![]() ![]() Speaking from England after the completion of the picture, the Who’s mainstay said, “The chasm between the original record album and the film is a great one. Pete Townshend looks at the collaboration between himself and Russell a bit differently. Before Tommy, the only group he recalls liking is King Crimson. But if Russell has fallen in love with rock, it is evidently a new love. Bach and Kurt Weill worked into their creations. To him, the work is a “genuine opera” and he sees no material difference between Townshend’s images of pinball wizards and acid queens and the popular images which such composers as J.S. Ken Russell sees nothing unusual in adding Pete Townshend’s name to his roster of musical infatuations. The soundtrack (a double LP with a $9.98 list price) has been acquired by Polydor Records and is expected to immediately earn a gold record. ![]() Promotional expenses, like $25,000 Hollywood publicity parties and $100,000 for premieres in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, will greatly increase the movie’s total price, though Stigwood and his London, New York and Los Angeles associates refuse to divulge just how much they are spending to boost the film. Tommy cost Columbia and the Stigwood Organisation $3.5 million to produce, with the film slightly overreaching its three-month shooting schedule in England late last year. Between them stands Ken Russell, the maverick – and sometimes pariah – of the movies a film director who began his career churning out thrillers like Billion Dollar Brain and romantic musicals like The Boy Friend, moved through the religious sensationalism of The Devils and finally turned to filming the biographies of the great classical musicians – Mahler, Tchaikovsky and, after Tommy, Franz Liszt. So the result is a kind of artistic detente, with the likes of Jack Nicholson, Oliver Reed and AnnMargret acting as ambassadors from one nation, and the Who, Elton John and Eric Clapton standing up for the youthful and lusty land of rock & roll. It brings together, for the first time really, the two main camps of contemporary entertainment, rock music and film, and utilizes the talents of the top figures of each. Still, the movie is expected to have a considerable impact. This little exercise in blowing up and exploding artistic balloons is only an example of the kind of hysteria and suspense which hovers over the release of Peter Townshend and the Who‘s magnum opus of the Sixties, as translated by Russell for the screen. “They get carried away, you know,” said Tommy’s director, the mercurial Ken Russell, who merely shrugs his shoulders and adds, “I think what I actually said was that Tommy was the best modern opera since Berg’s Wozzeck.” Tommy is greater than any painting, opera, piece of music, ballet or dramatic work that this century has produced.” This is what the hypesters at Columbia Pictures’ publicity mill came up with recently. ![]()
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