 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 | 🎙️ EPISODE 366: 09.15.21 Cool Daddio is a somewhat choppy documentary which will most likely end up being the definitive cinematic statement on the life of outsider and underground musician R. Stevie Moore (for better or worse or – Spoiler ! – correct answer: none of the above). That the movie's life itself has traversed a somewhat tortured and mostly tumultuous road is fitting and echoes the arc of the career of the man in question. A minimal and oft-delayed production that was, I believe, crowd-funded at one point, (I swear to god I backed it, forgot all about it, and never received a single perk; not that I'm bitching) the film eventually found its way into the world in the summer of 2019 via the Sheffield International Documentary Festival. It then found an extremely limited release, for a little while, on the Sky network only in the UK. Fast forward to December 30th, 2020, when some kindly soul ripped and uploaded a version of that TV broadcast onto YouTube. |
And that's how I watched it some nine months later (a measly 8K views to date). This unceremonious dump in the middle of the holiday season is probably the perfect conclusion for the saga, for – as the film richly dissects – the great and lingering theme throughout the life R. Stevie Moore is one of self-sabotage and glorious "we came this close!" failures.
The film is a nice primer on R. Stevie, however. Its relegation to afterthought (in the maze of mainstream and/or 'cool indie' media) sucks because I feel it does work excellently as an entry point for the uninitiated. Again, how doubly fitting is its own obscurity and fanfare-free release into the world. But in that sense it does seem right that it's now been unleashed to the masses on pirate YouTube; the man himself even tweeted out the link!
So, AS A MOVIE... I felt like the first fifteen minutes were clunky and rote and I was worried I was in for a paint-by-numbers talking heads bore-fest, even though they were able to snag a decent to great assortment of dudes (Mac DeMarco, Mike Watt, persona non grata Ariel Pink – who, like it or not, is a part of this story – as well as many others). It really could've used another pass in the editing room is all, staggering the before and after within the framework of its introduction. But the film finds its footing. There are some truly great and honest moments as we see current day Stevie struggle, both with the mundane day-to-day stuff, the battles of his volatile past (his shitty dad was Elvis Presley's bass player) and his place/legacy within the pantheon of music and notoriety, and the cross-section therein. He also drops some evergreen knowledge re DIY, home recording and never ever compromising, even if the latter ultimately proved to be the roadblock to his 'greatest success' (whatever that is). In the end, I give a lot of credit to first-time filmmakers Monika Baran and Imogen Putler for the effort here. They didn't have a lot of support and they got damn the thing done. I enjoyed it.
And so, as a Noted RSM Super Fan™ who once built a website around ranking his Top 365 Songs debuted one at a time over the course of a year (guess what? I never finished the project– shocker! I know) and who had a cover version of one of his songs find its way onto an RSM Covers Comp (a very sloppy "Irony"). I can say that I am in a somewhat unique position to assess this. I also briefly connected with Mari, RSM's live-in companion who features prominently in the doc, over Snapchat (lol) freaking somehow (?); I honestly I can't remember! But they would send me one-off snaps of Stevie fucking around with some music every once in awhile. (It was honestly incredibly weird and I never knew how to respond haha)... Take it with a grain of salt, but if I can't 'brag' about that shit here, where the hell else am I gonna do it? Anyway, go watch this, go buy all 7,000 of his albums, check out his incredibly shitty website which hasn't changed in 15 years and – most importantly – go shout his praises, to the rafters, to the hills, to anyone who'll listen. <3
...See also my reviews of Tape to Disc and I Am a Genius (And There's Nothing I Can Do About It)
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 365 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 366B ⫸
⫷ EPISODE 365 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 366B ⫸
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