Review: Starsuckers
Starsuckers: When the media makes a star... you get made the sucker
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Friday, 23, Oct 2009 04:50
Showing at the London Film Festival on October 28th (20:30) and October 29th (13:00)
On selected release from October 30th.
By Matthew Champion.
In the weeks before its release Starsuckers received incredible publicity when the Guardian ran with the story of several Sunday tabloids appearing to offer money for what they thought were confidential medical records of A-list stars; clear breaches of the Data Protection Act and Press Complaints Commission code of practice.
The People, the News of the World and the Sunday Mirror sent journalists to secretly-filmed meetings offering up to £10,000 for documents allegedly proving which celebrity had which cosmetic surgery at a Harley Street clinic (provided by a fictitious nurse), a section which forms the penultimate act of director Chris Atkins' documentary.
Atkins, who received two Bafta nominations for his debut film Taking Liberties, wrote on his blog this week his nerves were "completely shredded" ahead of the film debuting at the London Film Festival.
"We are quite frankly extremely relieved that the cloak and dagger shenanigans of the past few weeks are finally at end and we can actually talk to people about our film without winking, nudging or calling a lawyer," he wrote.
It's not clear if the apparently uncensored version showed to journalists this morning will be the same version put out when it goes on selected release next week.
Watching the film surrounded by the subject of Atkins' film, and for an online journalist myself, was an at-times uncomfortable experience, similar to the same unease that every enterprising, young journalist who thinks that Charlie Brooker is the British Bill Hicks and that Graham Linehan is right about everything feels when they read Nick Davies' Flat Earth News.
Just as Davies, who is featured in the film, railed against the pitfalls of online churnalism, the rising influence of PR and a lack of time to check sources and make contacts, Atkins goes for the jugular in exposing the outright lies of the entire media establishment, led by our own British tabloids.
The headlines over Starsuckers (in true Ouroboros fashion) will be about Atkins and his team giving fake stories to the press that they ran with and were picked up by other media outlets, including the completely invented line that Amy Winehouse's hair caught on fire when she tried to mend a broken fuse at a house party; that Guy Ritchie gave himself a black eye in a London restaurant with some misguided cutlery tomfoolery; and that Girls Aloud singer Sarah Harding is a quantum physics aficionado.
But the main thrust of Starsuckers is the unholy alliance by the media and famous faces to exert an almost unshakeable grip over the world's (western) population.
Atkins identifies five steps taken or factors exploited to create this level of control: Start them young; keep them hooked; hard-wired urges; gathering information; and creating news.
The evidence is compelling. During the opening act parents at a UK shopping centre are convinced to audition their young children for reality TV shows with names such as Slaughterhouse (set in an abattoir) and Baby Boozers.
The Lithuanian parliament, where the former host of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? briefly became speaker, is used as an example to examine the newfound collusion between the media/PR-led celebrities and politicians.
Nowhere is this better illustrated than the Live 8 concert in 2005, which the filmmakers allege, shockingly, was a construct to hijack the much more worthy Make Poverty History campaign and make it seem as though the G8 leaders were doing some good. It's an allegation that strikes a chord; I can't remember the 250,000 marchers in Edinburgh but I can remember Pink Floyd reforming in Hyde Park during a concert held on the same day.
The constant link throughout the film is six-year-old Ryan, whose parents take him to audition after audition in Los Angeles as he carves out a media personality career as the 'tough' football pundit who dresses like K-Fed.
Although his desire to be famous seems to be his own - and not his willing parents - for the white gloves of the unseen magician in Starsuckers and his pack of cards, Ryan's ambition completely owes itself to the design of a shadowy conglomerate of media groups that build up a several lowly souls to convince the rest of us, mere members of a global entourage, that there is something better, something attainable, out there.
Writing on his Twitter feed this morning, Atkins said "just been handed a less than pleasant letter by a certain famous law firm".
Starsuckers goes on selected release from Friday October 30th. It would be a tragedy if any parts of the documentary were pulled because of legal gags; it's essential viewing not just for disenchanted journalists but for anyone afflicted by the decay of the global media: Everyone.
Will it change anything? Will websites including this one take action based on Atkins film? We at inthenews.co.uk not only truly hope so, we aim to prove it. Watch this space, but more immediately, watch Starsuckers.