A BBC documentary, ‘The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector’ will screen for a week in August at the Egyptian Theatre (American Cinematheque) in Hollywood, and I will try to check it out because of the importance of Spector in the music world.
Spector, the inventor of the ‘Wall of Sound’, a production technique which by doubling or tripling instruments created layered symphonic effects, has produced the most relevant artists of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, from the Beatles to the Ramones.
As everyone knows, he was accused of having murdered actress Lana Clarkson in 2003, and after a first trial, which ended in a hung jury in 2007, he was convicted after a second trial and is now serving a 19 years-to-life prison sentence.
The film’s director and co-producer, Vikram Jayanti conducted in depth interviews of Spector during his first trial, filmed inside his huge ‘bubble’, his Pyrenees Castle in the San Gabriel Valley.
Mojo Magazine says that the documentary is ‘very much a film with an agenda: the defense of Phil Spector.’ The director apparently never asked Spector any questions about his use of guns or anything related to what happened on February 2, 2003, outside the House of Blues in Los Angeles
According to several reviews, Spector appears as a man with a super-ego, comparing himself to Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Bach and Galileo, no less, but not really a surprise there. And what about his awful afro-wig collection? It was apparently ‘a tribute to Albert Einstein and Beethoven’. I would have never thought!
In any case, the intimate interview-conversations in the documentary seem to show a crazy and eccentric genius rather than a controlling and manipulative cold killer. The second trial is not detailed and just ‘summed up with one title card’.
One juror of the second jury said ‘they felt unable to be objective considering someone of Spector’s stature is on trial’… and this is the problem with this kind of character, where does the celebrity status stops, when do we begin to just see a man?
I wonder what kind of coercive and damaging evidence was introduced in the second trial, since he finally ended up being convicted of murder.