The movie Color Me Obsessed was
recently part of the film screenings at the CBGB Festival with an informative
Q&A with filmmaker Gorman Bechard, and this Friday, July 27 it will be in New Haven, CT at Café 9. There will even
be a live tribute to the band and other regional musicians after the showing. See a complete listing of upcoming engagements here and for those interested,
there will be a DVD release before the end of the year.
Last year PopMatters declared
Color Me Obsessed one of the
Top 5 most anticipated music documentaries, and it is certainly worth seeing
for anyone who counts The Replacements part of their personal history or any others
that wish they could. Bechard made an
unusual creative decision not to include the band or its music going into the
project. It’d be similar to the Mats, to
use their nickname, in that things could have been so much easier for all if
everyone adhered to the rules. He found fans on Facebook and Craigslist eager
to tell the tale instead, with locales decided by where participants were
comfortable doing an interview. So the
story revolves around how many concerts people attended (for Bechard, the
number was fifteen) and which is their favorite album (Bechard’s is Tim).
It wasn’t until editing the final cut that Bechard decided to add a few
photos at the end, a heartbreaking effect after ending the film with the band’s breakup
in 1991.
The effect of not seeing them
or hearing their music makes the audience want to run home and listen to the
band as well as looking up online resources, especially the train wreck which
was their Saturday Night Live Performance.
(Gawker explores a few of them in a recent article with the backstory.) Bechard can be forgiven for
the slight of hand in the editing room with this labor of love, for example allotting
screen time to George Wendt comparing the song “Here Comes a Regular” to his
hit series Cheers. These indie rock
pioneers were a messy group of guys mixing classic rock with punk charged
energy and attitude, earning them a place in Rock and Roll history. The music scene simply hasn’t been the same
since.