Monkees Movie Promo Fever

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X-eGroups-From: Brad Waddell
From: Brad Waddell

From: ItsNot2L8@aol.com

I just bought a Toronto Sun because right on the front page I saw in colour
“Hey hey They’re The Monkees” with a picture of the guys cast for the
Monkees movie, Daydream Believers!

Looks like it’s going to be great! Keep Monkeeing Around everyone! If
anyone wants a free list of Monkees stuff including cd’s, videos, old
trading cards, coins and everything inbetween please e-mail me:
itsnot2l8@aol.com
Lora Keyes
:+)
see neat stuff at www.monkeegirl.com

++++++++++++++++++++

From: JAZZ4JEFF@aol.com

The Canadian based internet site Canoe, has a new article and pictures on the
VH1 Monkee movie. It shows a picture of the four actors cast as the band,
plus some backstage insights into the filming.

The web link is

http://www.canoe.ca/Television/apr07_monkees.html

Enjoy,
Jeff Gehringer

Monkee Business
Hey, hey, they’re depicting the Monkees, and yesterday we got an exclusive
peek on set
By CLAIRE BICKLEY — Toronto Sun

TORONTO — The Monkees are mixing it up.

Mike Nesmith is determined to do a concert to prove they’re genuine musical
talents. His cause is being backed by Peter Tork.

Not so by Davy Jones, who can only play tambourine anyway, or by Micky
Dolenz, who thinks it sounds like a lot of work and doesn’t get what the
big deal is anyhow.

“It’s not like Barbara Eden sleeps in her genie bottle every night,” Micky
points out.

It’s a great line — and a great example of the varied ambitions of the
four ’60s popsters/TV comedy stars back when they began.

For Nesmith and Tork, it was about the music. Jones and Dolenz were just
satisfied to be stars, no matter how manufactured.

Which is something of an irony here on the Toronto set of Daydream
Believers: The Monkees’ Story, a $5-million movie to air this summer or
fall on TMN-The Movie Network in Canada and VH1 in the U.S. It’s being made
here by the Pebblehut Productions wing of Montreal’s Muse Entertainment.

After an open casting call that drew hundreds of hopefuls in New York, L.A.
and Toronto, the headliners were hired: Torontonians Jeff Geddis and George
Stanchev are playing Mike Nesmith and Davy Jones, L.A-based actor Aaron
Lohr is Micky Dolenz and New Yorker L.B. Fisher is Peter Tork.

The two actors who are real-life musicians — Stanchev and Lohr — are
playing the least musically talented Monkees, Jones and Dolenz.

Stanchev, who is only 19, plans to release a solo pop album this year. As
Jones, his biggest musical strain has been a tambourine-induced blister.
“I’ll have a scar from that. Where’s my stunt pay?” he jokes.

Lohr, 24, sang the voice of Goofy’s son Max in A Goofy Movie, was in the
musical feature Newsies and his R&B band has a deal with Epic Records.

Twenty-four-year-old Geddis, on the other hand, admits to playing nothing
beyond rudimentary guitar chords, and says, “I wish nobody ever hears me
singing.”

Nevertheless, he understands the musically-gifted Nesmith’s dilemma: “It
was one of those things. On one hand they were being handed cheques for
$250,000 after like their first couple shows and then on the other hand, he
was like, ‘I don’t really feel like I’m being honest, I don’t really feel
like I’m being true to what I do,'” Geddis says. “So he goes out and buys a
mansion. It was almost like gangster money to him, you know what I mean? He
bought his wife a mansion. He bought himself a whole bunch of cars. He
thought, ‘Well, I didn’t really earn this money so I might as well blow it.
Like it was dirty money, kinda.”

Non-naturally musical twenty-something Fisher got busted a bit by his New
York roommate Jeanette Keim, who is the lead singer in the band Moxy.

“Well she did, because she wanted me to really play. If we had more time,
she was going to teach me,” Fisher says.

Because Rhino Records is a co-producer of the movie, all of the Monkees’
real music will be used. Still, all four actors have been undergoing a
crash course in instrument-handling since shooting began three weeks ago.

No one had to get it together faster than Lohr, who was cast on a Friday
with shooting to start the following Monday. By Saturday, he was in Toronto
taking drum lessons.

“I was a bit overwhelmed when I first got here. I thought, ‘God, can I do
this?'” he recalls. “Plus, dialogue and taking on his characteristics and
his essence. But that weekend, I watched episode after episode. I watched a
documentary, which was great. I watched the movie Head and listened to the
songs over and over and over again. I took my sticks everywhere I went and
was beating on things, beating on the couch, on the bed.”

All four now have a feel for what it’s like to be a pop idol. They shot two
live concert sequences at Hamilton’s Copps Coliseum, with hundreds of
extras playing screaming fans.

“All of a sudden they announced, ‘In their first live show … THE
MONKEES!’ We went out on stage and the cheering went from one level to a
completely different level,” Stanchev describes. “The first song we broke
into was I Want To Be Free, which Davy Jones sings, and there was a little
number where I dance and go up to the crowd and I’m touching hands. Just
seeing the looks on their faces, it felt real. Whether we’re singing to a
playback or not, we’re performing. The more they fed off of us, the more we
fed off of them.”

Some extras hung around afterwards to get the actors’ autographs and pass
them their phone numbers. Just like the real thing.

One 13-year-old girl playing a shrieking fan was accompanied by her mother
who, 35 years ago, really was a shrieking fan at a Monkee’s gig, says
Canadian director Neill Fearnley, 46.

“We’ve compressed a few things for time purposes, but we’re telling it
very, very close to what happened,” he says. “Some of the historical things
that people don’t remember or don’t know is that Jack Nicholson wrote the
screenplay for their movie Head. That Frank Zappa wanted Micky Dolenz to be
the drummer of his band, Mothers of Invention. That Jimi Hendrix opened
their tour.”

The film, scripted by Ron McGee, is based on Harold Bronson’s book, Hey,
Hey, We’re The Monkees.

Yesterday, an east-end studio replicated the beach house where the Monkees
lived on their slapstick TV series. A lifesized toy giraffe stood in one
corner. An oversized eye chart hung on the wall. A stuffed gorilla was
upstairs, a jukebox sat beside the shabby chic art deco furniture and a
male mannequin was relaxing at the kitchen table.

Costume designer Mary Partridge has amassed two trailers full of mid-’60s
dress for the film’s 50 speaking roles and 1,300 extras. There are three
sets of clothes for the Monkees themselves: Street clothes, concert
costumes and the goofball get-ups they wore on TV.

The latter reflect the grab-whatever, fast and furious way in which the old
series was put together. Yesterday afternoon, for example, they were
re-creating the Monkees episode Princess And A Peasant.

“You know, like Mike’s blue jeans are tucked into his cowboy boots, which
isn’t exactly medieval footwear,” Partridge points out. “Davy’s watch is
still on. They’re wearing Indian beads that they got when they flew up with
Stephen Stills when he was part of Buffalo Springfield to do a concert on a
reservation.”

There’s one piece of wardrobe that actor Geddis is hoping to have as a
special souvenir when the movie is done: One of Nesmith’s tuques.

“Or the ‘wool hat,’ as the Americans say,” he says. “We got interviewed by
Entertainment Tonight and I said ‘tuque’ and they kind of looked at me
like, ‘What?’ I said, ‘Oh, wool hat for the Americans.'”

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