Monkees Movie Wrapped!

From: Emily861@aol.com

Rolling Stone online has a story on the Monkee movie:

On the Set of the New Monkees Movie
Monkees to swing again in TV movie “Daydream Believers”
Here they come…again

It had snowed in Toronto just days earlier, forcing the beach volleyball
scene in Daydream Believers: The Monkees’ Story to be filmed on wrap day,
April 14. The sun was out, but it was chilly. Still, the teenage extras had
to sit for hours in bikinis on Lake Ontario’s Sunnyside beach. For the
discerning viewer, only their lily white skin betrayed the fact that this
was not Los Angeles, September, 1966.

“Amazingly, Toronto has not only stood in for California, it’s stood in for
Manchester, London, Cincinnati, Los Angeles and Hawaii,” marvels the film’s
director Neill Fearnley (Escape From Mars, Dogmatic, Johnny 2.0), who is
making the film on a budget of $3.4 million.

The cast — Canadians George Stanchev (Davy Jones) and Jeff Geddis (Mike
Nesmith), alongside Americans L.B. Fisher (Peter Tork) and Aaron Lohr
(Micky Dolenz) — are assembled on a blanket for the Beach Pavilion
dialogue scene in which they discuss the craziness of the past year.

“The show’s not even on the air yet and every teenager girl in America
wants a piece of him,” says “Mike” of Davy.

“Davy” complains about a girl who breaks into his dressing room. “I found
her naked on my couch.”

The made-for-TV movie is produced by Toronto’s Pebblehut, a division of
Montreal’s Muse Entertainment Enterprises, which acquired the rights to the
Monkees’ music in 1999 from Rhino Records as well as to the Harold Bronson
book, Hey Hey We’re the Monkees, on which Ron McGee’s screenplay is based.
“The genesis is from that book,” says Fearnley, “and then we’ve added other
things.”

Many viewers will be surprised to learn that Jimi Hendrix opened for the
Monkees and Jack Nicholson wrote the band’s psychedelic full-feature
release Head. The cast also discovered some idiosyncrasies that personified
the original actors.

Lohr (Newsies, Mighty Ducks 2 and 3) was given leeway by the director to
improvise in the movie, such as wearing the baby’s hat or putting toys in
his mouth, because Micky was so playful. “I wanted to capture his essence,
his charm and child-like qualities,” Lohr explains.

Stanchev, who has his own pop album out on Bulgaria’s Ka Music, had to
master Davy’s dance. “Everybody [on set] started comparing it to Axl Rose’s
little sway thing,” he laughs.

Apparently Peter had a dual personality. “There was a difference between
Peter Tork, the character, which was the dumb, fun-loving guy, and Peter
Tork, the person, who was the serious musician, the intellect,” says
Fisher, whose acting credits include Felicity and ER. “He also smiles a lot
and wore his belt buckle sideways, so it didn’t scratch his guitar.”

On a darker note, Geddis, who plays the first victim in Friday the 13th
Part 10, due in October, reveals that there is a bit of blood shed in
Daydream Believers. “I do one scene where I punch a hole in the wall and
I’ve got a little bit of blood on my knuckles,” he says.

The story follows the prefab Sixties pop group through the audition process
for the TV show, its cancellation, the creation of the box office disaster
Head, and, finally, the foursome’s realization some months later that it
had been a fun ride.

“So it ends on an up note,” says Fearnley.

The film is scheduled to air in the summer of 2000 on VH1 in America, and
on TMN/Superchannel in Canada.

KAREN BLISS
(April 22, 2000)

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nes.com/sections/news/text/newsarticle.asp?afl=mnew&NewsID=10669&ArtistID=26
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