The Police - Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out

Product Description

Filmed entirely on a Super-8 camera belonging to the band's drummer Stewart Copeland, this film gives an insider's view of the band's rise to fame and eventual spilt. The film includes live performances, unique archive footage and interviews with band members and other key players.

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"We're done," says Stewart Copeland near the end of Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out, his homemade documentary about the rise and eventual fall of the group that ruled the planet during their '70s-'80s heyday. "When you get to where you're going, the ride is over." Yeah, but what a ride it was. Some 20 years after the Police (Copeland, Sting, and Andy Summers) disbanded for good, the drummer, now a film composer, edited the 50-plus hours of Super 8 footage he shot way back when, compiled a new soundtrack, wrote some voice-over commentary, and put together a film that, while considerably less than perfect, provides genuine insight into the chaotic, ultimately deadening world of rock superstardom. It all starts in '76, when the original band formed in England; by 1978, Copeland narrates, "we were ready to shed the leprous scab of (our) wretched history… and sally forth to the promised land of America." Fame and fortune ensued, and along the way, Copeland filmed everything--not just the inevitable scenes inside their tour van and backstage, but pre-gig sound checks, recording sessions, in-store promo appearances … Hell, he even recorded the band while they were making their videos, and there's one remarkable sequence in which he sets up his camera on a tripod behind his drum kit, then turns to address the viewer in mid-performance ("There's a little fight going on in front of the stage," he tells us). The camera work is often pretty shaky, and the performance footage is primitive, not to mention loud and distorted, but somehow that fits Copeland's fly-on-the-wall approach; and the soundtrack, live and studio versions of familiar tunes that Copeland "lobotomized" and "de-arranged," is revelatory. Perhaps best of all, the film offers Copeland a chance to tell us how it all went wrong. By the time of Ghost in the Machine, Sting (who comes off as his usual standoffish, mostly-humorless self) was no longer collaborating with other musicians in the studio. What's more, "(the) adulation started to feel like obligation," and while being rich and famous was swell, the price they paid was "our vibe, our essence." Part documentary, part travelogue, part video diary/confessional, Everyone Stares helps capture that essence again. --Sam Graham