Frank: The True Story That Inspired the Movie by Ronson Jon

Author:Ronson, Jon [Ronson, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Music, Biography, Humour
ISBN: 9781447265436
Goodreads: 20554259
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2014-01-15T08:00:00+00:00

Frank Sidebottom.

The telephone call happened to coincide with an abnormally opulent moment in my life. George Clooney was turning my book The Men Who Stare At Goats into a film. All this was happening thousands of miles away in Puerto Rico. On the day filming started I sat in my room in North London and looked at online paparazzi pictures of George Clooney sunbathing at the Puerto Rico hotel and playing basketball with the crew. I ought to have been delighted but a deep gloom descended instead. ‘They must be having unimaginable fun,’ I thought. ‘And here I am in this tiny room.’

I telephoned the film’s screenwriter, Peter Straughan. ‘I’m feeling very out of sorts – almost depressed – and I think the only way to get better is to visit the set,’ I said. We flew to Puerto Rico.

We arrived late at night at the hotel. The air was hot and wet and we found one of the producers sitting alone by the swimming pool. He said to me, ‘The most exciting day of your life is your first day on a Hollywood film set. The most boring day of your life is your second.’

And so it transpired. My psychological itch was scratched within minutes of arriving on set the next morning. It was in a disused chemical factory near a rainforest an hour out of town. It had only recently become disused and there were still signs above sinks that read Emergency Eye Wash. It was exciting to be in such a place. George Clooney introduced himself to me, was very nice, talked about Darfur. Then word got around that the author was on set and crew members – costume designers and art-department people – clustered around to meet me. But within a few hours the people who had earlier glanced excitedly at me were now looking surprised that the author was still on set for some reason. It turned out that they weren’t having unimaginable fun. They were working very long hours in a disused chemical factory. They were exhausted. It was good to discover that my life wasn’t necessarily that much worse than George Clooney’s life. That evening I suggested to Peter that maybe we should spend the next day sitting at the hotel pool instead. Which was where we began talking about Frank. Could the story I’d written for the Guardian be adapted into a film?

A few weeks later Frank was playing at a pub near my flat – the Bull and Gate in Kentish Town, North London. I found Chris in a dressing room at the back, Frank’s head in a bin-bag at his feet.

‘How did you lose so much weight?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, looking pleased.

‘Are you exercising?’ I said.

Chris shook his head and shrugged. It was a mystery.

‘Well, whatever you’re doing,’ I said, ‘you look great.’

Later, we walked across Kentish Town Road so Chris could buy some cigarettes – a cheap and obscure brand I’d never heard of. He’d already given us his approval on the film and I told him the latest news.

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