I think instead of nitpicking things wrong with movie we should just be happy it was made at all. The one thing the film has an extremely limited budget so they saved money wherever they could, including having just one wig for Micky, consolidating the two producers into one character so they only had to hire one actor, etc. Plus, I'll forgive the Davy actor for being 5 foot 7 because I doubt there's a whole lot of five foot three actors who look AND SOUND like Davy Jones just hanging around Hollywood waiting for a gig.
One of the things that struck me was when they were showing the chart position of "I'm a Believer" with The Monkees logo: US #1, Great Britain #1, Austrailia #, Japan #11, Brazil #1. Then when they showed the names of the countries: US, UK, Brazil, Japan, Hawaii (?!).
There was one thing I definitely noticed they got wrong in the movie was early in the film Phillis, Mike's wife at the time, drove him to the audition pregnant with Christian. In real life Mike drove himself to the audition on his motorcycle. Phyllis wasn't with him. Christian was already born at that time. The film didn't point out that Michael had several other children as his career as a Monkee went on. One with another woman.
Thanks for the comments. Yes, there was a lot of whitewashing of events. Of course I know all of that and use them in "To Clarksville and Back" -- you can read it here, Melissa. toclarksvilleandback.wixsite.com/to-clarksville
I've seen the movie and I have to admit that it left out an awful lot of the band's story. Yes, I agree the ending was contrived considering actual events, but I give the actors playing Mike, Peter, Micky and Davy a pass. Micky said in an interview that he had been approached to direct it; wisely, he passed. The Monkees story should be told in a mini series format to cover all the complexities and their lives post 1970.
I agree, it isn't the actors fault for portraying the boys the way they did. They simply portrayed what was on the written page. The controlling idea of the film is that any four guys could've done what they did. And that's the problem. Because that simply isn't true.
I'll admit Jeff Geddis looked the most like a young Mike Nesmith, but I thought the other actors were passable as their real life counterparts. In the DVD commentary, Davy in particular remarked at how much Geddis looked like Mike. The guys are hard to find lookalikes for and to be fair, this was a low budget production, so they did a decent job of casting considering. L.B. Fisher (who played Peter) won the role by dressing up like the real Peter Tork for the audition. He said in an interview that he wore a light brown wig similar to how Peter wore his hair in 1968, hippie clothing and love beads. Even the competition seemed to concede he had the "Peter look" down. Peter himself said in the commentary that Fisher also had his smile down! If you get at least some props from the guys you're portraying, you're on the right track.
Im not at all faulting the actors, and they done fine with what they had to work with. I know it would be very hard to find a 5'3 baby faced guy to portray Davy. I'm stating only my opinion. I think they could have looked a little bit more or even had some type of input from someone who was familiar with the guys to cast the right guys. I also know it would be hard to cast someone for Micky as he has a unique look. But for as off as the movie was all together I can't understand why it would even be endorsed with anything to do with the Monkees.
I agree that the wardrobe choices, hair styles, and accents were off key. I also think actors smiled too much making them look goofy and their portrayals contrived. No one can imitate the Monkees!
While it’s true that Davey hit Peter,it’s surprising that it wasn’t Mike that did it since he didn’t like Peter from the beginning! I don’t know why he disliked him without knowing him but he did. It might have been something to do with the Folk music that Peter was already singing before he was hired to be a member of the group by Kirshner who wasn’t even mentioned in the comment made in this video!
@@barryinglett7034 Actually, sigh, that's another myth. In fact Peter lived for a while with Mike and his first wife Phyllis in the apartment in North Hollywood because Peter had very little money when they were starting out. Peter stated they were both very hospitable to him; any issues arose later. It's not hard to imagine those issues if you know about their personalities. They didn't disagree about folk music; if you know about Mike's background you know that he started out working in folk music and his wife herself was a folk performer. But the men did disagree about the merits of each other's songs; Mike didn't like Peter's and Peter didn't like Mike's songs. They were not on the same page about the hippie lifestyle nor about religion. I suspect Peter's musical abilities might have intimidated Mike and Mike's vision and force of will might have made Peter uncomfortable. And despite the wall-punching incident, Mike didn't have a reputation for getting into the onstage smacking around that happened more frequently with the other three. Lastly, they were hired primarily as actors and actors don't always become close friends on a set. Their relationship was complicated.
I remember hearing about it from Peter's commentary on a DVD copy. He was about to say something profane when describing Davy's behavior at that incident then he quickly changed it to "terrible person". Also the fight wasn't about who was going to sing lead for Daydream Believer. It was about something else that I can't remember.
I disagree with the premise here. Although the movie clearly made mistakes, overall it was very good. One of the goals was to make it resemble a Monkees episode, so it was less serious than an ordinary docudrama. Look, all of the Monkees except Mike were willing to do full length commentaries for it (which I found very interesting), so how bad it could really have been?
Well, if you listen to Peter's he definitely lists what's wrong, as in the portrayal of Michael. Micky NEVER says anything critical about anything. He knows how hard it is to make a film. My concern is that people who think they were 4 clueless clowns with little talent will see this film and think, "Yeah, I'm right." And those that know nothing of them will come away with that belief as well. The controlling idea of this film is, "Any four guys could've done this." And that is so wrong. AND a disservice to them.
Monkee Mythbusters What I found interesting was Peters commentary during the Mike punches the wall scene. Don Kirshner brought four bonus checks for the guys that he always claimed were $250,000 each. Peter said they were only $25,000 which is still alot of money for 1967, but it's a far cry from a quarter million each.
Well, I got that amount from a couple of sources, including Andrew Sandoval's book. (It is Kirshner making the claim; however if Andrew knew it was wrong I think he'd have said something.) And Nesmith said somewhere that he took Kirshner's cheque because he couldn't pay him enough for all the hell he'd been put through, implying that it was a LOT of money. But who knows.
What I found a bit strange was during the "Daydream Believer" video part, they were all wearing white, whereas in the actual video, they were wearing colorful clothes. I mean that was the only thing they got wrong during that one clip
@@JadenYukifan28 I thought that was foreshadowing. Those outfits were similar to the clothes the real guys wore in the Circle Sky concert segment in Head, and right after that clip, they start talking about developing Head. Plus, they had to reuse costumes where they could.
Great video! I love the monkees and love learning about them. But I would suggest that you say the words while you write them out just to fill in some "dead space" and make the video flow better. Keep on making videos and loving the monkees😃
They also had Davy’s hair the same during the season two timeframe. They did the Daydream Believer scene totally wrong, the depiction of Micky is terrible in my opinion, the ending was horrific, and many points were missed and not done right. This movie was overall terrible. Only the Monkees can do the Monkees. The acting wasn’t great either and they smiled too much.
I think instead of nitpicking things wrong with movie we should just be happy it was made at all. The one thing the film has an extremely limited budget so they saved money wherever they could, including having just one wig for Micky, consolidating the two producers into one character so they only had to hire one actor, etc. Plus, I'll forgive the Davy actor for being 5 foot 7 because I doubt there's a whole lot of five foot three actors who look AND SOUND like Davy Jones just hanging around Hollywood waiting for a gig.
One of the things that struck me was when they were showing the chart position of "I'm a Believer" with The Monkees logo: US #1, Great Britain #1, Austrailia #, Japan #11, Brazil #1. Then when they showed the names of the countries: US, UK, Brazil, Japan, Hawaii (?!).
There was one thing I definitely noticed they got wrong in the movie was early in the film Phillis, Mike's wife at the time, drove him to the audition pregnant with Christian. In real life Mike drove himself to the audition on his motorcycle. Phyllis wasn't with him. Christian was already born at that time. The film didn't point out that Michael had several other children as his career as a Monkee went on. One with another woman.
Thanks for the comments. Yes, there was a lot of whitewashing of events. Of course I know all of that and use them in "To Clarksville and Back" -- you can read it here, Melissa. toclarksvilleandback.wixsite.com/to-clarksville
Yes, those inaccuracies jumped out at me too.
Thank you for confirming that I didn't need to waste 2 hours of my life of what I thought was going to be just exactly how you portrayed it.
You're welcome!
I've seen the movie and I have to admit that it left out an awful lot of the band's story. Yes, I agree the ending was contrived considering actual events, but I give the actors playing Mike, Peter, Micky and Davy a pass. Micky said in an interview that he had been approached to direct it; wisely, he passed.
The Monkees story should be told in a mini series format to cover all the complexities and their lives post 1970.
I agree, it isn't the actors fault for portraying the boys the way they did. They simply portrayed what was on the written page. The controlling idea of the film is that any four guys could've done what they did. And that's the problem. Because that simply isn't true.
the only actor who remotely close looked the part was the guy who played Mike. Other than that whoever cast the others done a terrible job.
I'll admit Jeff Geddis looked the most like a young Mike Nesmith, but I thought the other actors were passable as their real life counterparts. In the DVD commentary, Davy in particular remarked at how much Geddis looked like Mike. The guys are hard to find lookalikes for and to be fair, this was a low budget production, so they did a decent job of casting considering. L.B. Fisher (who played Peter) won the role by dressing up like the real Peter Tork for the audition. He said in an interview that he wore a light brown wig similar to how Peter wore his hair in 1968, hippie clothing and love beads. Even the competition seemed to concede he had the "Peter look" down. Peter himself said in the commentary that Fisher also had his smile down! If you get at least some props from the guys you're portraying, you're on the right track.
Im not at all faulting the actors, and they done fine with what they had to work with. I know it would be very hard to find a 5'3 baby faced guy to portray Davy. I'm stating only my opinion. I think they could have looked a little bit more or even had some type of input from someone who was familiar with the guys to cast the right guys. I also know it would be hard to cast someone for Micky as he has a unique look. But for as off as the movie was all together I can't understand why it would even be endorsed with anything to do with the Monkees.
Micky does have a very unique look.
I agree that the wardrobe choices, hair styles, and accents were off key. I also think actors smiled too much making them look goofy and their portrayals contrived. No one can imitate the Monkees!
I think the worst thing that the movie did.. was absolutely massacre Davy’s hair.. he looks like fricking Willy Wonka in the movie
Oh! Davy hit Peter first? I did not know that! Where did you find out about that?
sonyab1974 Peter has spoken about it in interviews, and it's also in Micky's book.
@@budgles Oh thanks! :)
While it’s true that Davey hit Peter,it’s surprising that it wasn’t Mike that did it since he didn’t like Peter from the beginning! I don’t know why he disliked him without knowing him but he did. It might have been something to do with the Folk music that Peter was already singing before he was hired to be a member of the group by Kirshner who wasn’t even mentioned in the comment made in this video!
@@barryinglett7034 Actually, sigh, that's another myth. In fact Peter lived for a while with Mike and his first wife Phyllis in the apartment in North Hollywood because Peter had very little money when they were starting out. Peter stated they were both very hospitable to him; any issues arose later. It's not hard to imagine those issues if you know about their personalities. They didn't disagree about folk music; if you know about Mike's background you know that he started out working in folk music and his wife herself was a folk performer. But the men did disagree about the merits of each other's songs; Mike didn't like Peter's and Peter didn't like Mike's songs. They were not on the same page about the hippie lifestyle nor about religion. I suspect Peter's musical abilities might have intimidated Mike and Mike's vision and force of will might have made Peter uncomfortable. And despite the wall-punching incident, Mike didn't have a reputation for getting into the onstage smacking around that happened more frequently with the other three.
Lastly, they were hired primarily as actors and actors don't always become close friends on a set. Their relationship was complicated.
I remember hearing about it from Peter's commentary on a DVD copy. He was about to say something profane when describing Davy's behavior at that incident then he quickly changed it to "terrible person". Also the fight wasn't about who was going to sing lead for Daydream Believer. It was about something else that I can't remember.
Love your vids. Just discovered them. Great work! 👍🏽
I disagree with the premise here. Although the movie clearly made mistakes, overall it was very good. One of the goals was to make it resemble a Monkees episode, so it was less serious than an ordinary docudrama. Look, all of the Monkees except Mike were willing to do full length commentaries for it (which I found very interesting), so how bad it could really have been?
Well, if you listen to Peter's he definitely lists what's wrong, as in the portrayal of Michael. Micky NEVER says anything critical about anything. He knows how hard it is to make a film. My concern is that people who think they were 4 clueless clowns with little talent will see this film and think, "Yeah, I'm right." And those that know nothing of them will come away with that belief as well. The controlling idea of this film is, "Any four guys could've done this." And that is so wrong. AND a disservice to them.
Monkee Mythbusters What I found interesting was Peters commentary during the Mike punches the wall scene. Don Kirshner brought four bonus checks for the guys that he always claimed were $250,000 each. Peter said they were only $25,000 which is still alot of money for 1967, but it's a far cry from a quarter million each.
Well, I got that amount from a couple of sources, including Andrew Sandoval's book. (It is Kirshner making the claim; however if Andrew knew it was wrong I think he'd have said something.) And Nesmith said somewhere that he took Kirshner's cheque because he couldn't pay him enough for all the hell he'd been put through, implying that it was a LOT of money. But who knows.
What I found a bit strange was during the "Daydream Believer" video part, they were all wearing white, whereas in the actual video, they were wearing colorful clothes. I mean that was the only thing they got wrong during that one clip
@@JadenYukifan28 I thought that was foreshadowing. Those outfits were similar to the clothes the real guys wore in the Circle Sky concert segment in Head, and right after that clip, they start talking about developing Head. Plus, they had to reuse costumes where they could.
Great video! I love the monkees and love learning about them. But I would suggest that you say the words while you write them out just to fill in some "dead space" and make the video flow better. Keep on making videos and loving the monkees😃
They also had Davy’s hair the same during the season two timeframe. They did the Daydream Believer scene totally wrong, the depiction of Micky is terrible in my opinion, the ending was horrific, and many points were missed and not done right. This movie was overall terrible. Only the Monkees can do the Monkees. The acting wasn’t great either and they smiled too much.
And they got the pilot wrong
And now you ruined the movie for me THANK YOU 😠