We’re going to start at the very end of the unfortunately tone-deaf music biopic “Spinning Gold,” because it is something else. Jeremy Jordan as the late and influential maverick record executive Neil Bogart looks straight into the camera and says, “I died …,” and a moment later, we’re plunged into an Afterlife Musical Number in which Bogart joins Tayla Parx’s Donna Summer for a Broadway-esque rendition of “Last Dance,” after which Jordan as Bogart sings an original tune called “Greatest Time,” while we see clips from the movie we’ve just experienced interspersed with shots of actors playing Bill Withers, Gladys Knight and members of KISS (in full makeup) joining Jordan as Bogart for the extended finale.
It’s like a strange and misguided takeoff on “All That Jazz” as funneled through “Rock of Ages,” and while there’s no denying the heart and effort behind the presentation, that finale is representative of the movie itself in that it has an uncanny way of hitting the wrong notes.
Writer-director-producer Timothy Scott Bogart clearly intended “Spinning Gold” to be a cinematic love letter to his late father, so it gives us no pleasure to report the film never reached us on a visceral level, never truly moved us. It goes through the expected paces of the modern-day Hollywood music biopic—but instead of profiling legendary performers a la “Ray,” “Walk the Line,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Respect,” “Elvis,” et al., the focus here is on an admittedly colorful and important record executive, but a record executive nonetheless.
As even Bogart acknowledges as he narrates his own story on camera, people remember Donna Summer and KISS and Gladys Knight and the Isley Brothers—not the man behind the scenes.
For those who don’t know the name: Neil Bogart was the scrappy, hustling, mercurial and risk-taking founder of Casablanca Records, which was often on the brink of collapse until Bogart struck gold in the 1970s with KISS, Donna Summer, George Clinton’s Parliament and the Village People, among other acts. Sadly, Bogart was just 39 when he died of cancer and lymphoma in 1982.
After an opening scene set in 1967 in which Bogart literally dances and sings his way into a church with a briefcase filled with cash as the Edwin Hawkins Singers are performing “Oh, Happy Day,” we get the first of those interstitial scenes in which Bogart speaks directly to us, explaining what a crazy ride it’s been. Cut to an entertaining and well-staged sequence set in 1974, with KISS taking the stage to a skeptical audience and eventually setting off the fire alarms and sprinkler system with its onstage pyrotechnics.
It’s the first of many instances where it appears Bogart’s career will be over before it really got started—but as we’re constantly reminded, there’s no keeping this man down, even as he drowns in debt and struggles to find the right formula for his eclectic stable of artists.
We also get a flashback to Bogart’s childhood in the Glenwood Projects in Brooklyn in 1951, with Winslow Fegley playing the young Neil Bogatz (Bogart changed his name several times) as an egg cream-sipping hustler who was putting together moneymaking schemes at the age of 8, even as he watched his father, Al (Jason Isaacs), get roughed up time and again over gambling debts and other failed endeavors. And we’re walked through the early 1960s, when Bogart had moderate success as a performer called Neil Scott before segueing into the executive side of the ledger.
Much of “Spinning Gold” is devoted to Bogart’s experiences discovering, mentoring and sometimes getting into creative disputes with talent, and this is when the film runs into insurmountable roadblocks. Some very talented artists are overmatched because they’ve been asked to provide the vocals for a few of the greatest pop, rock and soul singers of all time, and it’s an untenable position. When we hear “Lean on Me” and “Ain’t No Sunshine” performed by Pink Sweats, it’s only a reminder there’s never been anyone like Bill Withers. When Jason Derulo does “It’s Your Thing,” we want to hear the original lead vocals by Ron Isley. Heck, even the Sam Harris/Casey Likes version of “Shout It Loud” can’t stack up to the KISS original. (Probably the most impressive impersonation/performance comes from Ledisi, who does a superb take on “Midnight Train to Georgia.” It’s not Glady Knight—how could it be?—but it’s damn good.)
Michelle Monaghan does fine work as Bogart’s first wife, as does Lyndsy Fonseca as wife No. 2. Stunt casting abounds in “Spinning Gold,” with familiar faces from Chris Redd to Jay Pharoah to Dan Fogler to Peyton List to Michael Ian Black to Vincent Pastore popping in for smallish supporting turns. We even get Sebastian Maniscalco, nearly buried under wig and mustache, as the Italian composer and producer Giorgio Moroder.
As for Jeremy Jordan, who actually made his Broadway debut in the aforementioned “Rock of Ages”: He’s obviously talented, but there’s something light and affected to his overly mannered performance, when he’s playing what should be a fascinating, complex, charismatic and yet at times nearly tragic figure. Maybe “Spinning Gold” would have worked better as an all-out musical instead of an unsteady biopic that never truly finds its footing.
