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在不正常的世界里寻找自我（弗兰克）影评

    Frank 纵然是一个无可争议的可疼可爱又独特非常的角色，但Jon这根“搅屎棍”却让我很感兴趣。如果非要从这部并不喜剧的电影里看出一点阳光，我想说他的存在带来的是一种莫名的伤感，和淡淡的希望。

     Jon最大的问题，就是试图带这个不正常的乐队进入一个“正常”的世界。

      一个意外到近乎荒诞的契机，让他和Frank的乐队有了交集，对于这个整日快要溺毙在办公室里做着无处实现的音乐美梦的年轻人，乐队是能帮他梦想靠岸的一大把稻草，是他能抓住的一切，因此他义无反顾地砸了进去。电影的开篇是愉悦的，一个把所见所想都尽力唱出来的音乐“才子”，你认为他是怀才不遇；一支神经兮兮浑身上下都在抖动着音符和灵感的“鬼才”乐队，你觉得他们大有可为。于是bang地一声，两者的碰撞制造出一种莫大的惊喜，也给了你一种严重的错觉——好戏拭目以待。

      第一次登台合作的逼仄小酒馆，听众寥寥。但事后想想这其实是他们最棒的一次合作，因为此时还未抱定他遥不可及的幻象的Jon相对纯粹，所以即使暴躁的Clara毁了这场演出，但Frank与Jon无比呆萌的对视还是表达了前者对后者的认可。
     看到这里的时候我一边开心一边暗暗地有些嫉妒Jon，我始终觉得他代表着的是这个世界上的大多数，平凡到苍白的经历和背景加上半瓶子咣当的个性与才华，阻碍在他与梦想之间的几乎是这地球上存在的一切。不清楚多少人能在他身上看到自己——游走在坚持与否的岌岌可危的悬崖，梦想的下一步就像那些永远在溜走的歌词一样捋不清楚。因此Frank发现了他，对我们来说竟是种巨大的安慰。


     可有些梦真该被早点叫醒。

     对Jon来说，这个乐队是他拥抱梦想的巨大机会；但对于乐队，彼此就只是彼此，音乐就只是音乐。这差异不可弥合。所以在爱尔兰朝夕相处的木屋里，沉浸在共同创作音乐的平和表象中，所有观者都跟在Jon身后盼着他的努力能够得来认可，但直到最后一刻，等到的却仍是以Clara为代表的其他成员的可怕态度：“我不知道为什么Frank选中了你但你让我厌恶。”这股欢脱祥和气氛下的巨大暗涌，事实上已预示了那梦想衰落的走向。

    那么，Frank，何以才华横溢又魅力四射的Frank偏偏看中了Jon？——因为Frank是这群不正常的人之中最不正常的一个呀。

    Frank在以一颗孩童般纯真的心脏创造音乐，所以他的才华才会格外显得光彩夺目，所以是他成为了乐队的核心领袖。他有着能够安慰他人的奇异力量，让没度成假的一家人带着焕然一新的灵魂满足离去，他也会在音乐节上得知可能并没有那么多人喜欢他们时沮丧得钻到桌子底下。他是“love you all”的Frank，让你的眼中盈满泪水，这样一个孩子般的人是不可能洞悉Jon眼中世俗的欲望的，爱是他与这个世界联结的唯一量度，也是他唯一希望从音乐中所获得的东西。因此Jon用视频点击率证明他们的“成功”，Frank理解为得到了喜爱；因此Frank珍惜Jon音乐上的珍贵，Jon却看到了自己梦想实现的指日可待。于是这两个人，在完全曲解了对方的意图后达成了某种错误的彼此信任，拼了命抱着惨不忍睹的坚持。而失败可想而知。

    Frank不怪Jon，他根本不知道什么是怨恨。没有了Frank的乐队和没有了乐队的Frank都颓败得让人心疼，所以Jon做了他唯一能做的事，将命中注定在一起的他们再度聚合到彼此身边。

    这家酒馆更加破败不堪，可却在Frank口中成了信手拈来的词。没有人在听，但音乐的力量明明振聋发聩。Jon看着，微笑着；再一个镜头，他不见了。

    这个不正常的群体，怎么容得下他。

    至于Jon的未来，也许他能找到志同道合的伙伴迸发自己的音乐才能，到达他的furthest corners；而也许他最终只是一个做梦的人。
    但在那个小酒馆的舞台上，和乐队第一次合作的夜晚；在这个小酒馆的舞台下，最后一次做乐队听众的夜晚，我相信他找到了自我。
    它能教会他如何走下去。

文青不是你想当，想当就能当（弗兰克）影评

今天去电影节看了，对世博馆区域人生地不熟，小伙伴们没头苍蝇一样乱撞，结果就是冲进影院电影已经开场了。jon小哥在荧幕上边走着边做着曲，回到家记录灵感却又产生了不如意的懊恼。短短几个镜头就勾勒出了这个生活浑浑噩噩，有梦想又达不到的形象，闲来有事无事在社交网络上发个状态，几乎都跟你我一样。

然后转机出现了，大头乐队【】的键盘手去跳了海，jon临时顶替上阵。虽然因为设备故障他的演出只进行了一会儿，不过他因此认识了Frank，大头乐队的灵魂人物。从此之后事情就都改变了。

Frank是个特别的人，就像don，那个和人形模特做爱的前键盘手说的，世界上只有一个Frank，古怪而友好，带着孩童一样的不谙世事，直指人心，最重要的是他妈的才华横溢。他那种特殊的感染力很容易就成为了乐队里的精神领袖。在山区里录歌的日子大概是全片最欢乐的一段，笑声那个叫此起彼伏。看的时候就感叹英国网络覆盖真好，这种荒郊野外都有无线网络。。。以及人人都是拖延症患者，林中小屋租期都过了，jon只好自掏腰包。可就算这样他依旧不讨人喜欢，而讨厌他的人以生猛的Clara大姐为首。话说这位大姐简直就是俄罗斯战斗种族，全片穿着一身vintage睡衣长裙晃来晃去，冷不防掏出来一把掏肾小刀分分钟戳瞎你。jon小哥被她激的跳出浴缸大叫cunt那一幕简直全场爆笑，按Clara下一秒就把小哥办了的反应看来小哥的小弟应该不错，不知道和法鲨比起来怎么样【喂等等

然后终于，终于，在jon的胡子再不刮掉都能去演耶稣了的时候，他们开始录专辑了。法鲨在此处展现了欧洲第一腰线的美妙肉体！附送nipple一枚！【喂录完专辑的那一段对话其实是个预兆。don 和done的发音很相似，而他喝庆功啤酒的样子就像是再也没有下一次。确实也再没有下一次了，第二天的清晨他带着Frank的头罩吊死在了河边的树上。

之前他用jon的电子琴自弹自唱的那一段相当的黑色幽默，优美哀伤的旋律唱的是和人形模特做爱，这明显是没治好啊你怎么放出来的！然后他就发表了那套一Frank论。从他的话里明显能听出对Frank的艳羡。jon和don一样，穷尽一生或许都只是mediocre，而Frank则像是一个异教徒的膜拜对象。最终don带着永远都成不了Frank的抑郁忧愤自杀了，他离Frank最接近的距离也不过是死时戴在头上的头罩。

至于后面的船葬就坑爹了啊，烧木柴的火就能把人烧成灰了？船还好端端的飘回来了。。。导演文科生妥妥的【艺术创作就不要这么计较了好吗

这部片子前面一个小时笑料都挺多，最后半个小时让人鸦雀无声。情节上的转变不是急转直下，而是矛盾一步步的爆发，如同温水煮青蛙。Clara对于jon的厌恶不是毫无来由，这女人的嗅觉和保护欲像是一只母豹。因为这个外来者根本和乐队成员是两类人，而Frank偏偏还挺喜欢他，这简直气死人了。大头乐队的组成者都是音乐nerd，而jon不是，无论他多么努力地试图融入这个集体，体验他自以为的折磨和黑暗童年，就像梭罗住在艾默生借给他的小屋里躲避人头税。jon的梦想是站在舞台中央接受所有人的掌声，而Clara对此不削一顾，虽然按照马斯洛的需求理论人人都渴望社会认同，不过Clara似乎是个例外。她不需要外人的认同，有Frank就够了。但是Frank就像个小孩子，听到他的音乐有人喜欢立刻欣然同意了演出的邀约，而知道真相的时候沮丧地都缩到了桌子下面。Frank到美国之后一路上明显freak out了，而jon看不到这一切，或者说看到了，却视若无睹。他的注意力在别的事情上。他想通过Frank来实现自己，可那是不可能的。Frank穿着裙子给头盔花了大浓妆上台是全片荒诞和讽刺的高潮。jon让他迎合观众，于是他就用他的理解这么做了，最后的结果当然是失败。

失去头盔以后Frank就像是变了个人，话说这段法鲨演得真好，一个大男人低着头握着拳头仿佛一个局促不安失去依靠的小孩，失去了音乐创造的动力和灵感。而jon也失望的发现了，他之前臆想的折磨和黑暗童年根本不存在。影片的结尾jon带着Frank去找了Clara他们，然后Frank重新开始唱歌，流着泪水。而jon走出他们的生活，就像是荧幕前的观众在字幕结束后总还是要走出放映厅各回各家。the illusion is over。

说实话这片子的主题还是比较老的，一是借Frank的父母之口吐槽了文青“音乐灵感源于黑暗童年”的观念，二是影片矛盾也很眼熟：一个局外人机缘巧合加入了他一直梦寐以求的XX团体，得到了这个小团体灵魂人物的赏识，和灵魂人物的原亲友产生矛盾，最后发现现实和梦想的大相径庭。这种套路可以拉出一个排。不过好在导演还是加了点新元素在里面的，例如社交网络。jon从一开始就不是一个有强烈主见的人，他甚至听从网络视频对于激发灵感的建议，而最后Frank父母的话算是彻底把他抽醒了：Frank的才华和灵感都是天生的。影片的结局早已在开头的那个海报镜头中昭示了，jon的梦想是站在舞台中央，而现实中他最后还是台下诸多模糊身影中的一个。

好吧最后放任自己来花痴一下。这片的原声是必须要下的，法鲨的歌声必须当voice porn循环播放。欧洲第一腰线穿背心简直就是肉弹苏的人找不着北，就是本来已经头大还戴了大头盔更加五五身了哈哈哈哈【喂摘下头盔以后则让人心疼，哪怕头上化妆做了两圈疤痕头上斑秃【。也还是那么美！【。拉近景特写就感觉底下的迷妹苏倒了一片啊。。。然后往don的尸体旁边放小海豚玩具还有迷妹喊了一声Charles！这位迷妹你克制一下好吗！

ps. 出来以后简直不能直视电影院宣传屏幕上dofp的老万

pps. 我还有两篇论文没写居然来写这个，简直作死，明天还要刷locke，活不成了_(:з」∠)_

獻給cult的小情歌（弗兰克）影评

喧鬧、怪誕、可愛、歡樂。光看Frank的預告絕對會誤以為這是一部描寫叛逆創作者的歡鬧喜劇，但面具、頭套、奇裝異服卻是一首唱給自己聽的孤獨情歌。

拙作插圖: http://ww4.sinaimg/mw1024/725f21d5gw1eh4t176gacj20rs0l7jyv.jpg

Frank借用與Bob Dylan傳記電影"I'm Not There"類似的致敬手法，描述一個與Frank Sidebottom這個虛構喜劇人物類似的歌手與他的怪咖樂團，包括不露真面目的主唱、暴力的鍵盤手、心事重重的混音師。透過一個渴望成名卻沒什麼音樂天份的普通年輕人，將這個怪異小樂團拉到社會大眾面前。

前半段電影保持著歡樂驚奇的趣味，多虧於Michael Fassbender的表演，讓這個單看有點creepy的大頭人充滿不可思議的可愛魅力。看他們與世隔絕、如同修行般自在的探索創作音樂的樂趣，看身為普通人的主角努力的想要融入這個團隊，觀眾會忍不住想為他的笨拙加油。但當隱藏在大頭面具中的真相暴露後，觀眾又會為主角的一意孤行感到焦躁。作為一個功能型的主角，Domhnall Gleeson的角色後半段的轉折被寫得略缺乏層次，除了惹人厭以外沒能給這部片帶來什麼作為，算是本片主要的一個缺點。好在電影的整體感是流暢的。中段混音師對Frank的才華羨慕忌妒憾恨的情緒，與後半段主角與社會大眾對Frank的誤解達到了很好的連結，讓喜劇轉悲劇的過程不至於突兀。

描寫cult角色不容於社會的故事，Frank並非第一部，手法算不上特別。但尾聲處呈現出的浪漫憂傷卻讓人印象深刻。我想這很大部份必須歸功於演員。Michael Fassbender很精準的掌握了演員在呈現喜劇與悲劇間相異的表演元素。前半段他把握到喜劇人物常具有的笨拙單純，同時也表現出演員本身俱備的領導魅力。後半段則切換到更為寫實的悲劇肢體語言，光是茫然無措的站著就能讓人鼻酸。

以小眾獨立片的完成度而言Frank可說是超越期待的交出亮眼的成績。它有趣、幽默、反英雄，很好的提供觀眾一次從喜悅、興奮到感傷、反思的旅程，但又不至於過度沉重。如同劇中他們表演的那些歌曲一般悅耳輕巧。

Frank Sidebottom: the true story of the man behind the mask -- Jon Ronson（弗兰克）影评

随手搜的，先摘过来，有空翻一下。
以下节选自Frank: The True Story that Inspired the Movie该书，书的作者Jon Ronson是剧本的Co-writer，也即电影中Jon的原型。
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更新，大概是不会翻译了，其实单词很简单很好理解，而且和电影里的对话非常像呢，可见改编之忠实。

In 1987 I was 20 and the student union entertainments officer for the Polytechnic of Central London. One day I was sitting in the office when the telephone rang. I picked it up.

"So Frank's playing tonight and our keyboard player can't make it and so we're going to have to cancel unless you know any keyboard players," said a frantic voice.

I cleared my throat. "I play keyboards," I said.

"Well you're in!" the man shouted.

"But I don't know any of your songs," I said.

"Wait a minute," the man said.

I heard muffled voices. He came back to the phone. "Can you play C, F and G?" he said.

The man on the phone said I should meet them at the soundcheck at 5pm. He added that his name was Mike, and Frank Sidebottom's real name was Chris. Then he hung up.

When I got to the bar it was empty except for a few men fiddling with equipment.

"Hello?" I called.

The men turned. I scrutinised their faces. In the three hours since the phone call I'd learned a little about Frank Sidebottom – how he wore a big, fake head and there was much speculation about his real identity. Some thought he might be the alter ego of a celebrity, possibly Midge Ure, the lead singer of Ultravox, who was known to be a big Frank Sidebottom fan. Which of these men might be Frank? If I looked closely would there be some kind of facial clue?

Then I became aware of another figure kneeling in the shadows, his back to me. He began to turn. I let out a gasp. Two huge eyes were staring at me, painted onto a great, imposing fake head, lips slightly parted as if mildly surprised. Why was he wearing the head when there was nobody there to see it except for his own band? Did he never take it off?

"Hello, Chris," I said. "I'm Jon."

Silence.

"Hello ... Chris?"

Nothing.

"Hello ... Frank?" I tried.

"HELLO!" he yelled.

Another of the men came bounding over to me. "You're Jon," he said. "I'm Mike Doherty. Thank you for standing in at such short notice."

"So," I said. "Maybe we could run through the songs? Or ... ?"

Frank's face stared at me.

"Frank?" Mike said.

"OH YES?"

"Can you teach Jon the songs?"

At this Frank raised his hands to his head and began to prise it off, turning slightly away, like he was shyly undressing. I thought I saw a flash of something under there, some contraption attached to his face.

"Hello, Jon," said the man underneath. He had a nice, ordinary face. He gave me a sheepish smile, as if to say he was sorry that I had to endure all the weirdness of the past few minutes but it was out of his hands.

Before I knew it we were onstage. As we played I watched it all – the band assiduously emulating the tinny pre-programmed sounds of a cheap, children's keyboard, the enraptured audience, and Frank, the eerie cartoon-character frontman, his facial expression immobile, his singing voice a high-pitched nasal twang.

After that night – the greatest of my life – a year passed. Life went back to normal. Then Mike phoned and asked if I wanted to be in Frank's band full time. So I quit college and moved to Manchester.

And there I was, in the passenger seat of a Transit van flying down the M6 in the middle of the night, squeezed between the door and Frank Sidebottom. Those were my happiest times – when Chris would mysteriously decide to just carry on being Frank. Nothing makes a young man feel more alive and on an adventure than speeding down a motorway at 2am next to a man wearing a big fake head. I'd watch him furtively as the lights made his cartoon face glow yellow and then black and then yellow again.

I am writing this 26 years later. The music journalist Mick Middles recently sent me his not-yet-published biography Frank Sidebottom: Out of His Head. His book captures perfectly that "rarest of journeys" when an onlooker got to see the man born Chris Sievey turn into Frank. "The moment the head is placed the change occurs. Not merely a change in attitude or outlook but a journey from one person to the other. I completely believe that Chris was born as two people." Middles likens Chris to transgender people, trapped in the wrong body.

I never understood why Chris sometimes kept Frank's head on for hours, even when it was only us in the van. Under the head Chris would wear a swimmer's nose clip. Chris would be Frank for such long periods the clip had deformed him slightly, flattened his nose out of shape. When he'd remove the peg after a long stint I'd see him wince in pain.

Frank's character was of a child in a northern town remaining assiduously immature in the face of adulthood. He was a paean to ordinariness. But Chris wasn't ordinary. He was chaotic. Sometimes, on the way back from some gig, I'd become aware that we were taking a detour to some house somewhere with some women we somehow met along the way. There would be partying while I sat outside on the sofa.

In the van I'd listen to Chris's stories, trying to understand him. He reminded me of George Bernard Shaw's unreasonable man: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." Chris was the unreasonable man, except the world never did adapt to him and he never made any progress. Like when Frank was asked to support the boy band Bros at Wembley. There were 50,000 people in the crowd. This was a huge stage for Frank – his biggest ever, by about 49,500 people. It was his chance to break through to the mainstream. But instead he chose to perform a series of terrible Bros cover versions for five minutes and was bottled off. The show's promoter, Harvey Goldsmith, was glaring at him from the wings. Frank sauntered over to him and said, "I'm thinking of putting on a gig at the Timperley Labour Club. Do you have any tips?"

We crisscrossed Leeds and Bury and Sheffield and Liverpool playing the same venues over and over again. Time passed and the audiences grew to 750 and sometimes even 1,000. It was consequently baffling for me to become aware of a growing sense of discontent in the van. Chris had been asking friends to perform cameos between the songs on his records. In this spirit he had asked his brother-in-law's friend Caroline Aherne to voice the part of Frank's neighbour, Mrs Merton. Afterwards, Caroline decided to keep Mrs Merton going. She somehow got her own TV show, The Mrs Merton Show. She won a Bafta. Her followup series, The Royle Family, won about seven. The Royle Family Christmas specials attracted audiences of 12 million. And meanwhile we were crisscrossing Manchester and Bury and Leeds and Sheffield and Liverpool in our Transit van.

The band's guitarist Patrick Gallagher told Middles: "It wasn't Caroline's fault. Chris was totally out of control. Whereas, say, Caroline Aherne had a single vision and could just pursue that, Chris might have a fantastic idea, and then, just as the point where it might actually get somewhere, he would spin off onto something completely different. That's OK for a while but it tended to piss people off because they never knew where they stood."

Suddenly everyone around us was becoming famous. My next-door neighbour Mani had a band. They became The Stone Roses. Our driver, Chris Evans, left us to try and make it in radio. By 2000 he was earning £35m in a year, making him Britain's highest-paid entertainer.

There is always a moment failure begins. A single decision that starts everything lumbering down the wrong path, speeding up, careering wildly, before lurching to a terrible stop in a place where nobody is interested in hearing your songs any more.

With Frank I can pinpoint that moment exactly.

"Chris wants to have a rehearsal," Mike told me one day.

"Why would Chris want to rehearse?" I said.

"To take things up a level," Mike said.

Chris's house was in a normal, nice, modern cul-de-sac. His children were playing outside. His wife, Paula, answered the door and told me to go to the spare bedroom. I walked up, passing the bathroom and glanced in. Staring back at me from the sink was Frank's head.

"In here, Jon," I heard Chris shout.

I opened the bedroom door. And stopped. A man was standing there, maroon shirt tucked smartly into neat black jeans. As I walked in he started playing a tight soul-funk riff with seeming nonchalance, but I understood it to be an act of aggression.

"Who ... are you?" I said.

"I'm Richard," he said. "From the Desert Wolves."

I'd like to say that during the years since Richard the bass player took an instant dislike to me – a dislike that only intensified during the months that followed before the band imploded, and climaxed in him yelling that he'd like to break my "keyboard-playing fingers" – he went on to have a disappointing life. But he didn't. He became one of the world's most successful tour managers, looking after Woody Allen and the Spice Girls. He currently manages the Pixies.

Richard was not the only proper musician Chris brought in. A skilful guitarist and a saxophone player turned up in the spare bedroom too. We began to sound like an excellent 1980s wedding band.

Chris told me to book us the biggest tour we'd ever undertaken. He choreographed it so I would begin the show. I'd walk on stage, alone, into a spotlight, and play a powerful C with my left forefinger. The synth brass tone – the most stirring of all the Casio tones.

We hired a people-carrier instead of a Transit van and set off to our first venue. The mood was pumped. The old band members had a certain avant-garde loucheness. But this new band: I felt like I was in a college sports team. We soundchecked. The place was packed. And then I walked out into the spotlight. And in the space of that first song – our classic Born in Timperley (to the tune of Springsteen's Born in the USA) – the audience veered from fevered anticipation into hoping we were playing a weird joke on them into realising with regret that we were not. The NME savaged us. By the end of the tour we were playing to almost-empty houses.

Chris returned to Manchester to a court summons. He owed £30,000 in back taxes. On the day of his court appearance the judge told him it was a very serious matter and had he considered a payment plan?

"Would a pound a week suffice, m'lud?" he asked.

"No it would not!" the judge shouted.

Chris never actually said to me: "You're fired." But I began to notice in the listings magazines that he was doing solo shows – just him and a keyboard. They were in the same venues we used to play, then in smaller venues, and then eventually there were no shows at all.

I moved back to London.

Ten years later I was in the park with my son when the phone rang.

"HELLO!" said Frank Sidebottom.

"It's been so long. How are you?" I said.

"Oh I'm very well actually, Mr Ronson," Frank said.

"Frank," I said. "Will you put Chris on?"

Chris filled me in on the past 10 years. Now divorced from Paula, he was an animator on the children's claymation series Pingu. He loved the work but missed Frank and wanted to bring him back from retirement. He was wondering if I'd write something about my time in the band to help him with the comeback. My story was published in the Guardian. My friend, the screenwriter Peter Straughan, asked me if I thought the story could be adapted into a film.

Not long after that, Frank was playing at a pub near my flat. 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.

"Well, whatever you're doing," I said, "you look great."

We walked across Kentish Town Road so Chris could buy some cigarettes. He'd already given us his approval on the film and I told him the latest news. FilmFour wanted to fund its development. But – and Chris and I shuffled awkwardly around the question – what would the film actually be about? Specifically, Chris wondered, would Chris be in it? Chris had always said we could do what we wanted with the story. But he was worried that however the film might depict Chris, any reality would surely damage Frank.

I had similar concerns. Chris portrayed himself as untroubled. While a total dearth of anxiety was a fantastically enviable character trait in real life, how could we write a film about a man who just didn't care when everything went wrong and in fact found disaster funny? And if Chris was secretly more obsessive about Frank than he let on, how would he feel if the film reflected that? But there was a solution. What if we fictionalised the whole thing? It could be a fable instead of a biopic – a tribute to people like Frank who were just too fantastically strange to make it in the mainstream.

I set off for America to research other great musicians who'd ended up on the margins – Daniel Johnston, Captain Beefheart, the Shaggs. A week after I returned, I saw Frank Sidebottom's name trending on Twitter. I clicked on the link and it said "Frank Sidebottom dead". I wondered why Chris had decided to kill off Frank. So I clicked another link:

Stars lead tributes as Frank Sidebottom comic dies at 54
Chris Sievey, famous as his alter ego Frank Sidebottom, was found collapsed at his home in Hale early yesterday. It is understood that his girlfriend called an ambulance and he was taken to Wythenshawe Hospital, where his death was confirmed.
Manchester Evening News, 22 June 2010

When I'd told Chris at our last meeting how thin he looked – he didn't know it then, but it had been throat cancer.

Frank Sidebottom comic faces pauper's funeral
The comic genius behind Mancunian legend Frank Sidebottom is facing a pauper's funeral after dying virtually penniless. Chris Sievey had no assets and little money in the bank, his family have revealed.
Manchester Evening News, 23 June 2010

A pauper's funeral? What did that involve? A journey back in time 200 years? I sent out a tweet. Within an hour 554 people had donated £6,950.03. By the end of the day it was 1,632 donors raising a total of £21,631.55. The donations never stopped. We had to stop them.

A Timperley village councillor, Neil Taylor, started his own fund-raising campaign for a memorial statue – Frank cast in bronze. He sent me photographs of its journey from the foundry in the Czech Republic to its final resting place outside Johnson's the dry cleaners in Timperley. In the photographs, Frank looked like he'd been kidnapped but was fine with it.

And now our Frank film – directed by Lenny Abrahamson and starring Michael Fassbender, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Domhnall Gleeson, is going to be premiered at the Sundance film festival. As I prepare to go to it, I remember something Chris once said to me. It was late one night, and we were in the van, reminiscing about a show we'd played a few weeks earlier at JB's nightclub in Dudley. It was very poorly attended. There can't have been more than 15 people in the audience. One of them produced a ball, the audience split into teams and, ignoring us, played a game. In the van, Chris smiled wistfully.

"That Dudley gig," he said.

"Ah ha?" I said.

"Best show we ever played," he said.