Purple Pain

What is up movie buffs. Welcome back to a new episode of Bill's 1980's blog post. On today's agenda we are going to take a look at Prince's Purple Rain, a film so bad that it did the impossible, made millions of dollars thus launching the success of Prince and his band to likes that they had never seen. This film was a hard one to watch especially being a film student. I had a hard time keeping up with the plot, the acting was absolutely atrocious, and what little character development there was made no sense. This film was up there with some of my classic bad films I watch for enjoyment, Tommy Wiseau's The Room and Claudio Fragasso's Troll 2. I could not imagine a film such as Purple Rain even be considered by Hollywood producers this day in age. It baffles me to think that this film even got made in 1984. Then I realized something. The reason this film did so good in theaters, like the reading says the film grossed over 100 million dollars on a measly budget of 7.5 million, is because of the fact that every human who saw this must have been ridiculously high off their knockers on cocaine!

But in all seriousness there is no amount of coke that could get me back into a room to watch this film again, but I can see why it was made and thus did so successful. The 1980's was the start of something never seen before MUSIC TELEVISION! Move over Grandma, no more sock hops and gramophones it's the age of visual music. This was an exciting time to be a musician because for the first time you could now not only dominate the radio airwaves, but also the television! That's a win win when it comes to making money through promoting your music, and in a business where it's all about making money no one was complaining. Kids in the 1980's were just sick of listening to the radio like their dumb parents did, they craved something more and the got it with MTV and music videos. Music videos really are an art. They are usually mini stories that are told in 2 to 5 minutes, or in Michael Jackson's case 14 minutes, that have to hook you in that amount of time or you're going to change the channel. That's pretty impressive to do, but artist like Prince and MJ were pulling it off thus leading to some big corporate fat cat to get the bright idea to take these musicians and their songs and give kids what they really want, a hour and a half music video!!!!!!

So now you have Prince, Prince's songs, Prince's music videos, Prince's movie, Prince's Academy Award win, and Prince's domination on the music billboard for a long ass time. This is what the article refers to as "synergy" and hot damn if it didn't turn out that this "synergy" was good at promoting Prince and making everyone a boat load of money. Who cares if the plot doesn't make sense, the acting blows, Prince and the rest of the film treat women like punching bags, as long as in the end of the day you have millions of dollars and success to show for it. You as an audience are sitting through one long Prince commercial, and you don't even care because as long as Prince is up there shirtless humping a guitar amp vigorously while singing one of his hit songs your eyes are glued to the screen.

 In the article it points out how these record corporations manipulate you into going along with paying to see an almost two hour Prince film/concert. "The single "When Doves Cry" debuted on vinyl and video 3 months prior to the film's release. The appearance of the album in mid-June was over a month before the film's debut." (260) So you got the hit song on the radio and on MTV for two months constantly, and then another month being inundated with the whole album that everyone is listening to, and then what's this! A film based on the constant bombardment that has been filling your radio and TV for the past quarter of the year! Sing me up! It's rather quite ingenious.

All and all I hated Purple Rain. I just don not see the value in this film other than to sell copious amounts of Prince merchandise. If I wanted to see Prince sing in concert I would go see him in concert, not sit in a theater watching Prince play someone who isn't Prince, but is Prince, play his music to a crowd of people while you sit in a crowd of theater people. You won this time Prince. You and your sweet motorcycle and cool pirate clothes.