Director Stephen Kijak did not want to make his latest movie, Backstreet Boys Show ‘Em What You’re Made Of. “I was a big snob and had turned it down,” he confesses, “I was not a Backstreet Boys fan.”
Kijak is known for directing serious music documentaries like Scott Walker – 30th Century Man (executive produced by David Bowie no less) and Stones In Exile, a film about the recording and cultural impact of the Stones’ Exile On Main St. So it’s no surprise that Kijak wasn’t initially enamoured with the idea of making a movie about the worlds most successful boy band.
Maybe the realisation that pop-docs are big business was what gave Kijak the change of heart, case in point being Katy Perry’s Part of Me, which grossed a monster $32,726,956 by the end of 2014. Add into the mix the fact that the Kevin, A.J, Nick, Howie and Brian have sold in excess of 130million albums worldwide over the course of their 20-year career and the idea of making a movie with them doesn’t seem like such a nightmare.
“Try editing with it for eight months, you wake up with Shape of My Heart on repeat in your head. At first it was a problem and then you just go ‘fuck it I love this shit,'” Kijak laughs.
Even before its release the movie has garnered mixed reviews, with the New York Times plunging in the knife, describing it as “a film that only fans that are seriously overinvested in that once formidable boy band could love.” What they fail to realise is that this isn’t a bad thing.
“You’re never going to please everybody, especially not old white guys,” Kijak bites back, “I’m sorry this isn’t for you.” It’s a fair response since there seems little point in making a film about the Backstreet Boys for anyone other than diehard fans. “Their fan base is 30-something women, they’ve sustained this band. You can accuse me of making a puff piece, but you’re wrong.”
The Backstreet Boys are an undeniable corny entity, but if you embrace the cheese the results can be magic. Highlights of the movie include vintage VHS footage of the Boys singing a capella and a not-so-high-drama slanging match between Nick and Brian that culminates in Nick yelling, “I’m not afraid of you anymore.”
“I was surprised with the level of emotion they brought to it, they didn’t want to edit themselves,” Kijack explains, “They were referencing Metallica’s Some Kind of Monster – they wanted to be open.”
The problem is how much empathy you can actually have for the five millionaire members of one of the world’s most successful boy bands. “Yeah boohoo – the problems of a rich pop star,” agrees Kijak. That said, it’s true that like pretty much any pop act or boy band of the their time they were treated like puppets and manipulated by their management. What’s unique is how they turned it around, divorcing themselves from their manager/father-figure Lou Pearlman aka Big Poppa.
Their larger than life Lou Pearlman casts his shadow over the film. He was convicted in 2008 for his part in a Ponzi scheme that saw him embezzle $300million of other people’s money – including digging into more than his fair share of the Backstreet Boys profits.
“A lot of the press in later years about Lou makes him seem super creepy but to our knowledge they never experienced anything to that degree. Their pain seems to come from the betrayal of his trust, which affects money and money screws everybody up at some point,” relates Kijak. “They can be hurt and wounded in very nice homes but they’ve worked their asses off.”
Lou Pearlman, the films most interesting narrative arc, is also its biggest weakness. It transpires that the Boys did want to confront Pearlman in prison, but couldn’t organise it; “try getting the Backstreet Boys into a Federal Penitentiary,” he jokes, “we got denied.” Kijak struggled with whether to visit Pearlman himself alone but couldn’t reconcile it, “The film is about the Boys experience of that time so without them there [in prison] there was no way to feed them back in and I didn’t want to give Lou the space to be honest, he’s enough of a presence.”
In truth, there probably is a darker, deeper movie out there to be made about the Backstreet Boys, but so much of their collective story has already been rehashed over the years it seems like a cheap trick to drag it up again, we don’t need another VH1 Behind the Music on them.
The film deals smoothly with the logistical problem of telling the collective story of five individual members in one movie. “I looked at what’s the known narrative about these guys,” Kijack explains, “then you try to find a short hand. Do we sit there and let AJ moan about rehab? Or take you to a bowling alley where he talks about drinking his own vomit with topless bowling strippers?”
Ultimately what pulled Kijak in was the Boys earnest nature and pre-internet era work ethic. That and the fact that they’re one of the finest vocal harmony groups you ever heard, “They have a musical craft they never get credit for. Yes they’re working in a form of pop music and pop culture that I don’t love, but I try to take all that away and get back to basics. Hopefully that will convince a few other cynics.”
The final results fall somewhere between the Pinocchio and Frankenstein; with these wooden pop puppets turning into real boys with real feelings, and Lou Pearlman cast as the mad doctor betraying his vulnerable creation before it turns on him. Now if anyone out there is game for making the Lou Pearlman movie, Kijak says, “Lou will talk.”
Backstreet Boys: Show ‘Em What You’re MAde Of is in cinemas nationwide on 26 February followed by a special performance by the band broadcast live by satellite
backstreetboys.com/international
Credits
Text Russell Dean Stone