The Best Film of 2023: Purple Rain

We thought we’d done an amazing job, and the first contract was coming due. Steve was with him in Atlanta, and I said, ‘Tell Prince we’re going to organize a contract with him for another five years.’ And Steve (Farnoli, co-manager) calls me and says, ‘You’re not going to believe this. The kid says he’ll sign if you get him a major motion picture. It has to be not from a jeweller or drug dealer but has to be from a major studio, and he wants his name above the title.’ I can’t tell you what an impossible task that was.

Bob Cavallo, Prince co-manager 79-89

They really had done an amazing job with His first contract. Back in 1977, they’d somehow manage to successfully argue that one of the biggest production companies in the world bow to this snotty little, precocious 18 year old midget’s ridiculous demand that He be given complete creative and production control over His own music when signing His first ever record deal. Now He wanted a movie made. A major motion picture. And not one made by jewellers or drug dealers either. I imagine he initially demanded it not be made by cocaine addicts or rapists either, but this was Hollywood in the 1980s and some things are just literally impossible.

It can be easy to be fooled by retrospect nearly 40 years later. Of course Prince had a movie made about Him! He was one of the biggest stars of the 80s! That album sold twenty five freaking million copies! ‘Purple Rain’ was one of the highest grossing movies of the year! Motherfucker was a sure ticket! And, yeah, sure, now we know that, but remember that at the start of 1984 (omg this is literally 1984) Prince had released five albums: two commercial nonentities, followed by one of the most critically adored and influential albums of the decade... and hat trick of commercial nonentities, one decent seller and finally the breakthrough with ‘1999’, his first top ten album and first real suggestion of longterm commercial viability. He was hardly some unknown Minneapolis bum trying to convince bingo halls to give him fifteen minutes before the midnight game, but these five albums had spawned two top ten singles in total. Giving Prince a movie in 1984 wasn’t like giving Beyoncé a squillion dollars to race-wash Disney while she pretends her skin colour doesn’t make her a crucial part of the capitalist machine that’s exploiting Africa. It would almost be like if the success of Heatwaves lead to the next Glass Animals contract included a ten part HBO series starring the band playing themselves in a fictionalised biography of their upbringing in Oxford. It’s insane that this movie was made. It’s insane that one of the biggest companies in the world simply trusted in the intuition of one of their midlevel artists due to their simple trust in His artistic legitimacy. It’s insane how Prince just said “Trust me”. It’s insane that Warner Brothers just greenlit a seven million dollar movie. Its insane how right He was.

“If you make this movie, I’ll become the biggest star in the world and make you millions of dollars”. And he did. And they did.

“Oh, and make sure there are loads of tits”

Something sexy but not dirty. You know, I got enough problems

Billy

And Prince threw everything He had into creating this movie. He ‘served cunt’ for the ‘Purple Rain’ movie. Threw His whole ‘Purple Russy’ into it. The reason He demanded the project is because He knew how big it would be if it was done right. He even hired an acting coach named Don Amendolia. I can’t imagine that Don was available for the full entourage, as the performances of the Revolution are pretty terrible, with Apollonia 6 member Brenda Bennett in particular being so bad that her scenes literally gave me eye cancer. But Prince is perfectly good. It’s hardly an “I’VE ABANDONED MY BOY!!!” Daniel Day Lewis scene/Oscar eating Acting™ masterclass, but asked to carry a whole movie without any previous acting experience He comes out looking fine, and those acting performances will have also helped perfect both the ‘Prince’ persona and His performances over the rest of His career. He also hired a dance choreographer named John Command, who must be one of the unsung stars of the film, as the live performances from both The Revolution and rival band/antagonists The Time absolutely pop with heavily circumscribed genius. If Prince wasn’t already the greatest live performer of all time, He’d just made sure that would be the case from that point on.

Prince already had a plot in mind. It would open with His dad being killed by His mum, then His mum would also commit suicide. The film would end with Prince with that same gun contemplating suicide. The movie would be called ‘Dreams’. They somehow found a screenwriter sick enough to flesh out these ideas: William Blinn, who at that point was pretty much exclusively known for his work on the TV show ‘Fame’. It was, strangely enough, difficult to find any director to take this guaranteed summer crowd pleaser on.

After a long search, they eventually came in contact with James Foley, who had just directed his debut movie, the Daryl Hannah flop ‘Reckless’ (0% on Rotten Tomatoes). No chance, said Foley, and instead suggested offering the movie to the ‘Reckless’ editor Albert Magnoli, who had never directed a film. “Fuck it”, thought Prince’s management team, “I guess he’ll have to do”.

Magnoli turned them down.

He hated the script as well, saying ““it was not musical, [and was] too cerebral”. However, he suggested that if he could make some major changes to the script – less death, less misery, more hope, more music – he could see himself taking it on. Desperate by that point, management agreed.

Vanity (Denise Matthews), from the shortlived Prince side project Vanity 6, was going to play the love interest, but she quit the band and the movie before shooting started, apparently in a dispute over pay. They held auditions for a replacement which were notorious enough for Rolling Stone to report of an actress who “fled from the try-out because what was being asked of her was excessively explicit” – “It was way too pornographic for me, they had stuff in the script I wouldn’t even let my boyfriend do to me in my own bedroom.” Magnoli would later speak of how the audition scenes were actually way more risqué than the movie versions which… OK? So that… explains it and makes everything alright, I guess…? They found Patricia Kotero, whom Prince had seen in an episode of ‘Tales of the Gold Monkey‘ playing a ‘saucy island girl’, and was perhaps most notably a model for “the Elyria, Ohio-based Ridge Tool Company’s pinup calendar”. Prince decided she should only have one name, so called her ‘Apollonia’ after Michael Corleone’s wife in the Godfather, and the group in the film became ‘Apollonia 6’.

They had their cast of people who had never acted before; they had the script that not a single director wanted to take on; they had the first time director whose only credit was editing a notoriously awful film; they had a lead actress with recent experience of playing saucy island girls… The movie was going to be fucking awful.

And… it kinda is…?

But also… kinda one of the best movies ever…?

Listen, let’s get down to brass tacks: if you evaluate ‘Purple Rain’ as an actual ‘film’ then it’s pretty fucking dreadful. Prince is serviceable, Morris Day and Jerome are pretty great, but otherwise the acting is generally abysmal. The plot is dumb and the holes are hilarious – Prince plays a struggling artist still living in his parents’ basement with barely enough money to afford his customised motorcycle emblazoned with his own personal logo. And the film kind of hates women. The scene where Morris Day and Jerome literally put a woman in a bin is often cited as evidence (Magnoli explained: ““I really did hear them say that they threw a girl in a garbage bin once, If you’re going to make a film about a culture, you have to honour that culture and show what it is.” #Representation #HonourTheCulture), but from the gross auditions onwards there is a general undertow of misogyny always present. The Kid* has no rizz: the film’s idea of successful courtship is stealing a woman’s jewellery and then telling her that you won’t help her career unless she gets naked and dives in the lake**. He later punches her in the face. The sexual politics of the movie are further complicated by the fact that Prince was fucking basically every woman on set at one point. And I’m pretty sure that scene where Prince sings Darling Nikki directly at Apollonia is some form of sexual assault that we’re not even advanced enough to even comprehend yet. And the club owners reaction to the scandalous song/performance is very Tipper Gore, guy was ahead of his time.

Basically, the bits of ‘Purple Rain’ between the music scenes are borderline unwatchable…

(*awful name for Prince’s character, especially when near everyone else just plays a character just plays a character named after themselves

**a scene that caused Apollonia to catch severe hypothermia and convinced the crew to instead shoot the scene in sunnier Los Angeles)

But…

Those music scenes…

It doesn’t really matter about the superfluous plot. Around once every five minutes you’re going to get the best performance you’ve ever seen of one of the most perfect pop songs ever written. It feels like you’re watching Prince become the greatest performer of the the 20th century and its most accomplished pop songwriter almost in real time. It doesn’t really make any sense that the plot is that fans aren’t coming to see the band, as this is so obviously the greatest show of all time. ‘Purple Rain’ is far from a hagiography – diegetically Prince is a complete dick, as well as coming across as a complete creep unintentionally – and yet I’m not sure there exists another piece of film so successful at communicating the overpowering genius of its subject. The film presents a protagonist who is both unlikeable and sympathetic, but also presents His genius and throws its hands in the air: you can’t deny that shit. Yeah, maybe they just turned the cameras on a Prince show and said “Go!”, but live performances from even the best artists often fail in translation to film, while live performances presented as part of a fictional narrative almost always fail.

We get to hear loops that The Kid has made on a drum machine (erm, backed by a woman crying…), a rare peep at Prince’s genius at constructing electronic rhythms. The film-long creation of the Purple Rain song (diegetically*, the first decent song the band has done) is an actual believable construction of a song that is (diegetically** and in reality) an all conquering and inspirational anthem. By the way, director Magnoli saw the band play a version for the song while they were rehearsing and said that it’d be perfect for the movie’s climatic scene. He asked what it was called. Prince said ‘Purple Rain’. They agreed that should be the movie’s title rather than ‘Dreams’. So the movie ‘Purple Rain’ is named after the song Purple Rain. Why is the song called ‘Purple Rain‘? It’s the climax of the ‘Purple Rain’ movie! What else are you going to call it?? It’s never actually meant anything, but Prince just insisted that we all know what it means and we all just nodded our heads. That’s cultural capital.

(*I forgot the word ‘diegetically’ while writing this and it took me ages to remember it, so I’m going to use it as often as possible. I found it in a list of media studies terms 🤦

**see?)

And the relationships and dynamics behind the plot and presentation are fascinating. In the movie, Prince and the Revolution are feuding with local rivals The Time, while Prince also worrying about their involvement in his girl’s group Apollonia 6. Though in reality, it’s Revolution (Prince) feuding with The Time (Prince) while Apollonia 6 (Prince) look on. Prince was so talented, he had to invent and write for other bands in the movie just to make it look like a fair fight. The subplot involves Prince not given enough attention to a song written by His band members but… Lol! No! Prince wrote that song too! There’s even an extraordinary scene where Prince catches Lisa and Wendy rehearsing Purple Rain, and Wendy responds angrily by claiming that they’ll just go back to playing the basic bitch songs that He’s written, and spitefully strums the dull riff to Let’s Go Crazy. Like, dude, you wrote both of those songs! They’re on the same album! The ‘Purple Rain’ album!

There are also… interesting… decisions. It’s notable that the crowds for both The Revolution and The Time are almost exclusively white. This might have been a sadly inevitable production decision – this was still an era where MTV was largely closed to black artists, and if you’re going to try and sell a movie with a black protagonist then you better show that white people like Him. To this day, people still confidently state that Prince is mixed race. Nope. Black mum, black dad in real life. Lighter skinned? Sure, because that happens sometimes. The fact they give Him a white mother in the movie was probably an executive decision made because “Hey, look at him? We can get away with saying he’s actually a bit white!” To then have the black parent the violent alcoholic murderer of the poor white women is… unfortunate. Would Prince/’Purple Rain’ be anyway near as successful is His skin were a few pigments darker…? Hey! Look at that spin though!

And I don’t want to go all “They don’t ’em like this anymore!” but… companies… no longer… produce… similar things… in the current day… ‘Purple Rain’ is – even if, in Revolution guitarist Wendy’s words “We’re not talking about a brilliant thespian film here, it’s just a rock ‘n’ roll movie” – an actual movie for adults. It’s an 15 certificate/R rated blockbuster picture with tits and swearing. These days you only get two sorts of movies: Disney films that everyone has to watch, or 160 minutes Bulgarian art house cinema about a peasant woman forced to feed her disabled child with the pig semen she farms. There’s no middle ground. Studios even risking $7mil on a project like ‘Purple Rain’ these days is unthinkable, unless they could change Prince’s character to ‘Prince Yan of Aladna‘ and tie it into the Marvel universe.

Ah, ignore my yelling at clouds. The album soundtrack is next up on my Prince journey, so it’ll be included on Necessary Evil 2023. Maybe I’ll say it sucks? No spoilers. The movie ‘Purple Rain’ though, defies any normal human skills of critique and comprehension. It’s a moment. It’s a time. It’s a place. It’s a vibe. It’s, technically, shit. But also one of the greatest movies ever.

The final, eight minute performance of Purple Rain is legitimately one of the most magical moments in cinema. It’s hard to believe now that it was an actual live performance. It would probably be the last time He played it where nobody would sing along to every word.