A music-packed movie about Casablanca Records founder Neil Bogart, who gave the world acts like KISS and Donna Summer, opens in cinemas on Friday with stars like Jason Derulo and Wiz Khalifa.
Writer, producer and director – and Neil's son – Timothy Scott Bogart told iHeartRadio.ca that it took more than two decades to get Spinning Gold to the big screen. Along the way, some Canadians got burned and lawsuits got filed (more on this later).
One of the challenges was how to make a mainstream music biopic about a man who wasn't famous and didn't succumb to the excesses of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.
“My father didn’t die of a drug overdose. He died of cancer," said Tim. "So it wasn’t a cautionary tale. He died at the peak of where he was going.
“This was always a movie that didn’t have third act because he didn’t have a third act."
Neil Bogart, pictured in 1980. Harry Langdon / Getty Images
NEIL WHO?
Neil Bogatz was born in 1943 in Brooklyn and raised in the Glenwood Houses project by mom Ruth and gambler dad Al.
He dabbled in acting, soft core porn and, after a stint at MGM Records in the early ‘60s, recorded catchy tunes like “Bobby” and “It Happened All Over Again” under the name Neil Scott.
His teen idol dreams behind him, Neil (now Bogart) landed an executive job in 1966 at Cameo-Parkway Records, where he signed Bob Seger. When the label was shuttered late the following year, Neil moved over to the newly-launched Buddah Records, which blew up thanks to bubblegum pop before adapting to changing tastes and focusing on gospel and R&B.
Neil hustled hits for artists like The Isley Brothers (“It’s Your Thing”), Bill Withers (“Ain’t No Sunshine”) and The Edwin Hawkins Singers (“Oh Happy Day”).
He left Buddah to start Casablanca Records and signed KISS, a rock band that was more popular on stage than on records. He also put everything the fledgling label had behind Here’s Johnny: Magic Moments from The Tonight Show, which was an epic bust.
Taking a page from his father, Neil spent more cash and kept going, hoping for a big win. The gamble paid off with disco and Casablanca’s roster of acts like Donna Summer, Lipps, Inc., Parliament and Village People.
The payout came in 1977, when PolyGram bought a 50 percent stake in Casablanca. The company bought the other half three years later, showed Neil the door and eventually shut the label down. (The Casablanca name was resurrected in 2000 and now focuses on dance and electronic music.)
Neil didn’t stop. He founded Boardwalk Records before losing a battle with cancer in 1982 at the age of 39.
Timothy Scott Bogart, right, with Jeremy Jordan as Neil Bogart.
THE MUSIC MAN
Spinning Gold is told in the words of Neil, portrayed by Broadway star Jeremy Jordan, and focuses mostly on the Buddah and Casablanca eras and on only a handful of the 140 artists Neil worked with. (One of the label's most successful acts, The Village People, are given less than 20 seconds.)
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The movie is fun, but far from perfect: There is some cheap-looking use of green screen throughout and a rather jarring view of two modern air conditioning units in a scene set in 1951. It's the music, though, that takes centre stage. Classics like "Last Dance," "Midnight Train to Georgia" and "Rock and Roll All Night" are part of the soundtrack.
And, despite being made by his son (with the involvement of other family members, including Tim’s younger brother Evan “Kidd” Bogart, who co-wrote the score) Spinning Gold doesn’t spin Neil Bogart into some kind of flawless superhero.
“Everyone would assume that, as the son, I was being precious about the father. Ultimately as a storyteller I just felt gifted with this unbelievable story. It happened to be my father … but I just thought what a crazy story, what an extraordinary unlikely journey from impossibility to possibility,” explained Tim. “I never saw him as my father. I saw him as this unbelievable character at this unbelievable time.
“He was an addict, he was a gambler, he was a womanizer. He was all of these things. I thought that made him interesting. I thought those flaws were his superpowers. I don’t think if he wasn’t a gambler he would ever have succeeded. If he wasn’t an addict he would never have gone so far.”
Noticeably absent from Spinning Gold is much about Neil’s relationship with his four children. “It was on purpose,” explained Tim. “I was telling this story of this guy who achieved this thing with this group of people and the kids just were in the periphery, so to make them more important than that for maybe some more dramatic impact, I didn’t think was honest to the story I was trying to tell.”
How accurate the film is depends on who you talk to. Tim, who was 12 when his father died, said he interviewed many of the people involved before writing the script but acknowledged it’s natural for people to have different memories of what went down.
“You just kind of have to take the best stories from everybody, try to triangulate how many of them say the exact same thing, and then embrace that,” he explained. “I thought it was crucial to stay as close to the events as one possibly could.
“It’s a biopic … I have never liked biopics that play fast and loose with the truth. Do it or don’t do it and in this particular story, the stories were so much more entertaining than I could ever have made up.”
Tim covered himself by scripting a line that Neil says early in the film: “You’re just going to have to believe all of it because every single bit of it is true. Even the parts that weren’t.”
“It can’t be all linear. I did have to combine some scenes," Tim admitted, adding that “maybe two or three things are a little more mushy to get the story to where we need to go but the vast majority of it is pretty darn spot-on to what really happened.”
A scene in which Neil is working with Gladys Knight (played by Grammy-winning R&B singer Ledisi) to record “Midnight Train to Georgia” has Knight suggesting changing the song’s original title, “Midnight Plane to Houston." But, in the Billboard Book of No. 1 Hits, songwriter Jim Weatherly said producer Robert “Sonny Limbo” Limbaugh requested the title change for Cissy Houston, who recorded the song in 1973.
Ledisi, as Gladys Knight, and Jeremy Jordan, as Neil Bogart.
Another scene has Neil alone in a studio with Donna Summer (Grammy-winning songwriter Tayla Parx) and getting up close and personal to coax orgasmic moans out of her for “Love To Love You Baby.” But, in a 1976 interview published in Rolling Stone, Summer said: “Everyone's asking, ‘Were you alone in the studio?’ Yes, I was alone in the studio. ‘Did you touch yourself?’ Yes, well, actually I had my hand on my knee. ‘Did you fantasize on anything?’ Yes, on my handsome boyfriend Peter.”
Tim insisted “the scenes with Donna and [producer] Giorgio Moroder are all stories that Donna or Giorgio told me.”
Spinning Gold also shows how the ballad “Beth” from the 1976 KISS album Destroyer (produced by Canada’s Bob Ezrin) came to be the band’s biggest hit.
“Gene and Paul have over the years been the most outspoken from KISS. Very little has been heard from Peter and that story about the real origins of ‘Beth’ was always important to him,” said Tim. “I just thought that’s what we haven’t heard, that’s an interesting one.”
In his 2010 memoir KISS and Make-Up, Simmons wrote: “I have never seen [Criss] compose a single song.”
THE LONG ROAD
Tim said Spinning Gold has been in the works since 1999, and not necessarily with a plan for him to call the shots.
“It wasn’t important at the beginning for me to direct it,” he said. “I did always think I was probably the guy to write the piece. I thought I probably had the best insight into him or maybe the best access to interview people who would tell me stuff that they might tell me more than they’d tell someone else.
“At the beginning, I was going to write it, I was certainly going to produce it, but I was assuming I would go with a different director and over the years went through different ones.”
At one point, Spike Lee was attached to the project. “Ultimately it just became clear that if I wanted to make it the way I wanted to make it, right or wrong, I should probably do it,” said Tim.
Spinning Gold sought financing at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, where Tim was joined by pop superstar Justin Timberlake, who was set to play the lead role. Four years later, Timberlake told Screen Daily they were still “chipping away at the material, working on the script, having conversations.”
Timothy Scott Bogart and Justin Timberlake, pictured in 2013. Michael Buckner / Getty Images
In February 2019, iHeartRadio.ca was first to report that Spinning Gold was going to be shot in Montreal that summer. Months later, it was announced that Jordan was replacing Timberlake.
Names like Samuel L. Jackson, Kenan Thompson, Neil Patrick Harris, Chris Rock and Zach Braff as well as singers Kirk Franklin and Jazmine Sullivan were all at one time or another attached, or rumoured to be attached, to the project. According to a source, Jackson and Harris shot scenes that had to be cut from the movie after they bailed out of the project.
The final cast is nothing to scoff at: Jason Derulo as Ron Isley, Wiz Khalifa as George Clinton, X Ambassadors singer Sam Nelson Harris as Paul Stanley, All Time Low frontman Alex Gaskarth as Peter Criss, R&B singer Pink Sweat$ as Bill Withers, New Edition’s Johnny Gill as Clarence Burke Jr. and Ledisi as Gladys Knight.
“We’re doing this story about these extraordinary music artists… we have to have extraordinary music artists,” Tim explained of the casting choices. “I never wanted it to be a movie about mimicry. I didn’t need someone who looked like Donna Summer. I needed someone who felt like Donna Summer.”
In addition to casting music artists to play other real-life music artists, Tim used a plethora of comedians in various roles, including Jay Pharaoh, Sebastian Maniscalco, Chris Redd, Michael Ian Black and Dan Fogler.
“I always loved casting against type. I always love casting comedians in dramatic parts,” said Tim. “You always get something darker, richer and more electric when that happens.
“Everybody came to play. I’m so proud of all the performances.”
Spinning Gold also has some eh-list talent. Canada’s Doron Bell Jr. portrays Rudolph Isley of The Isley Brothers and there are appearances by homegrown actors like Delia Lisette Chambers, Charlie Ebbs, Alex Gravenstein, David Reale, Ellen David, Christopher Hayes, Nadine Djoury, Danny Bruzzi and Jenny Brizard.
The movie also benefitted from the work of at least 120 skilled and talented Canadians behind the scenes – although they wouldn’t be blamed for not rushing out to buy a ticket.
STIFFING CANADIANS
If Tim learned anything from his father, it’s to get things done no matter what it takes, even when the money’s not there.
Spinning Gold was scheduled to be shot from July 15 to Sept. 20 in Montreal, where it could take advantage of a favourable exchange rate and taxpayer-funded production credits.
But, filming came to a halt in the summer of 2019 when producers struggled to pay the people working on the film.
Talent union ACTRA Montreal told iHeartRadio.ca, in a statement, that “payments owing from the production were late and, in some cases, not forthcoming.
“After pursuing the payments, ACTRA was informed by a whistle blower that something was ‘not right.’ ACTRA took necessary actions.”
The union issued a “Do Not Work” order to its members, alleging that Spinning Gold LLC and the numbered Quebec company it was required to register were “unfair engagers for failure to meet payroll obligations.” ACTRA warned its members that working on the film could result in “disciplinary action.”
ACTRA Montreal said: “To this day, the Producer is not in full compliance with all of its payroll obligations.”
It said actors who appear on screen have been paid in full but choreographers, dancers and background performers are still owed money.
ACTRA Montreal said it used the production’s deposit to pay a percentage of what its members were owed but said the union is “determined to recoup … the remaining amount owing to performers, the Insurance & Retirement contributions, Late Payment Penalties (still accruing) and other unpaid expenses … along with ACTRA’s administrative fees.”
AQTIS 514 IATSE, the union representing technical crew, said that at one point producers owed workers about $600,000 in wages. (AQTIS executive director Sandrine Archambault told iHeartRadio.ca in 2021 that the union’s beef with Spinning Gold “has been resolved to our satisfaction and all our members have received payments.”)
Notably, the logos for ACTRA, the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit and the Quebec Film and Television Tax Credit do not appear in the end credits.
Tim declined to answer when asked if he will work with ACTRA Montreal to resolve the payroll issues and ensure that everyone who worked on the film is paid in full.
He also declined to answer a question about a multi-million-dollar lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by Montreal producer Alex Habrich accusing him and Toronto-based producer Jennifer Martins of contractual fraud. The jury trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 16.
Casey Likes as Gene Simmons and Sam Nelson Harris as Paul Stanley.
MONTREAL ON SCREEN
Tim said about 40 percent of what ended up on screen was shot in Montreal, including most of the Buddah Records story.
Montrealers may recognize the ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in a scene set in New Jersey in 1961.
The city’s NDG neighbourhood stands in for vintage Brooklyn: “Rimba’s Records” is actually Encore Books and Records on Sherbrooke St. W. and a couple of doors down, at Harvard Av., is “Quincy’s Candies,” now home to Atelier Matthieu Cheminée.
It’s outside Quincy’s where Jordan sings the catchy “Cherry On Top” backed by a band made up of Montreal musicians Antoine Kosko Fafard, Felix Gagné, Jonathan Fortin and brothers Gabriel Gagnon-Blackburn and Maxime Gagnon-Blackburn.
The rest of Spinning Gold was completed in New Jersey in 2021.
A CANADIAN FIND
Among those scheduled to attend the Los Angeles premiere of Spinning Gold this week is Toronto singer Max Parker.
He spent several months working with Tim on the director’s next project, Verona, described by Tim as the first in a trilogy that “turns Romeo & Juliet on its head.” It’s a period piece, filmed in Italy, and set to original pop music.
“It’s something that I don’t think people will see coming in terms of the story arc that we play out over three films,” he said.
Parker, a former iHeartRadio Rising Star, makes his acting debut as Romeo’s cousin Benvolio and had to learn horseback riding and sword fighting – while singing. “He was fantastic,” said Tim.
“Here’s a kid who has very little acting experience but a guy with such raw talent both musically and as a performer. I saw an audition early on when we were doing a full ‘blue sky’ audition process and he just knocked my socks off. I thought, Yep, another guy who is going somewhere. I’d love to be there with him as he goes.”
ON A HIGH NOTE
Near the end of Spinning Gold, Neil points out that audiences are likely familiar with many of the artists Casablanca Records spawned but chances are that “not one of you has ever heard of my name.”
He adds: “I wouldn’t change a f**king thing. I just wish I had more time.”
Tim said he believes this to be true. “I really don’t think he would,” he said. “Yes, we all live complicated lives that are flawed, that are highs and lows. I don’t think he would have changed a thing.
“The message hopefully to an audience is it all matters, you can’t rewrite any of it, so don’t. And I think that’s a hell of a message.”
Tim said there’s no question his father would have adapted and thrived had he not been taken by cancer. “He was ahead of every trend. He would have been ahead of the game in every one of these new media journeys,” he said. “He was a man always ahead of his time and if he were alive today he would still be ahead of all of us.”
Spinning Gold ends with “Greatest Time,” an uplifting song performed by Jordan and others that interpolates some of the Casablanca hits.
“Hopefully everyone will leave the theatre dancing because the music’s playing,” Tim said, “but going ‘My god those guys did an amazing thing. What did I do today? What can I do today? And if I don’t do something wild and great today, why not? Because I don’t know what tomorrow brings.’”
Spinning Gold opens March 31. This article has been updated since it was first posted to correct information about the lawsuit in Los Angeles.