Video Notes From All Over

Okay, here's the good news: You can finally get a DVD of Telstar: The Movie -- the critically acclaimed 2008 bio-pic on 60s howling weirdo record producer Joe Meek -- over at Amazon.

The bad news: You need a Region 2 player to be able to watch it.

The short version: Telstar, named after its auteur's multi-million selling world-wide 1962 instrumental smash (Margaret Thatcher claims it's her favorite record of all time), stars Con O'Neill, who first played Meek in an acclaimed 2005 West End stage play; also on hand are Kevin Spacey (as Meek's possibly crooked financial manager) and Swinging London cinema icon Rita Tushingham as a psychic.

For those unfamiliar with Meek, suffice it to say (as I wrote last year) that he was both the first important independent record producer in England and the most consistent UK hitmaker before the advent of The Beatles. A genuine visionary, his records have a sound (based on canny use of primitive tape echo and early electronic instruments) as readily identifiable as those of his contemporary Phil Spector; the vast majority of them, however, were crafted in a hole-in-the-wall homemade studio on the floor above a leathergoods store on London's Holloway Road. An eccentric with an interest in UFOs and the occult (his unreleased for years 1960 solo album I Hear a New World was a bizarre concept record about Outer Space), Meek was also a flamboyant yet closeted gay man who committed suicide, ten years to the day after the death of his idol Buddy Holly, by blowing his brains out with a borrowed shotgun (but only after first murdering his landlady).

Here's the trailer, which should give you an idea of the film's nifty evocation of a genuinely exciting pop moment. (And what I wouldn't give for one of those band suits -- it really was the Golden of Age of Sharkskin, wasn't it?)

Telstar was very well received in England when it played this summer, and obviously Meek's life is a great story, which makes it all the more puzzling (and maddening) that there's no American release scheduled at the moment for either the film or a playable at home DVD. We'll keep you posted if that changes anytime in the future.

Meanwhile, if you've got a multi-region DVD machine, you can -- and definitely should -- order the Brit disc version over here.