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Magnolia Pictures

Funny as the auditions can be, there has always been something unsettling to me about laughing at someone who isn't trying to be funny. That unsettling feeling lasted for me much of the way through Great World of Sound.

Like the aforementioned talent show programs, real people audition in the film with the hopes of "getting their break" with a record company. And just like the people who are mocked on Idol, the auditioning artists seem to take themselves pretty seriously.

Reality TV or documentary this film is not. And it doesn't quite fit into the mockumentary category either because it is a fiction film set in a bizarre universe where songs named "Body Glow" are top 40 hits and the Lowtowners are a gold-record selling band from Australia.

Built around the real audition footage of unsuspecting "actors", the movie tells the story of a record production company that essentially suckers money from people looking to be discovered with promises of studio time, record promotion and distribution.

From the opening scene of a spray paint can spraying a regular record gold, it's obvious that all is not right with the Great World of Sound -- a company that relocates from Chicago to the great record industry mecca Charlotte.

At Great World of Sound, gold records are made of 80-cent cans of spray paint while pressings of actual records -- if it ever gets that far -- average 1,000.

That cheap wall paneling and the absence of an office desk in the opening scene don't raise any red flags with Martin (Pat Healy), the film's lead character, when he ventures into the empty parking lot of the company for a job interview, is telling.

One of 80 applicants for the job, Martin impresses enough to be brought into the training program where he learns the ins and outs of the industry from Shank, the company's owner. On the first day, Martin meets his eventual partner Clarence (Kene Holliday) at the office coffee maker. The odd pair hit it off immediately, sharing a common American dream of bettering themselves and their loved ones.

As a team, Martin and Clarence prove to be the ideal salesmen for Great World of Sound.

They're naive enough to believe that a company that presses an average of 1,000 records can help an artist and also poor enough to think that $13,000 is a lot of money -- during training one of the company's scammers dials his bank to show off how much money he has in his personal checking account.

To the viewer, it's painfully obvious that the "record producers" -- who set up shop in $40 a night motels, audition anyone stupid enough to answer a seedy ad and promptly ask for a financial commitment up front, even when the song is barely listenable --æare anything but legit.

Martin, an awkward dreamer whose humor is so deadpan it's hard to know whether he's joking when, for example, he shares his idea with Clarence to market Guinness to the African-American community, isn't completely comfortable with the job but he's egged on by his partner to go for the money even when people who can barely carry a tune express apprehension about putting up a "$4,000 investment" on the future.

But Martin catches on and finds himself pushing the right buttons to get people to open up their checkbooks. He goes so far as fronting half the money for a poor war veteran whose horridly off-key 12-year-old daughter auditions with a song she calls a song about national anthems.

He even starts to believe the line of bull he's selling, commenting to his girlfriend about all the talent that must be out there waiting to be discovered.

Still, when Clarence pretends to take photos of newly signed artists with the company-issued cell phone -- the camera "lense" is actually a screw -- Martin gets uncomfortable. He tells Clarence he doesn't feel right about lying.

"Just because it's a lie doesn't mean it's not a good idea," Clarence says. "When we get a little money we'll get one that does take pictures."

Making money means more travels to cheap motels, more musicians to try and con. As Shank (John Baker) puts it, producing records is like a major public university. Those who wear their hats backward help pay for all of the magna cum laudes.

As well as it goes, the cheap sales tricks and travel start to weigh on Martin and his relationship with his girlfriend, who slaves away in a garage art studio trying to earn money the honest way. Things start to spin out of control when the partners fly to Indianapolis, setting up a Trains, Planes and Automobiles-esque finale that has a kind of Little Miss Sunshine mixture of the ridiculous and the philosophically deep.

In the end, the film succeeds as an engaging and poignant satire of an industry scam known as song sharking, even if the blurring of fact and fiction tactic of actually setting the scam up for unsuspecting auditioning cast members leaves the same unsettling feeling that makes me cringe at the popularity of American Idol.

posted [09.17.07]