Cocksucker Blues

Cocksucker Blues is an unreleased documentary film directed by the still photographer Robert Frank chronicling The Rolling Stones American Tour 1972 in support of their album Exile on Main St.

Cocksucker Blues
Directed byRobert Frank
Daniel Seymour
Produced byMarshall Chess
StarringThe Rolling Stones
Edited byRobert Frank
Paul Justman
Susan Steinberg
Music byThe Rolling Stones
Release date
1972
Running time
93 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Production

There was much anticipation for the band's arrival in the United States, since they had not visited there since the 1969 disaster at the Altamont Free Concert in which a fan was stabbed and beaten to death by Hells Angels and the incident was caught on camera.[1] Behind the scenes, the tour embodied debauchery, lewdness and hedonism.

The film was shot cinéma vérité, with several cameras available for anyone in the entourage to pick up and start shooting. This allowed the film's audience to witness backstage parties, drug use (Mick Taylor is shown smoking marijuana with some roadies and Mick Jagger seen snorting cocaine backstage),[2] roadie and groupie antics, and the Stones with their defences down.[3] One scene includes a groupie in a hotel room injecting heroin.[4]

Fate

The film came under a court order which forbade it from being shown unless the director, Robert Frank, was physically present.[2][5] This ruling stemmed from the conflict that arose when the band, having commissioned the film, decided that its content was embarrassing and potentially incriminating, and did not want it shown. Frank felt otherwise, hence the ruling.[2][4]

According to Ray Young, "The salty title notwithstanding, its nudity, needles and hedonism was supposedly incriminating and the picture was shelved—this during a liberal climate that saw the likes of Cry Uncle! and Chafed Elbows playing in neighborhood theatres."[6] Deep Throat was released in the same year. A Rolling Stones concert film, Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones, was released instead, and Cocksucker Blues was indefinitely shelved.

The court order in question also enjoined Frank against exhibiting Cocksucker Blues more frequently than four times per year in an "archival setting" with Frank being present.[2][4][7] Frank personally introduced one such rare screening of the film on February 23, 1988 at Boston's Cinema 57 theater in Park Square in conjunction with promoting the release that week of his new film, Candy Mountain.[8]

Other screenings have included the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on October 3, 2009 (curator Jeff Rosenheim, introducing the movie, mentioned that Robert Frank was "in the building," but pointed out that the building was over 2,000,000 square feet (190,000 m2)), the Museum of Modern Art in New York in November 2012 as part of a two-week festival, "The Rolling Stones: 50 Years on Film",[3] the Cleveland Cinematheque on November 15, 2013,[9] the Chuck Jones Theater during the 2015 Telluride Film Festival, and the Rotterdam, Netherlands 2015 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) as part of a Robert Frank retrospective, with Frank in attendance.

See also

References
  1. "Cocksucker Blues": Robert Frank's Suppressed Rolling Stones Documentary Comes to Film Forum". New Yorker. 20 July 2016. Retrieved 12 December 2021.
  2. "The Trouble With 'Cocksucker Blues'". Rolling Stone. 3 November 1977. Retrieved 2 June 2013.
  3. Fricke, David (20 November 2012). "The Greatest Rolling Stones Movie You've Never Seen: 'Cocksucker Blues'". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on November 27, 2012. Retrieved 2 June 2013.
  4. Doyle, Patrick (26 October 2009). "Rolling Stones' Controversial Tour Documentary "Cocksucker Blues" Screens in New York". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2 June 2013.
  5. "Cocksucker Blues (1972) – Trivia". IMDb. Retrieved 18 December 2016.
  6. Young, Ray (2004). "Cocksucker Blues". Flickhead. Film Review. Archived from the original on 30 September 2015. Retrieved 18 December 2016.
  7. Famous movies that have been banned all over the world. Upbeat website. Retrieved 27 October 2020.
  8. Meyerhofer, Will (26 February 1988). "Galled Stones". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved 7 June 2021.
  9. Petkovic, John (15 October 2013). "Scandalous Rolling Stones film '(expletive) Blues' makes rare screening Nov. 15 at Cleveland Cinematheque". Cleveland.com. Retrieved 18 December 2016.
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