The script was inspired by the real-life story of Tim "Ripper" Owens, a singer in a Judas Priest tribute band who was chosen to replace singer Rob Halford when he temporarily left the band. After optioning the filming rights to a New York Times profile of Owens by Andrew Revkin, Warner Bros. hired Stockwell to write the script. Brad Pitt was initially signed to play the lead role, but left due to creative differences, and Wahlberg was eventually hired for the part.
Rock Star garnered mixed reviews from critics, but was a box office failure, grossing $19 million worldwide against a production budget of $57 million.
Plot
In the mid-1980s, Pittsburgh resident Chris Cole is a fanatical admirer of a heavy metal band called Steel Dragon. By day, Chris is a photocopier technician and by night, he is the lead singer of a Steel Dragon tribute band called Blood Pollution (the name is taken from a Steel Dragon song).
Internal struggles among the actual Steel Dragon band members culminate with the firing of their lead singer, Bobby Beers, and the beginning of recruitment sessions to find a new vocalist. Chris experiences his own strife with his Blood Pollution bandmates, particularly guitarist Rob Malcolm. During a show, Rob plays a guitar solo instead of following the note-for-note accuracy to the original Steel Dragon song and, after Chris sabotages Rob's amplifier mid-song, a fight breaks out between the two onstage. The next day, Chris goes to rehearsal but he finds out that he has been replaced by his arch-rival, the erstwhile lead vocalist of another Steel Dragon tribute band. Rob and Chris argue, and Rob criticizes Chris for preferring to remain the singer in a tribute band rather than create his own music.
One day, Chris receives an unexpected phone call from Steel Dragon's founder and rhythm guitarist, Kirk Cuddy, and is offered an audition for the band (thanks to two of Blood Pollution's groupies, who showed Kirk a videotape of one of Blood Pollution's concerts). After hanging up on Kirk once, thinking he's being pranked by Rob, Chris ecstatically agrees. At the studio, he meets the band and gives an outstanding performance of "We All Die Young" (a Steel Dragon song in the movie, but it is a real song by Steelheart, whose lead vocalist, Miljenko Matijevic, provides Cole's singing voice for the film). Chris joins the band as their new singer, adopting the stage name "Izzy". Following a successful debut concert with Steel Dragon, Izzy must come to grips with the pressures of his new-found fame and success. The band embarks on a lengthy tour and Izzy experiences the excesses of the lifestyle, with the group's road manager, Mats, serving as a sympathetic mentor to Izzy.
His new lifestyle impacts his life both for better and worse, particularly with his relationship with his supportive girlfriend, Emily Poule, when she decides not to continue with him throughout the remainder of the tour as a rock star girlfriend, though Emily and Izzy agree to get back together when the tour reaches Seattle. Eventually, Steel Dragon stops in Seattle for a show, and Emily arrives at his hotel room as they had previously arranged, although Izzy has become so inebriated while on tour he forgot about the arrangement and does not even know what city he is in. Although taken aback by all the groupies, Emily still tries to reconnect with him, reminding him of their plans to meet up once he got to Seattle; however he is too intoxicated to really understand what she is saying, eventually suggesting they go to Seattle together. Heartbroken with his inconsiderate behavior, intoxication and the fact that he is having sex with so many groupies, Emily leaves him.
Six months later, Izzy reports to the next series of Steel Dragon recording sessions with song concepts and artwork for the band's next album. The rest of the band like his ideas, but they reject them, with Kirk explaining that the band has to stay true to the "Steel Dragon thing" to fulfill fan expectations. Izzy is angered upon realizing that he was only recruited for his vocal abilities. After a heartfelt conversation with Mats about how he feared he had no control over the direction life has taken him, Izzy begins to reconsider his rock star lifestyle. On the next tour, in a scene directly paralleling one near the beginning of the film with their roles reversed, Izzy hears a fan singing along with him toward the end of a live concert. Impressed, Izzy pulls the fan, who introduces himself as Thor, onstage and hands him the microphone to finish the concert. Backstage, Izzy realizes that what he thought he wanted for so long was not what he wanted, and he says goodbye to Mats, departing from the band while doing so.
After leaving Steel Dragon and ditching his rock star image and stage name, Chris makes his way to Seattle and starts a new band with his old friend and former bandmate, Rob, allowing him to write his own music. Chris finds Emily working in the coffee shop she and her roommate purchased a few years earlier, and he is initially too ashamed to speak to her. While walking one evening, Emily sees a flyer for his band posted on the wall and takes it down. In the final scene, Chris is singing with his band in a bar and Emily walks in. Chris leaves the stage and speaks to her. They reconcile, ending the film with a kiss and the final note of Chris' first original song "Colorful" (which is a real song by the Verve Pipe).
During the credits, Cuddy talks about the future of the band and Bobby Beers is shown to have taken up Irish Dancing after his sacking from Steel Dragon.
The singing voice for Wahlberg's character was provided by Steelheart frontman Miljenko Matijevic for the Steel Dragon Songs, and the final number was sung by Brian Vander Ark of the Verve Pipe. Jeff Scott Soto (of Talisman, Yngwie Malmsteen, Soul SirkUS, and Journey) provided the voice of Jason Flemyng's character Bobby Beers. Ralph Saenz (aka Michael Starr of Steel Panther) also appears briefly, as the singer auditioning ahead of Chris at the studio.
After The New York Times ran a story on Tim "Ripper" Owens in 1997, various Hollywood studios ran to option the filming rights. Warner Bros. won the bid, and hired John Stockwell to write the script. Stockwell soon began researching the heavy metal music and tribute band scene and visited Owens' hometown of Akron, Ohio.[3] Afterwards the project, under the working title Metal God, got the involvement of George Clooney's newly founded Maysville Pictures.[4]Brad Pitt signed to star in 1998, but wound up dropping the project following creative differences with the studio.[5] Eventually Mark Wahlberg, a former rapper with Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch who co-starred with Clooney in Three Kings, was hired for the main role in May 1999.[6]Stephen Herek signed to direct in October,[7] and the following month Jennifer Aniston became attached for the main female role, while Callie Khouri was hired to revise the script.[8]Judas Priest were initially approached, but the band had some objections to the initial script and were phased out as it was rewritten into a more original story loosely based on the facts, in spite of the band still offering to give advice and assistance to the production.[9][10]
Wahlberg spent five months preparing for his role as Chris Cole, working with a vocal coach, growing his hair, attending the metal scene and wandering around Los Angeles in-character.[11] A concert scene was shot at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena before 10,000 Metallica and Megadeth fans.[12] While filming one Steel Dragon performance, the crew pranked Wahlberg by playing Marky Mark's "Good Vibrations" instead of a rock track, and footage of this is featured during the film's end credits.[13] By 2001, Warner renamed the project from Metal God to Rock Star in order to attract a broader rock fandom instead of just metal fans.[14]
Reception
The film opened at No.4 at the U.S. box office taking US$6,018,636 in its opening weekend,[15] and grossing a domestic total of $17,008,282 and $2,325,863 internationally for a worldwide gross of $19,334,145; based on a $57 million budget, Rock Star was a box office bomb.[16]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 53% of 129 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.4/10.The website's consensus reads: "Like its title, Rock Star is rather generic, being not so much about the heavy metal scene than about rock cliches and formula."[17]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 54 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[18] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B−" on scale of A to F.[19]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 2.5 out of 4 stars and wrote: "By the end of the film I conceded, yes, there are good performances and the period is well captured, but the movie didn't convince me of the feel and the flavor of its experiences."[20]
Tim "Ripper" Owens, the inspiration for the story, noted to Rolling Stone that while he considered Rock Star "a Spinal Tap kind of movie" that distanced from the real facts to feature "all the cliches of sex, drugs, and rock and roll", he found the portrayal of the band members as accurate and was still flattered to become the basis for a movie.[9] When Judas Priest bassist Ian Hill was asked about his reaction to Rock Star in an interview in PopMatters magazine, he said "I mean, I quite enjoyed the movie. It was entertaining, you know?" Hill was quoted as saying "It had nothing to do with Rob Halford, Ripper Owens and Judas Priest, it's got nothing to do with that, whatsoever. It was fiction. Apart from the fact that 'Local Boy Makes Good'? That was the only true aspect of the movie." Hill was quick to add "I watched it once. I don't have the urge to watch it again."[10]
A small number of the songs featured in the film and on the soundtrack were released after the dates given in the film. They are marked with an asterisk.
Adam Richard Sandler is an American actor and comedian. Primarily a comedic leading actor in films, his accolades include nominations for three Grammy Awards, five Primetime Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2023, Sandler was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Judas Priest are an English heavy metal band formed in Birmingham in 1969. They have sold over 50 million albums and are frequently ranked as one of the greatest metal bands of all time. Despite an innovative and pioneering body of work in the latter half of the 1970s, the band struggled with indifferent record production and a lack of major commercial success until 1980, when their sixth studio album British Steel brought them notable mainstream attention.
Robert John Arthur Halford is an English singer and songwriter. He is best known as the lead vocalist of the heavy metal band Judas Priest, which was formed in 1969 and has received accolades such as the 2010 Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance. He has been noted for his powerful and wide ranging operatic vocal style and trademark leather-and-studs image, both of which have become iconic in heavy metal. He has also been involved with several side projects, including Fight, Two, and Halford.
Kenneth Keith Downing Jr. is an English guitarist and a founding member of the heavy metal bands Judas Priest and KK's Priest.
Glenn Raymond Tipton is an English guitarist. Often noted for his complex playing style and classically influenced solos, he is best known as one of the lead guitarists for the heavy metal band Judas Priest. He is the second longest-serving member of the band, after bassist and co-founder Ian Hill. Tipton and Hill are the only two members of the band who have appeared on every studio album.
Ian Hill is an English musician, best known as the bassist and the sole continuous member of the heavy metal band Judas Priest. Along with lead guitarist Glenn Tipton, he is the only member who has appeared on all of the band's studio albums.
Timothy S. "Ripper" Owens is an American heavy metal singer who currently performs with KK's Priest, Spirits of Fire, the Three Tremors and A New Revenge. He first gained attention as the lead singer of Judas Priest and then Iced Earth. He took the nickname "Ripper" from the Judas Priest song "The Ripper" during his time in the tribute band British Steel.
A tribute act, tribute band, tribute group or tribute artist is a music group, singer, or musician who specifically plays the music of a well-known music act. Tribute acts include individual performers who mimic the songs and style of an artist, such as Elvis impersonators covering the works of Elvis Presley or groups like The Iron Maidens, an all-female band that pays tribute to Iron Maiden.
Roy Z Ramirez is an American guitarist, songwriter and record producer, best known for his work with Bruce Dickinson, Halford, and Judas Priest. He also is the founder of Tribe of Gypsies, a Latin-influenced hard rock band. Roy also helped write and produce the band Life After Death in 1996.
Jugulator is the thirteenth studio album by English heavy metal band Judas Priest. It was released in Japan on 16 October 1997 and the rest of the world on 28 October 1997. It was their first studio album since Painkiller in 1990 and the first of two studio albums the band recorded without Rob Halford and with American lead vocalist Tim "Ripper" Owens. Jugulator is the only Judas Priest album that has never been released on any major digital media website, due to SPV falling under and going bankrupt around 2009.
Demolition is the fourteenth studio album by English heavy metal band Judas Priest, and the first in the decade of the 2000s. It is the second and final studio album to feature Tim "Ripper" Owens on vocals. It is also the only Judas Priest studio album to feature a Parental Advisory label on the album cover due to the songs "Machine Man", "Hell Is Home", and "Metal Messiah" containing profanity.
John Frederick Hinch was a British drummer from Lichfield, Staffordshire. From 1973 to 1975, he was the drummer in an early line-up of heavy metal band Judas Priest. Hinch was a jazz-rock styled drummer with a very compact style.
"Living After Midnight" is a song by English heavy metal band Judas Priest. It was originally featured on their 1980 album British Steel, which was their first gold album in the United States selling more than 500,000 copies. The song speaks to the hedonistic, rebellious spirit of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and is among the band's most popular songs.
Steel dragon or Steel Dragon can refer to:
"We All Die Young" is a song by Miljenko Matijevic of Steelheart, and Kenny Kanowski formerly of Steelheart. It is the first song from the 1996 album Wait. The song was covered by the fictional band Steel Dragon in the 2001 film Rock Star, with Miljenko Matijevic on vocals, Zakk Wylde on guitar, Jeff Pilson on bass and Jason Bonham on drums. For the movie, Matijevic performed the vocals for Mark Wahlberg's character, Chris "Izzy" Cole.
Stephen Herek is an American film director. Herek was born in San Antonio, Texas. He attended the University of Texas at Austin.
Mark Robert Boals is an American heavy metal vocalist and occasional bassist, best known for his vocals with Yngwie Malmsteen. He is currently a member of the band Foundry.
"Victim of Changes" is a song by English heavy metal band Judas Priest, featured on their 1976 studio album Sad Wings of Destiny. Adrien Begrand, writing for PopMatters, claimed the song changed the course of metal history. Vocalist Rob Halford's performance is considered one of his finest ever. The guitar work is noted as well; Bob Gendron praised the song's "landslide riffs" in the Chicago Tribune. The song has come to be regarded as one of the band's classics, and Martin Popoff listed it at No. 17 in his "Top 500 Heavy Metal Songs of All Time".
Fans of heavy metal music, commonly referred to as "Metalheads", have created their own subculture that encompasses more than just appreciation of the style of music. Fans affirm their membership in the subculture or scene by attending metal concerts, buying albums, growing their hair long, wearing jackets or vests often made of denim and leather adorned with band patches and often studs, and by contributing to metal publications since the early 1980s.
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