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Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story is a documentary I’ve been waiting so long for, and I’m hoping it actually does justice to the great man, best known for portraying Frank Sidebottom with his papier-mache head, whereas 2014’s Frank, starring Michael Fassbender, was so misguided, the master tapes should be burned along with every DVD and Blu-ray ever created from it.
Chris Sievey died aged just 54 in June 2010, and I posted an obituary here at the time about this man for whom no-one ever seemed to really know his age. That’s because, with the head on, he never looked any different.
Originally, he was created by to be a fan of Sievey’s band, The Freshies, in a 1984 ZX Spectrum computer game, The Biz. The band are most remembered for ’80s track, I’m in Love with the Girl from the Manchester Virgin Megastore Checkout Desk, a song which later replaced ‘Virgin’ with ‘a certain’ at the insistence of the BBC for brand-naming reasons.
I could go on at length about the wonderful Frank Sidebottom and Mr Sievey, but you can read the aforementioned obituary.
Director: Steve Sullivan
Interviewees: Johnny Vegas, Ross Noble, John Cooper Clarke, Mark Radcliffe, John Thomson, Mike Joyce, CP Lee, Bruce Mitchell, Mike Doherty, Gaz Whelan
Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story is released in the UK on March 29th and I can’t wait for this.
Check out the trailer below:
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.