The Prophecies of Platinum, an Appreciation

Platinum
directed by Bruce McDonald
CBC TV Movie
(and pilot for a series that never happened)

When Joe Dick shoots himself in the head at the conclusion of the movie Hardcore Logo so ends his descent into the inferno. Bruce McDonald’s portrayal of the music business as nihilistic road trip – where the last stop is always rock bottom – leaves the audience with a bitter moral: even if you manage to sell your soul for a couple extra minutes in the limelight, in the end everyone on stage is doomed to a rock’n’roll funeral.

However, there is another side to the story. Logo’s benediction of rock as apocalypse is fantastically contrasted with the director’s subsequent foray into the music world. Premiered last Thanksgiving on the redoubtably hip CBC, Platinum – directed by McDonald, aspiring to soap opera status, and, as yet, still waiting in the wings – emerges as the light to Logo’s darkness; inviting the viewer to experience rock as carnivalesque utopia. We begin where its predecessor left off, with a funeral. However, this time it’s for a guitar.

The funeral of Action Boy’s guitar introduces us to a world fifteen minutes in the future, where the line between genuine mourning and promotional gimmick disappears in a frenzy of morphing logos (repeatedly reduced to parking surfaces), flashing icons and overacting archetypes. Don’t fret if that sounds like the present. Since history ended in the mid-80s, the future is now. Platinum’s most pressing dilemma concerns its mode of transport. Music on television is inextricably linked to (surprise!) music television (MTV and its unholy progeny). Resolutely postmodern (bricolage in full effect!), can such a show sustain the narrative thread required for a television series? Is such a thread necessary?

Our setting is Montreal, home to two feuding record labels. On the one hand, we have our indie heroes Platinum, lead by swaggering soul man Simon Tucker (anglo) and his business smart partner Michelle Michaud (franco). On the other, there’s Archangel, a soulless major label fronted by weaselly Mickey Charles and vampiric Sir Ian (a scenery-chewing Jackie Burroughs). Musicians are secondary to the machinations of the suits, but, as in the real life music biz, we can’t do without them. Platinum is built on the back of Jessica Webb, a teenage pop tart who resembles ex-teenage pop tart Mitsou (who appears in a cameo as a demo-dropping waitress). She makes the money. The aforesaid Action Boy is the label’s resident underground genius and zen therapist. He plays Yoda. Finally there is Ophelia, an all girl rock band with a four song demo that has instigated a bidding war between the two record companies. The crux of this war lies on the swaggering yet suicidal shoulders of Astrid Kirsch, the singer/guitarist with a chip on her shoulder of unknown origins. She peers inscrutably from beneath her fringe of tousled hair. She, it seems, is the shit.

Subplots ensue among the sketchy secondary characters. Anthony Medici the druggie video director develops an unhealthy Jessica obsession. Gunter Haller the greasey manager of Jessica and (for a moment) Ophelia swaggers to his own agenda. The b-boy babbling sound engineer’s assistant gets fed up with recording Action Boy’s flatulence. And Angie the put-upon yet highly organized assistant suffers through a silent crush on Simon Tucker. As concerns the purported dramatic arc of the film, Astrid plays Mickey and Simon off each other amid Michelle’s attempts to wrangle a distribution deal with Archangel, a deal threatened by Simon’s interest in Ophelia. Michelle’s potential defection to the business minded major is postponed when Ophelia finally decide to sign with Platinum. But what of Jessica? Tired of her trashy bimbo image, she has started to write her own music. But is Platinum willing to sacrifice their cash cow in the name of her artistic integrity? Stayed tuned!

Assuming that Platinum the TV movie will one day become Platinum the TV series, one can excuse each character’s reduction to a mere cipher who acts aggravatingly intense yet lacks any obvious motivation. Why does Simon care so much about Ophelia? By all evidence, they have only one song. Why does he hate Mickey? Professional or emotional jealousy? The future of the series would have to take up these slack characters and, in the manner of all good soap operas, hold their relationships in tension (largely sexual) for perpetuity; which, in a way, is what is implied by fantasies of utopia.

However, there is yet another layer to be introduced into this world. In contrast to Hardcore Logo’s DIY lo-fi aesthetic, Platinum goes into stylistic overdrive. Accompanying the melodramatic bent of its characters, the costuming taps into a lineage of future’s past predicted in such films as The Road Warrior and Streets of Fire. An overabundance of scarves and longcoats typify the punk underground from Ophelia’s leading ladies on down; miscegenating subcultures (teddy, punk, goth, new wave) drape themselves in baroque thrift store dandery, teased and crimped hair, and (new wavest of new wave) warpaint face make-up. Trading Blade Runner’s smogged out pan-Asian L.A. cyberburg with Montreal’s old country spar-city means the futuristic urban sprawl is somewhat less dense, but this dystopia manages to inject some heterogeneity (roving clumps of Hasidic Jews, a loitering Acadian folk singer, and installation artist gang bangers) amid the leather-clad rock stars.

The attempts to sustain a futuristic milieu through props (proposed street militia were rejected, but in their place oddities such as Marilyn Manson-esque gum spreaders and street drugs administered by eye-dropper appear) are weak, but Platinum makes the step to light speed at the level of medium rather than message. And here is where things get tricky. Hardcore Logo’s great special effect consisted of a rolling asphalt barrel to represent miles of road travelled. Platinum custom designs intricate graphics, fades and processing in order to replicate the superinformation superhighway that the youth of the nineties are repeatedly assumed to demand as a minimum requirement of literacy. Thus we have icons circling a momentarily letterboxed screen, swirling dollar signs and metronomes to indicate business dealings in the works. Action Boy is introduced and lost amid a constantly changing mist of computer generated fractal psychedelia with flashes of CD covers and recording sessions interrupting his pouty-lipped expressions of concern. Jessica’s past is also subliminally evoked through strobed cuts to her video and split second insertions of her many magazine appearances. A simple single shot is a rarity, soon replaced by such dense concoctions as in Simon’s confrontation with Gunter regarding Jessica’s video. The scene takes place before a bank of video monitors and is framed by a TV set framed by a pixellated close-up on said monitors (all stacked within your very own TV set just in case you forgot exactly where you were).

The disruption of dramatic exchanges — by stuttering the movement of figures, inserting out of scene characters in flashforwards, or doubling speakers so you hear both their spoken and thought responses – is not too disturbing, because, appropriate to the business in question, such scenes are few and far between. Seemingly little happens in the course of the movie and an inordinate amount of screen time depicts thematic idleness. Astrid stomps around a warehouse roof with a guitar slung over her shoulder. Simon drums the air while pondering the fate of indie rock. Jessica spends an afternoon taking pictures of herself in an alley somewhere. True to the “hurry up and wait” ethic of the entertainment business, Platinum captures this nothingness with elegant craftiness.

Simon’s aimless cruising through the streets of Montreal unites this overarching concern with frenetic inaction to the circle motif that appears throughout the movie. From spinning wheels (car and bicycle) to rotating tape reels and record players, Platinum’s iconology does not let us forget the sustained motion it so desires. As the world turns and the seasons change, Platinum aspires to the status of series in order to achieve its own inherent circularity. Once it becomes a weekly vehicle for the trials and tribulations of Montreal’s rock glitterati, Platinum will incorporate the cycle of conflict and resolution that marks a dramatic series. Each rapprochement will begat a further division. Closure occurs insignificantly with the loss of individual characters. The End can only happen with cancellation. While Hardcore Logo could do nothing but end, Platinum only makes sense if it goes on.