Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon

 

Mike Myer’s takes his first foray into the world of documentary making with this entertaining, although disappointingly unbalanced, portrait of the kind of interesting life of talent manager, film producer and all around good egg Shep Gordon.

As a close friend of Gordon’s, it’s clear why Myers would find him an engaging subject matter. He has been at the heart of several musical movements from the mid-sixties onwards, been involved with the Dalai Lama, and practically invented the celebrity chef. But more than his achievements in show business, it is Gordon’s personality that takes centre stage. ‘Mensch’ is an old Yiddish word meaning ‘good person’, and from the sheer amount of testimony from an array of familiar faces, including Michael Douglas and Sylvester Stallone, it is clear that he is a man of integrity, despite the murky nature of the industry in which he made his name.

Stories of him unofficially adopting the four kids of a former lover who passed away suddenly, setting them up in a large home and funding their educations, or looking after Myers himself during a particularly low point in his career, treating the Austin Powers star, in his own words, “like a baby bird that had fallen from it’s nest” help propel the film’s primary agenda: to let the world know that Shep Gordon really is one hell of a guy.

The main issues arise from the absolute one-sidedness of Supermensch. Throughout the films entirety, Gordon is shown to be a master of spinning stories, and regularly asserts his ability to control a situation. Why, therefore, should viewers of a documentary about his life, made by one of his personal friends, believe anything other than the most indisputable facts? The ninety minute ball-washing feels more like a tribute video to celebrate Gordon’s latest birthday, rather than an objective or compelling documentary about someone who was present at several key moments in the history of America’s pop culture.

Talking heads Stallone, Douglas, Tom Arnold and Anne Murray offer zero by way of interesting insight, more closely resembling as they do a gaggle of old yentas remembering the good old days. Alice Cooper, the artist to whom he is most closely associated, and whose career he genuinely helped shape, is slightly more worthy of note. Clad in a bright red polo shirt, with his golf club in hand, Cooper shares an interesting insight into how Gordon manipulated the press, creating Cooper’s infamous stage persona in the process.

Further interesting industry insights come in the moustachioed form of Groucho Marx, whom Gordon apparently helped towards the end of his life, at a time when the legendary comedian’s finances were in such a state that he was close to bankruptcy. The story of how Gordon became an agent is interesting too, spurred on as he was by Jimi Hendrix whilst staying at the same hotel as he, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. But these moments are few and far between, and are generally lost amongst the slurry of back-patting schmaltz.

Despite the ostensible good-guy image the documentary promotes, small flickers of who the real Shep Gordon might be slip through. Moments such as insinuating that the horrific car crash that paralysed soul singer Teddy Pendergrass was the result of the “bad karma” earnt from refusing to play a gig in London, smack of an arrogant hubris ill-fitting of the image the film is trying to promote.

Whilst Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon exposes several interesting insights into the grim underbelly of show business, it is unfortunately, on the whole, a rather dull and one-sided affair. Myer’s has proven the old adage that, when it comes to documentary making, what’s interesting to you isn’t always interesting to your audience.

Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon is showing at Broadway Cinema until Thursday 24 July 2014.