Oscilloscope_2Panel_BluRay_01 copy
About 100 minutes of someone's home movies does not sound like a promising viewing experience, but in this case the footage was all autobiographical material shot by a tragically short-lived pop-music sensation. Shannon Hoon fronted the band Blind Melon and, presciently wanting a comprehensive record of their whirlwind ride, took some 200 hours of high-end analog 8mm video footage of the group from 1990 up until his overdose death (at age 28, just missing being in the notorious "27 club") in New Orleans in 1995.
Now chronologically assembled and augmented with phone-answering machine cassette-tape audio (which Hoon had also archived), they tell the Blind Melon story in Hoon's own viewfinder (and wide-angle "fisheye" lens, evidently a favorite). Of course, one is in the hands of the posthumous filmmaking team (Danny Clinch, Taryn Gould and Colleen Hennessy, with the late Hoon sharing directing credit), but the choice of clips form a sadly familiar rock-and-roll narrative that seems to confirm a showbiz arc retold numerous times—burlesqued, in the case of Judd Apatow's satire Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. The cliches are so broad that when Hoon does drugs on camera one expects funnyman Tim Meadows to pop in with his catchphrase "No, Shannon Hoon! You don't want none of this!"
Here is the band (all small-town Indiana guys) on their starstruck early pilgrimage-visits to LA and Seattle. Here they are signing their big contract at Capitol Records. Here is Hoon doing his first-ever hotel-room trashing; the band's first Saturday Night Live appearance; their making the cover of Rolling Stone (followed by Hoon's family celebrating by singing...what else? Shel Silverstein's "Cover of the Rolling Stone"). And here is Hoon's misbehavior on tour and mounting frustration that the group has become narrowly defined by media and fans fixated on their megahit song/video "No Rain." Perhaps the only unexpected thing: the oft-disrobed/nude Hoon is not seen smothered in groupies and seems to have been faithful to lover Lisa Crouse (whose demand that cameraman Hoon "turn that thing off!" is the line that foreshadows countless mockumentaries to come).
Statements of alcoholism in his family history - and grim tidings of the deaths of Chris Farley and Kurt Cobain—foreshadow Hoon's own demise, only months after Crouse gave birth to their child. Besides poignant fatherhood, perhaps the brightest moments in All I Can Say are Hoon's palpable joy in Blind Melon performing at Woodstock 94 among much-admired artists such as Neil Young and Bob Dylan.
Clips of Hoon playing with his camera for pure visualization's sake indicate that he was serious about the power of images. Who knows what might have sprung from him had he been able to beat his addiction demons? The conventional-music-tale-unconventionally-told is distributed by Oscilloscope, a media company founded by another performer who died young, Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys. Optional. (Aud: C, P)