Mayor of the Sunset Strip

Meek, geeky, mop-topped, and transparently insecure, Rodney Bigenheimer is the most unlikely rock 'n' roll icon in the world. But as this bittersweet documentary shows, the now-fading DJ for Los Angeles' once-cutting-edge KROQ has been--for 30-plus years--such a hanger-on extraordinaire that just about every big name in pop music counts him as a friend. Literally abandoned as a teenager on actress Connie Stevens' doorstep (she wasn't home) by his mother in the late 1960s (leading to a wickedly obsessive Oedipal complex), Bigenheimer crashed on couches and fell into the uninhibited Sunset Strip scene, soon becoming a Monkees stand-in, a procurer and collector of groupies, an in-crowd nightclub owner, and an incredibly influential pioneer in the alternative music scene--in no small part responsible for launching the careers of Devo, the Sex Pistols, Dramarama, Blondie, No Doubt, Coldplay, and dozens of other bands (who all lend songs to the soundtrack). Directed by George Hickenlooper, this energetic, empathetic film features an amazing array of vintage photographs and Super-8 film footage, coupled with dozens of interview clips with rock stars (David Bowie, Cher, Courtney Love, Joan Jett, Alice Cooper, Nancy Sinatra, the list goes on) as it follows modest, apprehensive Bigenheimer's tide-drifting career to its current awkward, melancholy decline. An uncommonly--and sometimes uncomfortably--intimate film, Mayor of the Sunset Strip is destined to become a landmark of the rockumentary sub-genre. Highly recommended. (R. Blackwelder)