Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out

We all know how burdensome it is to be a rich, famous, fabulously successful rock star: those endless stretches on the road, the loneliness and deprivation, the constant hounding by the fans who bought zillions of your records…. But Stewart Copeland's Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out is a little different, and a lot better than the usual rock doc-cum-pity party. For one thing, the Police drummer shot pretty much every frame of it himself, using a Super-8 movie camera he acquired in the late '70s, just as he, Sting, and Andy Summers were on the verge of taking the world by storm. And by waiting for nearly a quarter of a century before editing his 50-plus hours of footage into one cohesive film, Copeland can look back on the whole crazy experience with a wry, wise perspective. One wonders how he ever found time to play any music: the dude shot everything, and not just the usual stuff (backstage, in their van, and hotel rooms), but also while the band made music videos (and in one very cool sequence he sets up the camera behind his drum kit, then turns to address the viewer in mid-performance). The camerawork is often chaotic and primitive, and the concert footage is raw and distorted, but these drawbacks are more than made up for by the soundtrack, for which Copeland "lobotomized" and "de-arranged" familiar tunes (studio and live) to remarkably fresh effect. Perhaps most interesting, he also wrote new narration that chronicles how things eventually went so terribly wrong as the band fragmented (Sting, who comes across as his usual smug, superior self, virtually took over in the studio), constant adulation took its toll ("when people come rushing at you, even with love in their hearts, the first instinct is to recoil"), and solo work beckoned. Presented in Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS, and PCM stereo, DVD extras include audio commentary by Copeland and Summers and over 20 minutes of bonus footage. Part documentary, part travelogue, part video diary/confessional, Everyone Stares is recommended. Aud: P. (S. Graham)