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Purple prose
Prince’s Rain as a movie star was short-lived, says Stevie Chick



Though modest of stature, Prince Rogers Nelson showed boundless ambition in 1984. After swiping the superfreak Rick James’s crown as king of sinful funk, he invaded the world of mainstream rock, advancing as far as the cover of the metal magazine Kerrang! Next, his insatiable drive saw him undertake the riskiest of all rock star follies: the silver screen.

Since Bill Haley’s riot-starting appearance in The Blackboard Jungle (1955), Hollywood had snatched up the more suave and charismatic rock’n’roll performers as acting talent. Results were mixed: the manic comic genius of the Beatles’ movies was cancelled out by Elvis wasting his 1960s in a series of humiliating cinematic vehicles. The twin totemic leaders of the cultural revolution, John Lennon and Mick Jagger, opted for more serious celluloid careers: Lennon delivered a suitably wry turn in How I Won the War before returning to the recording studio; Jagger, meanwhile, won acclaim in Performance, his aura of sexual and chemical liberation infecting the set and the lurid movie. However, Jagger then pursued forgettable fare (Ned Kelly, sci-fi flotsam Freejack), only truly exhibiting his star power as himself on infamous Stones documentaries such as the banned Cocksucker Blues .

This is the crucial stumbling block for aspirant rock thespians; on stage, their egos run productively rampant. But those same egos that propel them to Hollywood often fare badly within the constraints of filmed drama, a much more subtle art than concert stageplay. The successful ones play their egos to their advantage; flinch away from such disasters as Michael Jackson’s bewildering self-hagiography Moonwalker or Mariah Carey’s so-bad-it’s-good-then-bad-again Glitter, and instead rent 8 Mile (Eminem impressively deconstructing his own legend), or The Man who Fell to Earth (David Bowie proving once again that he’s not quite of this planet).

Or purchase Purple Rain, released now on DVD accompanied by a lush array of documentary extras, further blurring the movie’s already-tricky distinction between fiction and autobiography. Its soapy tale of the Revolution’s rise to fame in Minneapolis contrasts the gritty urban reality with the aspirational 1980s glitz of the 1st Avenue Club, where the Battle of the Bands is fought against rivals Morris Day & the Time. Similarly, the relationship between the melodrama of Prince’s private life and the opportunities the movie gave to let his ego run as wild as he wished is crucially well observed.

It’s hard to think of another rock star of the era who could have pulled off such a performance, but Prince wisely played up his eccentricities: the sensitive, tortured artiste who plays out the most raunchy live performances. “The whole experience was over the top,” recalls the Revolutions’ keyboard player Dr Fink, and it was. But wonderfully so.

Certainly Prince would never walk that tightrope between sublime and ridiculous so gracefully again. Also released on DVD, Under the Cherry Moon (1986) is a winningly pretentious but lousy black-and-white screwball comedy with Prince chasing Kristin Scott Thomas across Europe; and with Graffiti Bridge (1990), Prince filmed a sequel to Purple Rain that was everything the original was not — a dull and overextended MTV promo that even fans balked at.

Purple Rain, Under the Cherry Moon and Graffiti Bridge are out to buy on DVD on Monday