I know many of you gag at the mere mention of "Graffiti Bridge," but bear with me. The movie is actually a fascinating piece of Prince history.

Consider the plot:

There's this angel, see, and she really cares what happens to the Kid's nightclub. So she flirts with Morris, makes out with Prince, and then kills herself. Which doesn't speak too well of their mack daddy skills. Bitch would rather walk in front of a charging Chevy than hang around their sorry asses.

Okay, moving right along:

Morris Day is a greedy badass who likes eating Jalapeno peppers. The Kid pouts a lot and looks like a metrosexual Jesus. Aura is an angel who lives under a bridge.

This being the sequel to "Purple Rain," I was expecting Morris to put together a girl group called "Aura 6" which of course would pisse off the Kid, causing him to smack her up real good, even though she gives him a guitar, a drum set, and a brand new motorcycle. And then Wendy and Lisa show up and together they form Graffiti-Bot and battle the dastardly WarnerBeast. Or something like that.

Anyway, "Graffiti Bridge" is interesting for this: It's mostly about Morris Day. The story hinges on whether he's gonna let this little punk Kid off the hook for not pulling his weight financially. Morris is actually the main character who undergoes a transformation--the main requirement for a protagonist, aside from likeability, which he also has.

Here's my breakdown: The movie plays out like a celluloid exorcism of Prince's pious streak, which was unleashed back in Lovesexy. The Morris/Kid battle is pure psychodrama, a confrontation between Prince's commercial instincts and his spiritual urges. Aura is Prince's connection to the spiritual realm. In order for Prince to make peace with Morris and regain his business instincts he had to sacrifice his spiritual inspiration (Aura).

So now that the "Spirit Child" was dead, he could go and make a wholly commercial record: "Diamonds and Pearls." An album not named after an idyllic place, nor a feeling you get when you fall in love with the heavens above. No. An album named after BLING. An album designed to make money.

"Graffiti Bridge" was necessary to put to rest Prince's inner proselytizer, which was doing serious mischief to his career.

[end analysis]

I don't know if you're right or wrong..but you defend your premise well

It's an interesting metaphor, and one that works from a kind of psychoanalysis POV, but one that is played out entirely from you viewing perspective IMO.

When you talk about it as the sequel to Purple Rain, you have to remember that, that whole sequel idea was a tack on to the whole project, and was not part of the original concept for the album or movie.

Next time, make more reference to vaginas or anal stimulation, and then it will be more clear that your post is facetious and/or sarcastic.

Great analysis.

For me this is Prince's most confused period.

Also it comes at a time when music in general seemed to be taking a dramatic change.

The 80's were over and new bands were coming onto the scene and Prince was starting to sound less cutting edge and more dated.

Bands like Nirvana and The Red Hot Chili Peppers were now main stream and they were a lot edgier and a lot more real than Prince.

Graffiti Bridge and Diamonds and Pearls seemed to heighten Prince's image of living in his own makebelieve world which was becoming harder and harder to relate to.

I remember the first time I heard Thieves In The Temple and I thought what a great pop tune but how icredibly bland.

The main hook line is "Thieves in the temple, tonight"

It seems a far cry from anything that had come before it. It wasn't about sex, it wasn't about spirituality, it wasn't about relationships, social issues.

Or certainly it was obviously about those things.

It may work in the context of the film and the story of Graffiti Bridge but as a song alone it's hard to fathom out.

I'm sure I read somewhere that originally the film was just going to feature The Time but Warner's wouldn't agree to distribute it unless Prince was in it. Though it's hard to imagine someone with the ego of Prince entertained the idea of someone else having the limelight in one of his productions. Madonna was originally planned for the 'Aura' role, wasn't she? Way back in '87. She is supposed to have told Prince the script was 'shit' to his face. Why that stopped her, I don't know, she went onto star in several movies with 'shit' scripts.

pepper7 said:

I agree with that completely. Graffiti Bridge was just a big giant mess of half-baked ideas and hotch-potch projects from the previous 4 years all stitched together into one garish patchwork.

The movie and it's characters were difficult to relate to because they were so poorly written, and the decision to film the movie at PP was THE biggest mistake IMO -- It does give the movie a "style" of it's own, but it's not particularly a style conductive to selling lots of movie tickets.

This all impacted on the audiences reception of the album IMO. There's a lot of good material on the album, but do they work better individually? I think so.

There's only a couple of upto tracks on there, the rest is from the previous few years - again back to the bad patchwork.

I think (going back to the original post) it was cathatic kind of, to finally close the chapter on all these abandoned ideas and unfinished projects that are referenced within the final released version of Graffit Bridge (movie and album).

Prince was sure into the idea of the project since he clung onto it for so long, all through the Black Album, Lovesexy, Rave, then Batman, and it was only after all this that he could finally get the project done and dusted - There are so many other great albums and projects that he threw aside never to be heard from again, what made this one so special? -- It shows that he was strongly devoted to the project, but I think that was it's downfall, that by the time he finally got to work on it, I think he settled on a lot of bad decisions just to get the movie done and finally out of his system.

metalorange said:

Prince wanted Madonna in the 'Ruthie Washington' role. This is the original version of the project, before the whole 'PR sequel' idea, no sign of the Time, and Prince was to play 'Camille Blue'.

I dunno if it's still around, but the early scripts used to be online somewhere - They're a trip, the early version is even more incoherent than the finished version.

take the angel out and insert abusive father and we have Purple Rain, aside from the sex nothing happened in this film that didn't go down in PR.

metalorange said:

you think Prince is egotistical??..he's so shy!

if you watch Sign O Times movie, there was allot of sets as well. I think Prince got into that vibe to make everything sorta on sets & broadway feel with the look

How about this analysis?



"Record: 1

Title: `Joy in Repetition'?: Prince's Graffiti Bridge and Sign o' the
Times as Sequels to Purple Rain.
Author(s): Plasse, Marie A.
Source: Journal of Popular Culture; Winter96, Vol. 30 Issue 3,
p57, 9p
Document Type: Article
Subject(s): PRINCE (Performer)

GRAFFITI Bridge (Film)

SIGN o' the Times (Book)
Abstract: Explores the career of Prince in the motion picture
industry with the motion pictures 'Graffiti Bridge' and Sign o' the
Times.' Comparison of the 'Sign o 'the Times' with the motion picture '
Purple Rain'; Plot of 'Graffiti Bridge'; Review of the 'Graffiti Bridge'
soundtrack album; Similarities between 'Purple Rain' and 'Graffiti
Bridge.'
Full Text Word Count: 4061
ISSN: 00223840
Accession Number: 3113674
Database: Academic Search Elite
'JOY IN REPETITION'?: PRINCE'S GRAFFITI BRIDGE AND SIGN O' THE TIMES AS
SEQUELS TO PURPLE RAIN



In his review of Graffiti Bridge for the Boston Phoenix, Charles Taylor
observes, "Being a Prince fan means being exhilarated half the time and
embarrassed the other half." While such a characterization may not apply
consistently to fans of Prince's studio recordings, Taylor's words seem
particularly apt as a description of what routinely happens to followers
of Prince's movie career. The embarrassment visited upon Prince fans by
Graffiti Bridge (1990) seems especially acute since Sign o' the Times
(1987), Prince's previous film, gave us such a large dose of the
exhilarating side of the Prince equation.

The fun of watching Sign o' the Times comes from seeing Prince do what
he does best: lead a red-hot band through powerful sets of rock, funk,
blues, and jazz, testifying to his favorite obsessions--love, sex, God,
and rock n' roll. Prince's on-screen persona in Sign o' the Times is as
wound up and sexually charged as ever, but interestingly overlaid with a
relaxed, playful, and gently self-mocking affect unlike anything we've
seen from him on film. He is clearly having a great time here, working
out with an ensemble of musicians so tuned into one another that the
kick they get from playing together crests off the stage and into the
audience with the joyful force of a gospel revival show.

By virtue of its energy and upbeat, crazy positivity, Sign o' the Times
seems to pick up exactly where Prince's first film, Purple Rain (1984),
left off--that is, in the midst of a rousing concert performance that
captures Prince at the top of his form. In Purple Rain, the closing
concert sequence (in which Prince's character, the Kid, takes the stage
triumphantly and sings "Baby, I'm a Star") deliberately blurs the
distinction between the moment of the Kid's fictional achievement of
rock n' roll success and Prince's real life success as pop star whose
ascendancy to superstardom would be insured by the success of this very
film. This ending celebrates both the fictional Kid's triumph and
Prince's own stardom.( n1)

Sign o' the Times builds on this high point, but alters the Purple Rain
formula by expanding the live concert component that was so riveting
there (Sign is made up almost entirely of concert footage) and by
replacing the extended dramatic narrative of the earlier film with
short, symbolic video interludes that bridge the musical performances.
These dream-like vignettes, performed by Prince and members of his band,
take up many of the subjects that are treated more realistically in
Purple Rain, among them love, lust, domestic chaos, God, and spiritual
transcendence. Thus, even though it doesn't literally pursue the
narrative thread of Purple Rain by continuing the semi-autobiographical
fiction of the Kid, Sign o' the Times operates, in spirit, as a kind of
sequel to the earlier film, sustaining and often surpassing Purple
Rain's exuberant celebration of Prince as a performer and commenting on
some of the same themes.

But if Sign o' the Times can be seen as a kind of sequel to Purple Rain,
then what are we to make of Graffiti Bridge, which is considered the
official follow-up to the earlier film? On the one hand, it isn't
difficult at all to dismiss Graffiti Bridge as a mere embarrassment and
failed sequel. As the story of the Kid's battle with his old rival
Morris Day over the control of the Glam Slam, the nightclub willed to
them both by its deceased owner, the plot lacks even the flimsy interest
provided by the Kid's poignant domestic struggles in Purple Rain.
Moreover, the fervent but recondite spirituality that has shown up in
Prince's work from the beginning is so heavy-handed and sophomoric in
Graffiti Bridge that, after a while, the film is not only embarrassing,
it's downright agonizing.

Among its most difficult-to-take features, Graffiti Bridge gives us:
cryptically intoned voice-overs like "Are there really angels, or are
they just in our minds? It all comes out in the wash" and "It's just
around the corner"; clumsy symbols like the single white feather that
wafts through the air whenever Aura, the elusive Muse figure,
mysteriously disappears from the scene; painfully obvious markers of the
Kid's devotion to spiritual song-writing in the form of sheet music with
titles like "God is Alive" and "Rave Unto the Fantastic." On top of all
this, the musical performance scenes by Prince and the newly reformed
Time (Morris Day's band) seem tired and lifeless, with dull staging and
outrageous costumes standing in for the electrifying concert
performances that propelled Purple Rain.

On the other hand, though, if we put all of this aside, there are some
revealing comparisons to be made between Graffiti Bridge and Sign o' the
Times, not as "rival" sequels, but rather as two alternative follow-ups
to Purple Rain. If we look at Graffiti Bridge as a kind of cinematic
alter ego of Sign o' the Times, in fact, if we see Graffiti Bridge as
the "alter-sequel" to Purple Rain, we can bring into focus some striking
features of the latest cinematic image Prince has chosen to project to
his mass audience.

The notion of dual sequels fits well within the context of Prince's
long-standing fondness for working with binary opposites. As Jon Pareles
notes in his review of the Graffiti Bridge soundtrack album, Prince's
records have always invoked dualities like "mind/body, sacred/profane,
black/white, male/female, funny/serious." His music repeatedly blends
funk and rock, two musical styles that were, in Pareles' words,
"separate genres before he came along in the late 1970's." Additional
signs of Prince's affinity for dialectic can be seen in the back-to-back
appearance in 1987 and 1988 of two strikingly different recordings. The
first, the notorious Black Album, was a down and dirty, satirical, and
often nasty collection of dance music that Prince abruptly pulled from
release just before it hit the record stores. In a 1990 Rolling Stone
interview, Prince characterized The Black Album as an angry and bitter
work, but declined to reveal the source of these feelings, except to say
that his decision to pull the album was based on some sort of personal
epiphany that made him rethink the negative emotions behind the record
(Karlen 60).( n2) Widely circulated as a bootleg between 1987 and 1994
(when it was officially released by Warner Bros.), The Black Album was
followed in 1988 by its opposite, the beatific Lovesexy album, a
stirking summation of Prince's spiritual system. If The Black Album was
fueled by anger and bitterness towards an unnamed target, Lovesexy took
the opposite tack and was clearly driven by love and worshipful
adoration of God. Yet, even within Lovesexy itself, the familiar
Princean oppositions are set up, as the forces of good and evil engage
in battle through the allegorical personages of the heavenly Lovesexy
spirit and the satanic character, Spooky Electric.

Given the affinity for dualism evident throughout the Prince cosmos, it
is not surprising that there should be two very different, if not
diametrically opposed, movie sequels to Purple Rain: on the one hand,
the joyful, uplifting, and cinematically sure-handed Sign o' the Times,
and on the other, the brooding, anxious, and cinematically confused
Graffiti Bridge. In these two films, Prince's on-screen personae sketch
out a series of opposing perspectives on his art and on his position as
a pop icon. Sign o' the Times showcases a Prince in supreme control of a
wide range of popular black music forms and all the idioms of white
guitar-rock. Sign also offers a Prince who boldly and proudly telecasts
his messages of faith and salvation through songs like "The Cross,"
taking the whole cast and audience with him on a flaky, but somehow
sincere and moving, communal trip to glory.

In contrast, Bridge offers, in its reprise of the Kid character from
Purple Rain, a musician on the skids--artistically, financially, and
personally. The Kid's spiritually inspired music in Graffiti Bridge is
repeatedly rejected by an audience that apparently prefers the more
secular sounds of Morris, the Kid's chief musical rival, who has become
even more of a callous, greedy, egomaniacal cad than he was in Purple
Rain; he roles Seven Comers, the film's fictional clubland, like a Mafia
crime boss. On top of all this, the Kid is bereft of family (his father
has died of the self-inflicted bullet wound we witnessed in Purple Rain;
his mother, we learn, is in a nursing home), and he's jilted by his
girlfriend, who defects to Morris's side.

One of the strongest themes in the anguished scenario Prince constructs
for the artist figure in Graffiti Bridge is the relationship between art
and money. Unlike Purple Rain, Graffiti Bridge spends almost as much
time dramatizing conflicts about money and other forms of material
wealth as it does exploring the Kid's creative struggles. Despite all
its spiritual aspirations, for instance, Graffiti Bridge seems obsessed
with displaying the material goods that come with pop music success.
Fancy cars, expensive clothes, gold jewelry, and champagne appear on the
scene regularly. And one long sequence early in the film is a joke
predicated on the fact that both the Kid and Morris own a bunch of
high-tech musical instruments with which they taunt and tease each other
in a brief sample and play-back war. (Later, all this high-tech gear is
trashed in an assault on the Kid's club by Morris's thugs.) Much is also
made of computers in the film. Both the Kid and Moms often pay more
attention to their computers than their girlfriends at key romantic
moments, and Jerome is seen fully absorbed in his "Game Boy" during the
Kid's efforts to get everyone's attention with his performance of "Tick,
Tick Bang" outside the Glam Slam Club.

The only sustained dramatic tension in the plot, moreover, grows out of
an ongoing business conflict between Morris and the Kid over the club
they are supposed to co-own. The film repeatedly encourages us to see
this conflict in spiritual terms: Aura, for example, calls it a battle
between "money" [Morris] and "light" [the Kid], and the Kid and Morris
are associated throughout the film with Christian and satanic imagery,
respectively. Despite the film's efforts to construe their conflict as a
Christian allegory, however, the battle between the two men is most
clearly discernible on the material level. Graffiti Bridge opens with
Morris strategizing about how to add the Kid's club to the long list of
establishments in Seven Comers in which he already owns "a controlling
interest." Learning of this plan, the henchmen Morris has hired to help
him execute the hostile takeover immediately grouse about wanting more
money from Morris if he succeeds in adding the Glam Slam to his empire.
Early on in the film, the Kid loses his girlfriend, a dancer who works
in his club, when she quits to go to work for Morris, who pays her more
money. Later, Morris complains that the "spiritual" music that the Kid
plays at the Glam Slam is no good because it doesn't bring enough money
into the club.

Like Aura, who functions as a kind of emanation who helps dramatize
creative anxieties in the film, Morris also operates as the embodiment
of a distinct facet of the Kid's life as an artist, namely the financial
pressures and commercial headaches that complicate a career in the music
business. Morris's rivalry with the Kid over the ownership of the Glam
Slam Club and his efforts to draw the majority of the club-going
audience away from the Kid to his own club (and band) are presented as a
constant irritation to the Kid and as a threat to his artistic efforts.
This threat comes across most vividly when Morris's thugs break into the
Glam Slam and destroy the Kid's equipment, gleefully smashing amps and
musical instruments in an effort to sabotage the Kid's performance at an
up-coming battle of the bands against Morris.

In another scene that focuses on material wealth, Morris's comical
altercation with his disgruntled right-hand man Jerome takes the form of
a quick-draw showdown, not with loaded guns but with cash money whipped
out of pockets and plunked on a table to the tune of "Dueling Banjos."
Morris ends up winning the contest (and maintaining his control over
Jerome) by pulling just enough extra cash out of a hiding place in the
heel of his shoe. The joke is funny, but the scene also makes the
serious point that in the entertainment world, money is power, and both
are hard to come by for a guy like Morris.( n3)

Although money drives the plot of Graffiti Bridge, the emotional center
of the film is the creative crisis it dramatizes. Prince's character has
trouble figuring out what kind of musician he should be, and he has a
serious case of writer's block as well, which the film depicts,
heavy-handedly, in the Kid's failed efforts to paint words on the brick
wall outside his club. The plot further literalizes this artistic
confusion in the Kid's frustrating pursuit of the elusive Aura, the Muse
figure who makes occasional appearances on the club scene when she isn't
hanging out under the "Graffiti Bridge" of the title. There she writes
awful poetry and receives instructions from her "heavenly father" who,
it seems, has sent her to inspire and save the floundering, besieged
Kid. The romance between Aura and the Kid never really gets off the
ground, and when he finally gets Aura into bed, after rescuing her from
the lascivious Morris, the Kid doesn't do anything but tuck her in. The
Kid apparently has found his Muse, but not his sexual energy. In the
Prince universe, this hesitation about sex can only mean trouble. Here,
it signals not only a clear contrast between the Kid's honorable
intentions with Aura and Morris's sleazy seduction attempt, but also the
Kid's creative paralysis.

Later, the Kid and Aura do manage some steamy symbolic sex in the alley
behind the club, choreographed to the song "The Question of You." This
song, providing the soundtrack to all the suggestive writhing and
groping between the two, might easily be taken as a seduction tune, I
but its plaintive melody and its lyrics are not addressed to a potential
female lover. Rather, they represent a moment of anguished
self-questioning from a speaker at some sort of crossroads. Sexuality,
once Prince's answer to every question, is here again deflected by
metaphysical anxieties. "What do I look for, what shall I do," Prince
sings, "Which way do I mm when I'm feeling low? If I sell my soul, now
what will it cost? Must I become naked? No image at all? Shall I remain
upright, or get down and crawl?"

As rock critic Tim Riley has observed, these lyrics reflect the
preoccupations of Prince as a pop star trying to remain tree to himself
I and his art in a cultural climate in which almost every other major
star tours under the banner of beer or soda pop, and in which Jesse
Helms, Tipper Gore and their legions make artistic expression
continually problematic. Later on, the anxiety-ridden "Thieves in the
Temple" serves as the musical backdrop for the silly kidnap and rescue
plot in which the Kid saves Aura from Morris's lustful clutches, but
lyrics like "They don't care where they kick/Just as long as they hurt
you" and "You and me could have been a work of art" can be read as
comments on "the fear and anxiousness" felt by "successful artists who
suddenly find their work under attack" (Riley).

This mood of anxious self-questioning also prevails in "Round and
Round," the song performed by Tevin Campbell near the middle of the
film. The lyrics to "Round and Round" scold an interlocutor who is
stuck, inactive, unproductive, caught up in dreams. One verse, for
example, asks, "Can you tell me where we're going to?/Can you tell me
what it is we really want to find?/Is the truth really there?/Or is it
right under our hair?/For all we know it's been there all the time." As
a critical response to such questions, the chores declares, "Nothing
comes from dreamers but dreams/Sittin' idle in the boat while everyone
else is down the stream/Nothing comes to talkers but talk/We can talk
all we want to/But the world still goes round and round." None of this
questioning is resolved satisfactorily in Graffiti Bridge.

As the Kid's troubled relationship with Aura suggests, an especially
puzzling aspect of the artistic anxiety that envelops Prince's character
in Graffiti Bridge is his apparent inability to pull off the feverish,
ecstatic integration of sexuality and spirituality that has become a
staple of Prince's act. In the film, the concert sequences give us
transcendental "message" songs like "New Power Generation," "Elephants
and Flowers" (a song about faith in God), and the title tune, but the
onscreen performances of these songs seem devoid of any genuine sexual
energy. The choreography is dull, and the costumes Prince wears for
these numbers neither project his notorious horny satyr persona nor help
him strike his familiar gender-bending poses. Mostly, the outfits and
the facepaint he wears make him look like a clown, especially the loose,
black and white checkered outfit he wears for "Elephants and Flowers,"
which looks like it was plucked from a Harlequin in St. Mark's Square.

If the performance of these songs is surprisingly desexualized, the
other end of the spectrum is represented by the staging of "Tick, Tick
Bang," a blatantly sexual song about ejaculation. The song fits into the
plot as the Kid's last-ditch effort in a band battle against Morris, who
packs crowds into his club Pandemonium by offering updated, lustful
soul-funk numbers with no spiritual content. We might expect the
composer of "Dirty Mind," "Head," and "Jack U Off" to offer a song like
"Tick, Tick Bang" as yet another rave-up, tongue in cheek celebration of
sex, and, in the immediate context of the film, we might expect the song
to be a clever send-up of Morris, the musical enemy. But this isn't what
happens. The performance of "Tick, Tick Bang" has a strangely nasty edge
to it. The dance moves that Prince uses during the song are discomfiting
in that they look self-abasing, even self-abusive, instead of sexy.
Moreover, the phrase "Beat Me," which he wears scrawled across his bare
chest in black letters, projects a similarly discomfiting image,
combining possible references to Morris's victory in the musical battle,
slang words for masturbation, and, more disturbingly, a call for
physical abuse. The Kid certainly seems to be beating himself up in this
scene as he throws himself around on the pavement in front of Morris's
club as Morris and his band watch disgustedly. If people won't take his
spiritual music without the sexy trappings, he seems to be saying, he'll
give them the sexual trappings only, and make everybody uncomfortable in
the process.

All of this adds up to a portrait of the artist in extremus--the pop
star on op of the world letting us in cinematically on his dark night of
the soul. In devising Graffiti Bridge, Prince writes and stars in his
own worst nightmare. Among the many monsters this nightmare conjures up
are versions of Prince as an artist with worrisome financial
difficulties, troubling creative anxiety, and a big short-circuit in the
normally sizzling sexuality/spirituality connection that drives his
music and his public image.

That image has often focused on Prince's outsider, underdog status,
variously constructing that status in relation to such things as the
music business, the press, mass-market radio, Hollywood, and white
America. To be sure, Prince no longer occupies the underdog position
from which he fought early in his career. He is a wealthy,
internationally successful star whose work since Purple Rain has
received considerable, if not consistent, praise. Still, Graffiti Bridge
suggests that even the Prince of Paisley Park has his moments of high
anxiety. Press reports of two strategic career moves by Prince indicate,
in fact, that the artistic struggle dramatized in Graffiti Bridge has
its counterparts in Prince's own efforts to maintain his audience and,
at the same time, find satisfying media and congenial production
circumstances for his art. A 1993 Rolling Stone article, for example,
describes "a multi-media Prince blitz that began when he signed his
highly publicized six album contract with Warner Bros. last September"
(Light 15), suggesting a concerted effort by the usually reclusive
Prince to reassert himself as a strong public presence on the pop music
scene. The series of highly publicized activities constituting this
blitz included Prince's first American tour in five years, a rare
television appearance (on The Arsenio Hall Show), a record-store
performance and autograph session in Atlanta, and a benefit show at the
Apollo Theater.

Prince followed up this barrage of public appearances with the formal
announcement of his decision to retire from studio recording in order to
focus his creative energies on "alternative media" such as "live
theater, interactive media, nightclubs, and motion pictures"
(Goldberg).( n4) Whatever the impetus behind Prince's decision to take a
hiatus from recording,( n5) and despite the fact that he changed his
mind about retiring, this strategic move, and the intense promotional
activities that preceded it, suggests that more than a decade after
Purple Rain, life and continued survival at the top of the pop music
heap are not as simple as being the baddest, funkiest act in town.


Notes


(n1)I offer an extensive analysis of the relationship between Prince and
his fictional Purple Rain character within the context of rock 'n' roll
genre films in "Purple Rain: Rock-Fiction and the Prince Aesthetic,"
PostScript: Essays in Film and the Humanities 6.3 (1987): 54-66.

(n2)See also Dave Hill's account of the withdrawal of The Black Album
from the market in Prince: A Pop Life, 208.

(n3)As head of the musical empire supported by his own Paisley Park
record label and the lavish Paisley Park studio complex he runs in his
native Minneapolis, Prince has surely learned this lesson and has no
doubt shared Morris's peeved frustration over having to delegate tasks
to people who cannot execute them as well as he. Morris's "If you want
something done, hire good people" could only have been inspired by
Prince's real-life business experiences. See Karlen (59) for responses
from Prince to charges from Morris Day and others that he was a
dictatorial, overcontrolling employer.

(n4)Meanwhile, in order to fulfill contractual obligations, new Prince
albums would continue to be released, with songs taken from among his
500 unreleased recordings (Goldberg 22).

(n5)Sources quoted in Goldberg's 1993 article suggest that the decision
to retire was linked to Prince's dissatisfaction with the terms of his
Warner Bros. contract and to his general frustration with the
constraints of the music industry. From 1993 to 1996, Prince became
increasingly vocal about his unhappiness with the release and promotion
of his music by Warner Bros. His replacement of the name "Prince" with
the now-familiar symbol in 1993, his many public appearances since then
with "slave" written on his cheek, and his candid discussions of his
frustrations in interviews published in 1994 and 1995, signalled his
desire to move beyond "Prince's" persona and music into a more expansive
stage of artistic development, unhampered by the pragmatic constraints
of the music business. The latest album from The Artist Formerly Known
As Prince, Emancipation (1996), released on his own NPG label through a
one-album distribution deal with EMI, celebrates the artist's liberation
from his Warner Bros. contract.


Works Cited


Goldberg, Michael. "Prince Retires--Maybe." Rolling Stone 10 June 1993:
22.

Graffiti Bridge. Dir. Prince. Paisley Park/Warner Bros., 1990.

Hill, Dave. Prince: A Pop Life. New York: Harmony, 1989.

Karlen, Neal. "Prince Talks." Rolling Stone 18 Oct. 1990: 56-60, 104.

Light, Alan. "Superbad! The Elusive Prince Returns Triumphant." Rolling
Stone 29 Apr. 1993: 15-16.

Pareles, Jon. "Sonic and Sexual Updates from Prince." New York Times 19
Aug. 1990: H31.

Purple Rain. Dir. Albert Magnoli. Warner Bros., 1984.

Riley, Tim. "And the Bridge is Love." The Boston Phoenix 24 Aug. 1990:
sec. 3:16.

Sign o' the Times. Dir. Prince. Cineplex Odeon Films, 1987.

Taylor, Charles. "Into the Mystic." The Boston Phoenix 9 Nov. 1990: sec.
3:6.

~~~~~

By Marie A. Plasse

Marie A. Plasse is Associate Professor of English at Merrimack College,
North Andover, Massachusetts.

_____

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Source: Journal of Popular Culture, Winter96, Vol. 30 Issue 3, p57, 9p
Item: 3113674
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pepper7 said:

Interesting analysis of "Thieves in the Temple." It's shows how Prince had drifted into artifice and fantasy. It sounds pretty and has lots of evocative imagery, but you're right, at its core it's empty. Like a ditzy blonde.

That line, "You and me could have been a work of art." Sounds great! Brilliant even! But what the heck does it mean?

With "Graffiti Bridge," Prince music was starting to sound hollow and say nothing. It was Prince making art for art's sake. Or better yet: It was like the Seinfeld age of Prince music. What's it about? Nothing!

'nother comment about the movie: Prince made "Graffiti Bridge" in the wake of his Batman experience, right? And he features the Male-Female symbol quite a bit: He's got it on his bike, on his wrist, on his jacket, everywhere. It was obviously his "Bat Symbol."

I thought Commissioner Gordon was gonna light up the sky with the Prince symbol and Prince would slide down his pole and put on his mascara, hop into his Princemobile and go fight crime!

I'll tell you why, I think, Prince made Graffiti Bridge.
He was on the set of Batman and thought, "I fancy having a go at making another film, this looks easy". So he did...and it was rubbish!

james said:

But... but it was the feature film debut of his beard!

That's gotta count for something.

james said:

Under the cherry moon's script was just as bad, but the set was real and Prince and Jerome were hilarious!

padawan said:

The beard is the film's one saving grace, and only just missed out on the oscar for Best Beard In A Really Shit Film.

james said:

It was shit, yeah, but if you can get past the embarrassing factor, there's much to be gained.

Like Aura's feather. That shit was prophetic. Robert Zemeckis himself would steal that idea two years later for "Forrest Gump."

james said:

Not really because the Graffiti Bridge project came about way before Prince was even approached to do Batman.

I actually just listened to the music of the cd and I liked it again. Not hearing it for awhile made me enjoy it more. I'm still not crazy about the film, but the best thing to come from that was the fantastic NUDE TOUR 1990.

This was a great show and Prince was fantastic even though it was more of a hits tour to promote nothing. A couple of songs from G.B. and the Batman cds were cool hear live. Very cool versions of Do Me Baby and the best version of When Doves Cry. The extended Baby I'm a Star Jamm was excellent!!

I remember one particular bit from the Star & Trib's scathing review of this film. They talked about how near vomit-inducing it was to see Prince imitating Christ on a cross during the "Still Would Stand All Time," number.

jillybean said:

Yeah my first reaction to his Jesus thing was stomach churning disgust too.

But years later, I see the movie with fresh eyes. It's still hilariously bad, but I recognize it as was Prince's attempt to clear his mind of his spiritual nonsense. (Remember: Purple Rain had no otherworldly fantastical elements.)

The very first line of dialogue says it all: "Are there really angels? Are they just in our minds? It all comes out in the wash... in time."

He was adrift in his own mythological gobbledy-gook. When he saw the movie tank, he suddenly got dead focused on making the commercial crowd pleaser "Diamonds & Pearls."
[Edited 4/18/06 11:49am]

padawan said:

When I first heard "The Continental," I thought the lyric went:

Why settle for a star
When u can have the Son

And I thought, "Crap, here we go again!" Thank goodness it was, "sun," and all was well.
[Edited 4/19/06 9:10am]

1 word analysis of Graffiti Bridge: CRAP

jillybean said:

Except the sun IS a star. It actually makes more sense your way.

who would name a nightclub "Red Corvette"?

sheesh

Pile of Shit. One of THE very worst films of all times. ever. Period.

Tick Tick Bang. One the most embarrassing Prince performances on video. This wouldn't be the first thing you'd show to a non-fan is it?