The Smiley Smile Message Board

They're showing this on VH1 Classic right now. (Its going to end at 4) But I looked for future showings and it seems like they're going to show it a few more times in the next week or two. Just giving a heads up for anyone who hasnt seen it.

is this the terrible fake beach boys history movie, and if so could someone record it and post it online?

Had it on video, and my daughter recorded a show over it. Didn't feel bad about that at all...

It's a great comedy.

Wait a sec. What exactly was wrong with it? Sure it wasn't 100% accurate. But they said at the beginning of the film that it some liberties were taken. You have to admit that they got Mike Love pretty dead on. And the guy who played Van Dyke was pretty good.

I found it to be entertaining television.

In case your wondering this was not that bad movie from the late eighties with all the fake beards.

Ohhh, I know which one you're talking about.  I saw it on TV when I was a wee lad... only thing I remember really is Dennis drowning, and the ghostly voice of Brian yelling "DENNIS!  DENNIS!  NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Dear God...

What was wrong with it ?

Brian portrayed as a drooling idiot post-Pet Sounds...

Mike explaining to Brian what the hook was in "GV"...

Van Dyke being identified as the person who turned Brian on to drugs...

The overall tenor of the 2nd part: Mike good, Brian loony.

Just a selection...

Come on Andrew, we all know Van Dyke didn't appear in this feature epic! It was that crazy cat "Samuel" in his place with those fantastic, fake "Geronimo!" lyrics!  ;D

Keep on thinkin', Butch, that's what you're good at.   8)

Who was responsible for this film and it's particular depiction of characters and events?  I see that John Stamos is listed as 'executive producer' and Alan Boyd as 'co-producer'.  Was there any closer Beach Boy involvement?

Think you'll find that if you talk to the right people, the words "Mike" & "Love" crop up with considerable regularity.

Alan walked off the project twice, but that's his tale to tell, or not.

Well, that does interest me considering how negatively the Smile project is portrayed.  Because, as we all now know, Mike loved Smile all along!

Just a question, out of sheer ignorance--

Hadn't Brian become REALLY strange after Pet Sounds?  Maybe not a drooling idiot, per se, but wasn't he pretty darned loony?  Playing the same piano riffs over and over and over again, walking around with a little tape player on his wrist playing "Be My Baby" over and over and over and over again, walking along the highway in the middle of the night in his bathrobe, working at the Radiant Radish in his bathrobe, not leaving his bedroom for weeks on end while his band was recording downstairs in his house hoping that he'd join them, taking business meetings in his swimming pool because he was convinced his father and Phil Spector had his house bugged...

I guess what I'm asking is, what exactly WAS Brian like during the late sixties/early seventies, if the TV movie portrayed him so inaccurately?  (Maybe Peter Carlin's book can answer that, but I'm still waiting for it to come out here in the States.)

THAT's the problem -- you think that, everyone thinks that.  It simply isn't true.  Brian didn't start showing that behavior until the 70's.  Throughout the 60's Brian may have withdrawn, but he was functional (somewhat).  He certainly wasn't sitting in bed in a housecoat with a thick beard in 1968 as the movie depicts.  Part 1 was OK, but part 2 was fiction.

I'm afraid that's not a very satisfying answer.  So some of the actual DETAILS in the movie didn't jibe with actual events, but it seems to me that the movie more or less got the GIST of what was going on.  The movie couldn't show EVERYTHING, so they had to compress some events, details, and time periods.  It's inevitable.

Does it really matter whether Brian had a beard in the 70s instead of the 60s?  Does it really matter that Brian wasn't COMPLETELY out of his mind until the 70s instead of the late 60s?  I think the main point is that Brian eventually became a non-functioning mess and withdrew almost completely from his friends, his family, and reality.  Which, as far as I know, is true.  The WHEN of it doesn't really matter, does it?  Especially when we're talking about a movie.  Now, if this were a book, then I could definitely understand the ire.  But even CINDERELLA MAN futzed with a lot of real-life details, and that film is almost universally praised.

According to the Beach Boys themselves--I think it was in ENDLESS HARMONY--Bruce says that by the late 60s, it was becoming increasingly rare for Brian to join them in recording sessions and he'd stay up in his room while they recorded in the home studio.  (It was right at the point in the film where they showed footage of the Boys in the home studio with "Time To Get Alone" accompanying the footage.)

If AGD is saying that Brian was never the loony, drooling idiot presented in the movie, I'd like to know just how far off the mark the movie was.  If that wasn't what Brian was really like, what WAS?

Or is AGD simply saying that that wasn't what Brian was like AT THAT TIME, meaning the period immediately following Pet Sounds?

It DOES matter. To use an extreme example, how would you like a film where the World War II was started by the Netherlands and ended in 1957 AND SELLS THIS AS FACTS!?!?! It's just wrong, and you end up with nothing but probaganda. It may be entertaining, but it isn´t the truth.

Not to mention that it actually shows Brian becoming like that in 1966, with Mike swooping in to save GV with his input (yeah, right).  And the actor playing Brian acted very much the same all through the film as if Brian were always about to be a blithering idiot.  And no, he didn't get that bad until 1973/4 -- right as the film shows him supposedly getting better.  And he never even got THAT bad until the 80's and the Landy meds.

Brian in 1980 -- looks pretty lucid to me (esp. compared to Denny):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XCe-K6NiTm8&search=beach%20boys

That's indeed a very extreme example you're giving there.  Look, compressing events is a staple of biopics.  If you can't accept that, it's best not to watch them.

Even the movie version of Private Parts, WHICH STARRED THE AUTHOR HIMSELF, changed some things around and compressed events, time periods, and even people.  I don't know if you saw the movie, but assuming you did, here's just ONE example: It wasn't Howard Stern and Fred Norris who got into a tub with some B-movie actress in Detroit.  It was Jackie Martling and Stuttering John.  It wasn't a B-movie actress, it was Jessica Hahn.  And it didn't happen in Detroit, it happened in Los Angeles.  And it didn't happen in the early 80s, it happened in the late 80s/early 90s.  Also, Howard's wife didn't go into labor at the big rally in New York celebrating Howard's triumph in the ratings at WNBC radio.  

If Brian eventually did become as much of a mess as was portrayed in the movie, then the movie did its job in getting that across to the audience.  It doesn't matter if the real Brian was that messed up no earlier than 1972 or whenever it was.

Purists and historians may be mortified, but the movie wasn't made for them.  It was made for the widest possible viewing audience, most of whom don't know the full details of every aspect of the Beach Boys' story, nor do they care to.

I watched that clip yesterday.  Brian's squinting the whole time, he's slurring, he quickly defers to Mike to answer a simple question.  Yeah, he can get out a full sentence and he's intelligible for the most part, but Brian doesn't seem fully okay to me.  Yeah, he's more lucid than Dennis, but saying that is damning him with faint praise.

The salient point here is that  AAF doesn't just compact all of Brian's known craziness into a shortened time period, but misrepresents him as someone incapable of writing or completing a song after 1966! It amounts to character defamation. The "Good Vibrations" scene demonstrates the film's bias: Brian is too whacked out on drugs to complete the song and wants to give up on it. Mike tries to bring Brian back to sanity long enough to recognize that if they include the hook Mike has come up with and change the lyrics so the kids can relate, they'll have a million seller. Brian thanks Mike profusely for saving the day.

In a later scene, Brian is shown criticizing Dennis' songwriting ability telling him "you'll never be anything but a clubber" (referring to his drumming style). By all accounts (except possibly Mike's or the screenwriter's), this is the exact opposite of Brian's attitude regarding Dennis' writing. Van Dyke Parks is portrayed as a talentless hanger-on who has brainwashed Brian into thinking his "SMiLE" lyrics are substantial when Mike knows they're simply drug-induced gibberish. When confronted with the "truth", Parks runs out of the room whining that the scene isn't cool anymore (when the film originally aired on ABC, the character was called "Van Dyke Parks" and was strangely the only outside collaborator named. Parks threatened to sue for, yep, "character defamation" unless the name was changed to a fictional one).

Even at the film's end which tries to show where everyone ended up circa 2000, Brian is shown performing at one of his solo concerts, but the camera cuts to a close-up of his hands not touching the keyboard as if to emphasize  that he remains an incompetent fake.

All of this can be put down to an artistic viewpoint, but it's a damn mean-spirited one to be sure.

Dramatic movies always take liberties, but something like "Man On The Moon" goes a long way to capture the spirit of Andy Kaufman even if the events in the film are fictionalized. "An American Family" does not attempt to capture the spirit of many of the story's key players, but only wishes to exploit them to sensationalize the action.

Anyone watching the 2nd part will most likely form the opinion that, after the Pet Sounds/Smile sessions, Brian suddenly became retarded, in the strict medical sense of the word. To say he was protrayed as a near-imbecile is only exaggerating mildly.

Now THIS is a satisfying answer!

Thanks, Roger.

AGD--

So, to the best of your knowledge, Brian was NEVER as bad as he was portrayed in the movie, even when he was at his worst?

To the best of my knowledge, and from what I've been told, no. Pretty bad, for sure. But never as moronic as portrayed.

What upset some people about "American Family" is that it was an official Beach Boys' project.  It's not just some producer's take on the story, as "Summer Dreams" was.   An article appeared in the LA Weekly when it was first broadcast about how inaccurate it was.  It included an interview with a very upset Van Dyke Parks, who threatened to sue over the movie (a disclaimer was added to the film).  Van really had it in for Mike Love, mentioning his divorces (he claimed Mike had been married 11 times,  a few more marriages than Mike actually had).  He also repeated a story about Mike offering him a seat, seemingly without charge, on a charter flight, then billing him for the cost after the fact.  Not to bring  up all the laundry, but Van Dyke was clearly p.o.'d by the movie and blamed Mike for the content.  Darian was also quoted in the same article, describing Melinda Wilson yelling into her cell phone at the movie's director, so upset was she at learning what was in the movie as it was being filmed.  Brian was so rattled by her heated phone call that he ducked into a car to avoid hearing it. 

I'm not really sure how much Mike had to do with what's in the movie.  It glorifies him in some respects, but also makes him appear emotionally unstable and mean.  John Stamos was a co-producer, and a former touring Beach Boy, but he's said he couldn't make the movie he wanted because he was threatened with lawsuits.  But I take that to mean it would have been even more exploitive than it wound up being.  What I don't get is why Melinda Wilson became so upset during production.  Didn't she read the script?  She waited too long to voice objections, and it was too late to change anything by that point.  The film only makes her husband look like a retarded whack job who didn't respect his brothers and totally despised his own daughters.  I'm surprised it didn't feature his affair with Diane, since Diane is in the movie for little reason.  Maybe that's one of the things Stamos wanted to show that he had to drop.  That film made me lose respect for John Stamos.  Not that I had any to begin with. 

Besides that, it's just a really bad movie.  I'm not sure why people enjoy it, but to each their own.  I preferred "Summer Dreams," at least it was shorter.

Here's that article:

from The Los Angeles New Times 4/6/2000
Heroes and Villains
Brian Wilson's back, recording a live album at the Roxy this week and preparing for a summer tour with symphony orchestras throughout the U.S. So isn't it time to address the lies and half-truths depicted on ABC's recent Beach Boys miniseries?

By Bill Holdship

They say that history belongs to the victors. In the case of the Beach Boys' always strange Southern California saga,  the term boils down to two survivors -- namely, Mike Love, the group's cocky lead singer, and Brian Wilson, the group's musical architect and resident genius -- and their often distorted memories.

Brian Wilson, as you're apt to have read somewhere by now, has been on a solo tour for the past year, which has taken him through the U.S., as well as in front of hysterical, ecstatic Japanese fans, and to a showstopping performance at Neil Young's annual Bridge Concert in San Francisco late last year. On Friday and Saturday nights of this week, he'll be recording a live album at the Roxy, which will be released via his Web site (BrianWilson.com) later this year.

"I'm thoroughly convinced that nothing in the world makes him happier than being around a group of people performing vocal harmonies," says Darian Sahanaja, co-leader, singer, and keyboardist of the Wondermints, who make up the core of Wilson's backing band. "I think it's a very spiritual thing. It's his very favorite thing -- that and food!" He laughs.

"Going into this, we already knew Brian Wilson is not Bruce Springsteen," Sahanaja continues. "He's never been a performer, so it's never really been about that. It's always been about his vision, creativity, his songs, his arrangements, and his sensibility. So the shows have basically been to showcase the legacy of the music with the man himself -- the actual composer -- present."

"I'm a pretty happy guy," Wilson says during a brief interview between rehearsals for the shows. "In fact, I'm as happy as hell!"

Nevertheless, even current information continues to get distorted in this musical saga, sometimes coming from the main surviving source himself. It's little wonder, then, that historical facts get blurred. For instance, Brian claims: "I haven't been able to write anything new in over a year, but I have been playing a lot of piano. I've been at the piano every day, two or three times a day -- trying to keep alive, keep my voice alive. But I haven't been able to get any new melodies going. I've had writer's block, I guess." Yet, Sahanaja reveals that in addition to a new version of Wilson's gorgeous "Till I Die," the Roxy shows will be augmented by two brand-new Wilson originals, including a tune titled "This Isn't Love."

Of course, this type of distortion is basically minute detail, based on Wilson's whim of the moment, and ultimately harmless. When it comes to Beach Boy Mike Love's selective memories, however, things get a little more complicated and a lot more damaging. In fact, perversion may be a preferable word to distortion when it comes to Love's version of the truth.

During the last several months, there have been several television specials examining the Beach Boys phenomenon. In the last three weeks alone, Court TV ran a special documenting the various Beach Boys lawsuits involving Brian (and usually his cousin Mike Love) over the last decade, while American Movie Classics just hosted a Saturday night Beach Boys marathon, The Beach Boys: Then & Now, which included a rebroadcast of Endless Harmony, a documentary originally made for VH1 and recently released commercially on VHS and DVD by Capitol Records. Not coincidentally, when Mike Love offers a sound bite in the documentary, presenting himself as the "bright, positive" counterpart to Brian's "dark" side, history has a way of suddenly being rewritten. For instance, in a new scene added to the DVD version, Love suddenly takes credit for suggesting that Paul McCartney write a Beach Boys-like song about Ukraine girls, which, of course, became "Back in the USSR" -- and which is news to any rock historian who's followed the story throughout the years.

The worst example of Love's revisionism, however, was the ABC-TV miniseries, The Beach Boys: An American Family, which ran two nights in late February as part of sweeps month. Produced by actor John Stamos (who frequently drummed for the Love-fronted nostalgia unit calling itself the Beach Boys in the years following Dennis Wilson's death), the film could have listed a credit for Minister of Propaganda to Love. As an angry review on a Beach Boys-related Web site explained: "[The film was] a monstrously vile, twisted perversion of the truth...It's Mike's version of what happened, told with a huge smirk at all the so-called 'Brian freaks' he so deeply disdains."

The ironic thing is that when Wouldn't It Be Nice, the Brian Wilson autobiography written with Todd Gold (and, many argue, Dr. Eugene Landy, Wilson's controversial psychotherapist), was published in the mid-'90s, the ever-litigious Love was part of a libel suit against Wilson, Gold, and the publishers over objectionable material in that book. Shortly after that suit (and after Landy was out of the picture), Love was awarded $5 million from Wilson following a suit he filed over cosongwriting credits he claimed he never received; Love is currently suing former Beach Boy Al Jardine over the name "The Beach Boys' Family & Friends," which Jardine has been using to bill his current touring group, which includes Brian's daughters, Carnie and Wendy. It's almost as though Love has tried to claim his legacy via the American judicial system. And when that wasn't enough, he created a miniseries to claim his glory, presenting himself as the true vision behind the  Beach Boys. The sad fact, though, is that the TV movie now exists forever as a strong public record -- in other words, to be believed as history by those who don't know any better.

"I didn't like the second part," Brian hesitantly says of the miniseries. "It wasn't really true to the way things were. I'd like to see another movie if it was done right. But I just sort of turned my back to this one, or my other cheek, or whatever you wanna call it. It was best just to ignore it because it really wasn't true to life."

Sahanaja remembers a rehearsal last summer when Wilson's wife and comanager, Melinda, was on the phone with a copy of the script in front of her, yelling at one of Love's representatives over certain questionable content. Brian was so upset that he asked for the keys to the car and sat in the parking lot until the incident was over. "It was so sad," says Sahanaja, "because Brian's happier now, trying to move on -- and yet this stuff from the past keeps popping up to haunt him. My theory is that Brian and Melinda were most disturbed, apart from all the Mike Love propaganda at Brian's expense, by a scene that depicted Dennis Wilson screaming, 'You never supported me as an artist,' at his older brother. From everything I've read and everyone I've ever talked to, Dennis was the one guy -- perhaps the only guy -- who always stood by Brian."

I saw the movie when it came out around 2000. It has an 80's/Stamos/Love slant to it with Brian seen as a huge failure to the group. Mike Loves character doesnt always appear cool either. They all were portayed strangely in the 2nd part.

Allow me to pose a purely hypothetical question.

How do you think Stamos landed the rights to use the actual BB recordings ?

Here's another one, equally hypothetical.

Which Beach Boy was on the set far more than any other ?

I thought she wasn't given access to the script  of part 2 by the producers until the very last minute (which would explain her explosive reaction).  Brian himself never saw what was in that script until part 2 aired, so I was told.

The earlier drafts of the script were very, very different from the final product.  Particularly for the second half.

And no, Melinda and Brian didn't see the finished second half of the film until a couple of days before it aired.  Neither did I, for that matter.

Not a happy time.

Stamos just got cheesy and sold out i guess to return the favor to Mike for joining the band... What a duechebag!

It was much more complicated than that. 

One big problem was the rapidly shrinking music budget - the original vision for the second half of the film would have balanced much of the somewhat difficult portrait of Brian with a strong emphasis on music.  Lots of music.  Music that would have contrasted Brian's seemingly eccentric behavior against some of the strongest, most heartfelt and beautiful music that had ever been highlighted in a teevee movie (my opinion, but then again, I'm somewhat biased).  But the budget kept getting slashed as the fees kept going up ("sync" licenses have become hideously expensive) and the "setlist," which, as I recall, would have highlighted everything from "Cabinessence" to "Long Promised Road," kept getting boiled down to the bare essentials.  At least "Forever" survived.  And I made a bit of a pest of myself lobbying for "Add Some Music."

I also have to say that the film never recovered from Van Dyke Parks' last-minute decision not to allow any of his lyrics to appear in the film.  I don't blame him at all for his actions, but that was an utterly fatal blow to the movie and its portrayal of Brian.  The ONLY thing that would have redeemed that section of the film as it was finally shot would have been to hear some of that incredible music.  Brian and his collaborator are crazy?  Well... imagine how powerful it might have been to see and hear "Brian" playing "Surf's Up" (in his OWN REAL 1966 VOICE, by the way) while all of this other stuff was going on in the film.   Or to see "Carl" singing "Cabinessence."  Because that music is most definitely not crazy.  Because that music is incredible.  Because that music is heart-wrenchingly beautiful.  Because while the film may have presented a lowest common denominator, sensationalized-for-dramatic-effect portrait of Brian Wilson, I believe that the inclusion of Brian's original music might have been able to transcend all of that.  I liked Gary's "Geronimo" piece, but it had nothing to do with anything.

Think about it.... without the actual music, which is the whole point for ANY of this, "Smile," as presented in that film, was a stupid, self-indulgent piece of drug addled hippie crap.  And that's what millions of people who watched that film on TV went away with.

God, it still pisses me off thinking about it.

Thanks for giving your thoughts on this.  Nevertheless, my main suspicion is that though the presence of the music you mention would have offset the negative portrayal of Brian to some degree the intent to portray him that way was still there.  (Just speculating - is this why VDP didn't want to be associated?)  And even if Brian was as difficult and as crazy as some people say he was by the early 70s there is more than one way to represent even that story.

I have never met Brian Wilson and, obviously, I have no first hand knowledge of what he was like as a person in the 62-67 period but the rather dopey and nerdish portrayal of him right from the start of this movie struck me as pretty insulting.

I am not trying to put you down here but here is my take on why the movie is panned.

Does it really matter that Brian wasn't COMPLETELY out of his mind until the 70s instead of the late 60s?  

YES very much so he is all too often blamed for the lack of success then when he was threre. Have you listen to Sunflower, Friends or Spring.


According to the Beach Boys themselves--I think it was in ENDLESS HARMONY--Bruce says that by the late 60s, it was becoming increasingly rare for Brian to join them in recording sessions and he'd stay up in his room while they recorded in the home studio.  (It was right at the point in the film where they showed footage of the Boys in the home studio with "Time To Get Alone" accompanying the footage.)

Time To Get Alone was writen and sung by Brian. It shows how ridiculous the statement is. So what if he wasn't in the film.

If AGD is saying that Brian was never the loony, drooling idiot presented in the movie. Listen to or read interviews from the period.

All interview and studio tapes from 67-72 have him sounding exactly the same as in the 60s. He didn't slur until the 80s.

One more comment here....In ESQ Mike claimed not to like aspects of the film. If he did have something to do with the script itself then he should be criticised, but I would like to hear his comments after seeing the final results. The first part was pretty good but Summer Dreams is WAY better though the music is of course better in the second. They didn't even give Brian his Beatle haircut! I dislike bio pics as a rule. Kurt Russel as Elvis is about it for me.

I don't think the film is too bad, it's lightyears better than "Summer Dreams" (although IMO Summer Dreams had better Murry) Van Dyke Parks was portrayed poorly in both films.

These low budget made for TV films are never gonna win Oscars like "Ray" for instance. I tend to stay clear of music biopics such as these purely because they're too cheesy. The producers always have make it easy to watch for the "middle of the road" viewer, not for the hardcore fans.

The best music biopics in my opinion are "Walk the Line" and "Backbeat" which was about the Beatles early years in Hamburg. But even then I find that hard to watch, as I'm always picking out the mistakes or cheesy bits. The other Beatles film "Birth of Beatles" is very similar to "Summer Dreams" for it's over 40 years old actors playing teenage Beatles (like Bruce Greenwood playing Dennis in Summer Dreams) and coming out with typical one liners like "Yeah, George. It has been a hard days night hasn't it" (a la Summer Dreams "I wanna make the best rock and roll album ever made Marilyn!")

All in all, I can generally never watch these types of films more than once. I always find it hard to relate the actor playing Brian / Dennis or any musician for that matter, to the real person, purely because I'm a massive fan and the actors generally get the attitudes and personalities of the actors wrong. Maybe film producers should stay away from our favourite musicians!

PS You're right MBE!  ;D

does anyone have a copy of this or knows of where it could be found online, I saw this before i was into the beach boys and would greatly like to see it again!!!!!   please, anyone help me add a cult viewing film to my collection!

Someone on ebay is selling a VHS copy...here's the link:

http://cgi.ebay.com/BEACH-BOYS-AMERICAN-FAMILY-2000-TV-MOVIE-BIOPIC_W0QQitemZ270008547808QQihZ017QQcategoryZ309QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I feel the same way, which is why I always prefer a good documentary over a movie.

In Oliver Stone's "The Doors", even though Val Kilmer looked, talked, and sang amazingly like Jim Morrison, there was something about Morrison that nobody could duplicate, thus making it uncomfortable to watch.

I agree i dont like The Doors movie even though Val Kilmer looks and talks exactly like Morrison. There is something thats missing from the film and from the portrayal of Morrison. It comes across better if your on drugs but its nothing great.

VDP was VDP on the first broadcast.  He became Samuel on rebroadcasts because of his objection to be depicted.

Samuel seems like an odd choice.

If you could put it on your computer or anything, I'd be glad to try and provide compensation

Its a shame some of those songs werent in the film but they need to catch the character of the band through acting and presentation of the members better than what Stamos did. The songs might have covered the questionable story up alittlet but there was some in-accuricys being shown. They needed to show more good times and partying with the band which is what they liked to do sometimes in the later years. Just seeing the characters talk about music together without the drama.

all in all, i thank God this movie was made...otherwise, i'd just be obsessed with star wars and vintage television & not  phil spector, brian wilson, and burt bacharach

recorded it this morning on my dvr...watching it now.

dennis and mike are off at the beach to catch some waves...:p

oyu know you want to rip it onto your computer, joe!

i honestly would, just for you guys. but unfortunately i dont have a tv card...and the version that i have on dvd (someone ripped it for me previously) is really crappy. :(

better than nothing, IM GETTING DESPERATE :shrug

This was on this weekend on vh-1 as previously stated and I noticed that Van Dyke is still referred to as VDP...but only once when he's introduced to Brian.  I thought they changed it after the original airing?

I have seen both versions, one with VDP named and one with Samuel.  But either way.......Van Dyke was not anywhere close to being blonde?!  I think they found actors who looked exactly like Audrey, Murry, and Mike, and Nick Stabile really does resemble the young Dennis.  My question is.....this movie came out fairly recently.....why did they stop in the mid 70's? It could have been a mini-series, the ending could have went on to show the history from the last 30 years.

Carly

The only issue i have w/it is that I am not Marilyn in it  :lol





Besides that, its okay.  ;D

 :-D :-D

I had the same issue with "2 lane blacktop", I would have made a MUCH better hitch hiker girl....yep....I would have totally gotten into my character in that movie  ;)

Van Dyke Parks was blond as a kid, or at least he was in "The Swan."  But he does not appear blond in the photos froom the Smile period.   I haven't seen this miniseries in awhile, but I do remember the actor playing Van Dyke reminding me of Frankie Avalon in whatever surf movie he plays a blond British doppelganger of himself.

i enjoy the guy who played him..pretty sure he was on dazed and confused, a beautiful mind (maybe), and road trip

He's one of the dorks from that piece of crap known as 'Rent'.

that's a downer...never saw rent, prolly never will

For curious UK fans, 'The Beach Boys - An American Family' will be broadcast on Channel 5, Saturday 12th August at 2.40 pm BST.

 :-D

I am curious UK.  ::)

So am I... ;D

the group of people that are talking about it for the vh1 classic channel are a group of idiots...why couldnt they get people that actually have a clue?

"whats your favorite song off pet sounds?"
"oh good vibrations, definitely!"

"brian wilson is a genius...what is your favorite song?"
"surfin usa"
"fun, fun, fun"
"kokomo definitely!"

:thud

que?

Singularly Unamusing!