Non Conventional Documentary about a trail blazing artist.
This documentary was presented in a way that I don't really remember seeing before. It was entirely made up of pictures with no video whatsoever. It was very cool in the beginning as it was non conventional as Alice himself is as an artist. It was also cool to see many pictures from many time periods before and during his career that I had never seen before. Unfortunately towards the middle, it began to be somewhat tedious and I began to long for video footage. I think this documentary would have been much better if it's picture/voice over style had been mixed in with video footage and interviews on camera. The other thing I disliked about it was that they seemed to focus on some albums and time periods while blowing off others. As others have said it also seemed to end too soon with his "nightmare returns" period in the late 80s. Since then Cooper has made many other albums which were of course not mentioned. My absolute favorite album by Cooper in the modern time period would be "Hey Stoopid" which wasn't discussed at all obviously but fortunately my favorite album of ALL TIME, "From the inside" was discussed in some depth.
With all that said, this was still a very good documentary and I was pretty impressed. I had considered myself a huge cooper fan but this documentary revealed so many things I had never known. I'm also especially impressed with how many people participated in this documentary that haven't been too vocal over the years about Alice and his career. I know Alice made peace with his original band years ago but I didn't expect them to participate in this and they didn't really sugar coat anything. The whole thing came off as a clear cut documentary and not a glorified commercial or promo for an upcoming cd and tour.
For me though the true bombshell in this documentary was that Cooper admitted he was severely addicted to cocaine. I'll let this person explain from another thread on the message board:
I've seen/read a bazillion interviews where he said, "I drank but I never did drugs." Out of the blue he's admitting to having a cocaine addiction in the early '80s?! I had to pick up my jaw from the floor! That completely explains his gaunt look, why the music was so unlike everything else he's ever done, why the French TV special was so thoroughly bizarre, why his live performances were intensely high-energy but uncharacteristically awful, why he doesn't have many clear recollections of that era, and how he wound up at death's door. A tiny reveal and suddenly it's all glaringly obvious.
The above quote was right on the mark. My jaw dropped, literally. I sat there with my mouth wide open, not believing what I heard. If it had been a guns n roses documentary or an aerosmith one or any other hard rock band, I wouldn't have given it much of a second thought as it was commonplace for bands to dabble in drugs but Alice was always so quick to say he had never done anything other than booze and I had been hearing him say that for over 20 years now. I guess maybe he was really ashamed of it and if that's the case, kudos to him for finally admitting it. Looking back on it, that cocaine time period produced so many odd albums which were NOTHING like he had done before and yet somehow were very fun albums. Of that entire time period, the only song I know of that he still performs every now and again is "Clones" which is one of my favorites.
All in all I can highly recommend this documentary to most people and if you are an Alice Cooper fan, this is a MUST SEE. Again the unconventional style of not being able to see the person being interviewed seems a little like a loss but over all the information presented was very interesting. Hopefully there will be a second one where they expand on the rest of his career and hopefully it will include video footage. Thank you Alice for all your work and your honesty in this documentary. share