Image that Elvis only recorded two albums and they were both flops. Everyone forgot about him. Except for a small country on the other side of the world, where his music takes on mythic qualities and everyone knows the words to all his songs.
You should go and watch Searching for Sugar Man now, any more hints about the story will be a major spoiler to the film.
Searching for Sugar Man is a documentary that tells the story of a singer named Rodriguez who recorded two albums that were flops. Except in South Africa, where everyone knows the words to all his songs. We hear bits of these songs throughout the film. Rodriguez sounds a bit like Bob Dylan to me and a bit like any random late 60s/early 70s rock band. It seems that his songs really struck a chord with the anti apartheid movement and some of his songs were banded by the government of South Africa. His many fans were depressed that there were only two albums, but since he had killed himself on stage, there would be no more albums.
Like many documentaries we see people being interviewed and follow them around as they go about their business. We start off with a few people in Detroit talking about seeing Rodriguez preform and telling us that he had the habit of turning his back on the audience while he preformed. We then met a couple of South Africans who talk about their search to find out exactly how Rodriguez died and why no one outside of South Africa seems to have ever heard of him. One of the films funnier moments is when the South African says he tried to find the label owner of Rodriguez’s albums, but he had no luck. We then cut to a shot of the label owner, who doesn’t appear to have been that hard to track down, being interviewed.
I was surprised a number of times by Searching for Sugar Man as the story unfolds in carefully edited moments. This was ScriptShadow’s number one movie of 2013, which seems a little odd for a site about script writing. Of course, just because it’s a documentary doesn’t mean it isn’t scripted, that just isn’t usually considered a good thing.
I liked Searching for Sugar Man.
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That’s the musician in Detroit that no one within a few thousand miles had ever heard of, right?
Yeah, that’s the one. And maybe more like no one within 8,000 miles has ever heard of him.