Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival January 17,2014
A film by Lenny Abrahamson (Room)
Blaine: The thing that got my interest in Frank was seeing this fake head that looks like something out of David and Goliath with Michael Fassbenders face underneath it. The films about trying to invent your own sounds and lyrics in music.
Plot(Spoiler Alert)
Jon Burroughs wants to be a musician and one day he witnesses a man trying to drown himself which leads him to a band, Soronprfbs, that is visiting. Soronprfbs needs a new keyboard player and Jon volunteers to do it. After they do their first gig together the band keeps in contact with Jon and offer him a chance to travel with them to their cabin house and try to invent new sounds in music. Jon finds it weird that the lead singer wears a fake head over his face and doesn’t understand why he wears it, but he also thinks of Frank as a genius at times and should be famous. Jon wants to try and get the band out there and let people know who they are.
Blaine: Honestly Frank is weird at times, but also hilarious and can be fun to watch at other times. This character Michael plays is very different from the ones I've seen him play in the past because he's this hyper guy who loves inventing his own sounds in music and he also hides his face behind a fake head so you can’t see the expressions on his face.
Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan the writers of the film were in a band in the 80s with a character called Frank Sidebottom who is a mixture of punk and comedy and wore this big head. Jon and Peter were asking themselves what if there was someone who permanently wore this big head over his. The reasons why he never takes if off is because they thought he could be acrophobic. He knows that people think it’s weird that he wears a fake head, but he thinks of regular human faces to be odd as well.
It sounded like an outrageous idea for director Lenny Abrahamson to put Michael Fassbender in a project like this. Michael Fassbender really liked the script while he was reading it and thought of the project as a great new way to challenge himself in acting. Michael got use to wearing that head over his and he enjoyed going to work without having to go into the makeup chair.
A lot of the songs in the movie sound weird and are a little hard to understand, but I like the song at the end, "I Love You All" and one of the reasons why is because the lyrics are easier to understand and Michael Fassbender sings it well. They recorded all the music and sounds in a recording studio and Lenny thought it was great that they were really playing all those instruments.
Lenny wanted to cast people in this movie who could really play instruments and they found Carla Azar and Francois Civil as the drummer and base player. Michael Fassbender sings good, but he needs better songs to sing. Maggie Gyllenhaal learned how to play as well and Domhnall Gleeson learned how to play keyboard. A lot of the songs in Frank" Lenny said are original except for a couple Maggie Gyllenhaal sings later in the film.
Jona's grandfather gave him money before he passed on and Jon used it so that the band can keep their recording studio and continue to experiment with music. Disappointingly he waisted his grandfathers money on something that was going no where and the band hasn't become a huge success like they wanted to. But Jon got Frank back with his band so that makes things a little better.
