Monkee business

Hey, hey, they're depicting the Monkees, and yesterday we got an exclusive peek on set

By CLAIRE BICKLEY -- Toronto Sun

     TORONTO -- The Monkees are mixing it up.
Mike Nesmith is determined to do a concert to prove they're genuine musical talents. His cause is being backed by Peter Tork.
 

Not so by Davy Jones, who can only play tambourine anyway, or by Micky Dolenz, who thinks it sounds like a lot of work and doesn't get what the big deal is anyhow.
 "It's not like Barbara Eden sleeps in her genie bottle every night," Micky points out.

It's a great line -- and a great example of the varied ambitions of the four '60s popsters/TV comedy stars back when they began.

 For Nesmith and Tork, it was about the music. Jones and Dolenz were just satisfied to be stars, no matter how manufactured.

 Which is something of an irony here on the Toronto set of Daydream Believers: The Monkees' Story, a $5-million movie to air this summer or fall on TMN-The Movie Network in Canada and VH1 in the U.S. It's being made here by the Pebblehut Productions wing of Montreal's Muse Entertainment.

 After an open casting call that drew hundreds of hopefuls in New York, L.A. and Toronto, the headliners were hired: Torontonians Jeff Geddis and George Stanchev are playing Mike Nesmith and Davy Jones, L.A-based actor Aaron Lohr is Micky Dolenz and New Yorker L.B. Fisher is Peter Tork.

 The two actors who are real-life musicians -- Stanchev and Lohr -- are playing the least musically talented Monkees, Jones and Dolenz.

 Stanchev, who is only 19, plans to release a solo pop album this year. As Jones, his biggest musical strain has been a tambourine-induced blister. "I'll have a scar from that. Where's my stunt pay?" he jokes.

 Lohr, 24, sang the voice of Goofy's son Max in A Goofy Movie, was in the musical feature Newsies and his R&B band has a deal with Epic Records.

 Twenty-four-year-old Geddis, on the other hand, admits to playing nothing beyond rudimentary guitar chords, and says, "I wish nobody ever hears me singing."

 Nevertheless, he understands the musically-gifted Nesmith's dilemma: "It was one of those things. On one hand they were being handed cheques for $250,000 after like their first couple shows and then on the other hand, he was like, 'I don't really feel like I'm being honest, I don't really feel like I'm being true to what I do,'" Geddis says. "So he goes out and buys a mansion. It was almost like gangster money to him, you know what I mean? He bought his wife a mansion. He bought himself a whole bunch of cars. He thought, 'Well, I didn't really earn this money so I might as well blow it. Like it was dirty money, kinda."

 Non-naturally musical twenty-something Fisher got busted a bit by his New York roommate Jeanette Keim, who is the lead singer in the band Moxy.

 "Well she did, because she wanted me to really play. If we had more time, she was going to teach me," Fisher says.

 Because Rhino Records is a co-producer of the movie, all of the Monkees' real music will be used. Still, all four actors have been undergoing a crash course in instrument-handling since shooting began three weeks ago.

 No one had to get it together faster than Lohr, who was cast on a Friday with shooting to start the following Monday. By Saturday, he was in Toronto taking drum lessons.

 "I was a bit overwhelmed when I first got here. I thought, 'God, can I do this?'" he recalls. "Plus, dialogue and taking on his characteristics and his essence. But that weekend, I watched episode after episode. I watched a documentary, which was great. I watched the movie Head and listened to the songs over and over and over again. I took my sticks everywhere I went and was beating on things, beating on the couch, on the bed."

 All four now have a feel for what it's like to be a pop idol. They shot two live concert sequences at Hamilton's Copps Coliseum, with hundreds of extras playing screaming fans.

 "All of a sudden they announced, 'In their first live show ... THE MONKEES!' We went out on stage and the cheering went from one level to a completely different level," Stanchev describes. "The first song we broke into was I Want To Be Free, which Davy Jones sings, and there was a little number where I dance and go up to the crowd and I'm touching hands. Just seeing the looks on their faces, it felt real. Whether we're singing to a playback or not, we're performing. The more they fed off of us, the more we fed off of them."

 Some extras hung around afterwards to get the actors' autographs and pass them their phone numbers. Just like the real thing.

 One 13-year-old girl playing a shrieking fan was accompanied by her mother who, 35 years ago, really was a shrieking fan at a Monkee's gig, says Canadian director Neill Fearnley, 46.

 "We've compressed a few things for time purposes, but we're telling it very, very close to what happened," he says. "Some of the historical things that people don't remember or don't know is that Jack Nicholson wrote the screenplay for their movie Head. That Frank Zappa wanted Micky Dolenz to be the drummer of his band, Mothers of Invention. That Jimi Hendrix opened their tour."

 The film, scripted by Ron McGee, is based on Harold Bronson's book, Hey, Hey, We're The Monkees.

 Yesterday, an east-end studio replicated the beach house where the Monkees lived on their slapstick TV series. A lifesized toy giraffe stood in one corner. An oversized eye chart hung on the wall. A stuffed gorilla was upstairs, a jukebox sat beside the shabby chic art deco furniture and a male mannequin was relaxing at the kitchen table.

 Costume designer Mary Partridge has amassed two trailers full of mid-'60s dress for the film's 50 speaking roles and 1,300 extras. There are three sets of clothes for the Monkees themselves: Street clothes, concert costumes and the goofball get-ups they wore on TV.

 The latter reflect the grab-whatever, fast and furious way in which the old series was put together. Yesterday afternoon, for example, they were re-creating the Monkees episode Princess And A Peasant.

 "You know, like Mike's blue jeans are tucked into his cowboy boots, which isn't exactly medieval footwear," Partridge points out. "Davy's watch is still on. They're wearing Indian beads that they got when they flew up with Stephen Stills when he was part of Buffalo Springfield to do a concert on a reservation."

 There's one piece of wardrobe that actor Geddis is hoping to have as a special souvenir when the movie is done: One of Nesmith's tuques.

 "Or the 'wool hat,' as the Americans say," he says. "We got interviewed by Entertainment Tonight and I said 'tuque' and they kind of looked at me like, 'What?' I said, 'Oh, wool hat for the Americans.'"