Award-winning filmmaker Paul Devlin’s latest work-in-progress is The Front Man. This will be a feature-length, musical comedy starring the hilariously obscure band, Loaded Poets, still together 30 years after high school. Out front is the dynamic singer/songwriter Jim Wood, a man punished by his talent in a society where anything short of celebrity is failure.
The Front Man is about the broken promise of middle class rock and roll stardom. Paul has been following his childhood friend Jim for 10 years, telling a poignant story of what happens when the Rock and Roll Dream and the American Dream collide.
Paul Devlin has won 5 Emmys for his network sports work (CBS Tour De France and NBC Olympics) and numerous awards for his independent filmmaking. SlamNation world premiered at SXSW and went on to popularize the energetic literary/perfomance movement of slam poetry with screenings in theaters across the country and broadcasts on HBO and Starz. Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme was a film festival favorite and broadcast on VH1. Power Trip was one of the highest reviewed films on Rotten Tomatoes the year it was released and won an Independent Spirit Award nomination. BLAST! was featured on The Colbert Report, National Public Radio, and screened worldwide, including a global broadcast on BBC World News, reaching 120 countries.
We have approached both SXSW Film and SXSW Music about this new project. An ideal synergy, would be to follow the band to SXSW Music to shoot the climax of the film, and then screen it at SXSW Film the following year. As the old barriers of record company contracts collapse and artists discover the new tools that allow them to reach their audiences directly, is it possible the Loaded Poets moment has finally arrived?
Below are clips from the movie and excerpts from Loaded Poets music. We look forward to working with SXSW.
Clips:
Song Excerpts: