Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Twins65 ...and our green mohair suits (all the ex-Burritos and Fallen Angels, many who are not credited on the IMDb main details page for some reason), so please show your I.D. at the doorJust became aware of this great doc, and watched the whole thing online. I guess that makes this my first review on IMDb to come from a movie watched entirely on the internet. Wow, I really am slow to catch the trends.The producers really went deep to find people who knew Gram, especially from his formative years as a kid and as a Harvard "student". The interviewees from the LA years were also insightful. I learned a lot about the man, and knew he lived large because of his privileged background, but a $65,000/yr. trust fund in the late 60's would be quite a fund to stoke a party. Unfortunately, moderation never seemed to be a concept he grasped.Anyway, since we're now down to just one "Original Burrito" (Chris Hillman), I thought I'd bang out a little tribute to the group here, giving them a (very) belated thumbs up for some fine, under-appreciated work.P.S.-I was a little disappointed the two women featured on the cover of "The Gilded Palace of Sin" were not identified, only that they were models. Can anyone out there identify them for me, as I've been admiring them for years.

catchick I too wish there had been a little more depth in this movie. However, when my sister saw it at the screening at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, along with many of Gram's close friends and colleagues, she never heard anyone voice some of the complaints registered here.I think calling Gram "obnoxious" is too simplistic. He obviously had his obnoxious moments, but most highly creative people do. It's part of that artistic temperament you've heard tell of. However, I don't think most people could have registered the emotion they showed had Parsons merely been a gifted jerk. This is where the movie shines. The directors show some of the people who genuinely cared about Parsons as a person, and how his untimely death affected them.I understand the attempt to show Parsons as more than the very pretty face and voice idolized so often. I think the filmmakers wanted audiences to understand Ingram Parsons as a human being, a guy who had a lot of breaks in his life, but who also had a legion of demons chasing him. I actually found myself liking this man a lot by the end of the movie. Parsons was a basically nice, decent guy who had a lot of bad wiring, not the least of which included an inborn tendency to addiction. I felt incredible pity for him.I hope this movie spurs viewers to listen to Parsons' music and to appreciate the influence he had on popular music. If it does that, it has done its work well.

altafayejones2 By the time the documentary gets to the end of Gram's life we might as well be watching a "Behind the Music" episode of VH1. I appreciate the effort that the director put in to get this story told (since there is very little material to work with, we have to accept what we get), but his own interview reveals all the flaws in the conceit. I have seen footage that didn't make it into the movie and I wonder why. We are expected to accept this overview as objective, while the director is dressed in cowboy spangles and turquoise; obviously copying the costume of the period even though he probably wasn't born when Gram died. What really got my goat was the idea that there was something wrong about the way his body was treated by Phil and Michael. As though the "family" gave a damn. It's a body, it's not the person. Gram wanted to be burned at the Cap Rock when he died. Phil was Gram's friend, however anyone feels about it, and he fulfilled his friend's wish. Gram was in the process of divorcing Gretchen. The family interviews suggest that Phil Kaufman was to blame for Gram's death, even though the first 3/4's of the film make it clear that Gram was not controlled by anyone. Allowing Gretchen to appear on camera is the height of absurdity. She can't even muster a tear for the man she supposedly loved (plastic surgery will do that). We are subjected to the opinion of the whore who was with him when he died, and expected to believe that Gram's family was looking out for him when they weren't anywhere near him at the end. Look up the Parsons and you will find that the reason that Bob Parsons wanted Gram buried in New Orleans was so he could have access to Gram's royalties. Gram did not want to be anywhere near Bob Parsons. Gram and Phil made a pact and Phil kept it, regardless of how anyone feels about it. So instead of exploring the reasons why Gram wanted to obliterate reality, and how earth shatteringly great his final record was, we get platitudes from people who didn't spend any time with him in the last years of his life. There is only James Burton and Emmylou to give us a musical perspective, even though all he did was revolutionize rock music. I feel bad about his sister and his daughter, but they are barely a part of this documentary. The unkindest cut is that Bob Parsons is portrayed as some sort of caring parent. If you want to know about Gram, you'd be better off listening to his records and watching "Grand Theft Parsons" (which, though fictionalized, tells the truth).Putting aside my anger for a moment, Chris Hillman, Chris Ethridge, Bernie Leadon, and Emmylou tell the truth, and there are some excellent pictures that aren't available anywhere else. Gram was a giant, however, and he deserves better. Because this is all we have, I rate the film higher than it deserves. p.s. Sid Griffin is credited as a co-writer, but the film shares none of the insight of Sid's book. It's as though he forgot who he was writing about, unless the director decided to ignore his work.

rustin-2 This is a slipshod documentary that is about as original and involving as an episode of VH1's Behind the Music. The production values are very poor, with much of the video footage shot erratically out the window of a moving car, and the editing is a clumsy, uninspired pastiche of quick pans and tilts across black and white still photos jarringly inter-cut with a relentless onslaught of meaningless talking heads (do we really need to hear from the girlfriend of Parson's manager or the best friend of Parson's dead stepfather?). We hear very little of Parson's music, most of which plays in the background under the interviews, and no one except Emmylou Harris manages to truly elucidate Parson's gifts as a singer and songwriter. Technically, the film is embarrassing, but it is even worse in its shameful final minutes, when it juxtaposes the bizarre circumstances of Parson's burial with the heartfelt grief of those who loved Parsons, and manipulates the audience into laughter when what we should be feeling is sadness. Fallen Angel is disrespectful of Gram Parsons' groundbreaking music, banal in its storytelling, and grotesquely insensitive to the people who knew and loved him.