BILLY CORGAN TRIES TO GIVE AN IDEA WHAT A SMASHING PUMPKINS MOVIE MIGHT BE LIKE
First, look at this beautiful Phantom Of The Paradise illustration by Juliette Brocal, which she posted on Twitter last year.
It seemed an appropriate choice to accompany several Billy Corgan quotes from yesterday, in which the Smashing Pumpkins mastermind discussed the possibility of a Pumpkins movie, and mentioned "that one weird Paul Williams movie" along with Tommy and Pink Floyd The Wall as points of reference. Here's an excerpt from the Forbes article by Steve Baltin:
If Corgan has his way it would be bigger than an animated series, as he wants to turn the trilogy of albums, Melon Collie, Machina and the third album the band is working on now into a series of feature films in the vein of classic rock movies like the Who's Tommy and Quadrophenia and Pink Floyd's The Wall."My dream scenario is we'll not only play Melon Collie, Machina and the record we're working on now in mass theatrical stagings, but then I'll someday get to make a movie," he says. "And if those things ever get made into movies they would probably most likely have to be animation cause nobody's gonna write me that big a check," he adds laughing.
But he does have an idea on how the trilogy of Pumpkins' albums could make their way onto the big screen. "I have floated out here and there some kind of crowd-funding scenario and for whatever reason there seems to be a lot of energy there that fans would be interested in," he says. "So it's possible. Maybe it's one of those things if fans put up a million and I put up a million maybe we pull it off. I own all the music so that's the good part. But that's a lot of work."
When asked about reference points for what the Pumpkins films might be like he mentions the aforementioned Who and Pink Floyd films. "It helps if the album is classic," he says laughing. "There is that one weird Paul Williams movie where he's like a Phantom Of The Opera thing (Phantom Of The Paradise)."
Phantom Of The Paradise isn't the only unusual rock movie from the late '70s and early '80s, the same era that also saw the Village People's Can't Stop The Music, KISS Meets Phantom Of The Park and the much-maligned film adaptation of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club [Band] starring Peter Frampton, the Bee Gees and more.
What does Corgan see when he looks at that era of rock movies? "You just see cocaine, right?" he says laughing. "You look at some of these and you think, 'There's gotta be cocaine in there somewhere because this doesn't make any sense.'"
Alright, so if the Pumpkins albums ever get turned into film expect more Pink Floyd The Wall than Phantom Of The Paradise.
Note that Baltin is the one who singled out Phantom Of The Paradise in his article as "unusual," and lumped it in with the KISS and Village People movies, while Corgan seemed to sincerely bring it up as a reference point.