PURPLE RAIN
Purple Rain is a 1984 American rock musical drama film directed by Albert Magnoli, written by Magnoli and William Blinn, and produced by Robert Cavallo, Joseph Ruffalo and Steven Fargnoli. The film stars Prince in his acting debut playing “The Kid”, a quasi-autobiographical character. Purple Rain was developed to showcase Prince’s talents, and the film contains several concert sequences. The film grossed more than $68 million at the box office in the United States and over $80 million worldwide, thus making a large profit on its $7.2 million budget. The film won an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score, the last to receive the award. (More from Wikipedia)
But before I get into all of that, let me share this appreciation for Prince that was posted by Nick Gillespie on reason.com as part of the best commentary on the PMRC that I have been able to find online. It is quite a bit more barbed than the mainstream accolades that you and I have been reading of late.
“No wonder he scared the living s--t out of ultra-squares such as Al [Gore] and Tipper Gore. In 1985, the future vice president and planet-saver and his wife were, as Tipper’s 1987 best-selling anti-rock, anti-Satanism, anti-sex manifesto put it, Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society. Tipper headed up the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), whose sacred document was a list of songs it called ‘The Filthy Fifteen’. These were songs that glorified sex, drugs, Satan, and masturbation and could pervert your kid — or even lead them to commit suicide. At number one on the list was Prince’s ‘Darling Nikki’, from his massive soundtrack record to Purple Rain (jeezus, wasn’t that movie a revelation? Of what exactly, I can’t remember; but finally, it seemed, a rock star had truly delivered on the genius we all wanted to see emerge from pop music into film).”
(June 2016)
