We reported back in the summer that prolific rock doc helmer Julien Temple, behind classics like “The Great Rock & Roll Swindle,” “The Filth & The Fury” and most recently “Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten,” was planning a documentary on the great British Invasion band The Kinks. Temple had a little chat to Screen Daily recently, and it’s now emerged that the project is actually a dramatic feature, rather than a doc.
The film, entitled, somewhat inevitably, “You’ve Really Got Me,” will be produced by veteran Jeremy Thomas (“The Last Emperor,” “Sexy Beast”), and Temple is currently collaborating with the band’s frontman Ray Davies, before beginning work on a screenplay. Temple says that the project will focus on the relationship between Davies and his brother Dave Davies, saying “At the heart of it is the extraordinary love-hate relationship between these two brothers: love/hate, sibling rivalry is at the core. I think it’s a very rich social, cultural nexus around The Kinks. Their story is the untold story of all those big bands of the 1960s.” He also says that, while casting hasn’t started yet, the actors will be required to play the band’s music, rather than mime it.
The Kinks were underrated for a good deal of time, but have finally come to the prominence they’ve long deserved, thanks in no small part to their adoption by younger filmmakers like Wes Anderson, Jason Reitman and Edgar Wright, who’ve all used the band prominently in their films. We’re sure that there’s enough material here to cover a decent movie, although we’d maybe rather Temple was doing a documentary – his fictional CV, including the likes of “Absolute Beginners,” “Earth Girls Are Easy” and “Pandemonium,” is decidedly patchier than his documentary work…
I hope the over-obvious title, "You've Really Got Me," isn't a harbinger of the quality of this movie.
Next on the Brit-rock biopic list "Satisfaction: The Mick Jagger Story". They need better titles for these things.
Any new word on that Kinks musical, by the by?