Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon
Directed by: Mike Myers, Beth Aala
Starring: Shep Gordon, Alice Cooper, Michael Douglas, Mike Myers, Anne Murray, Sylvester Stallone, Anne Murray, Tom Arnold, Emeril Lagasse, Willie Nelson, Derek Shook
Documentary - 84 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 13 Jun 2014
Starring: Shep Gordon, Alice Cooper, Michael Douglas, Mike Myers, Anne Murray, Sylvester Stallone, Anne Murray, Tom Arnold, Emeril Lagasse, Willie Nelson, Derek Shook
Documentary - 84 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 13 Jun 2014
How have I never heard of Shep Gordon before? We’ve all heard of Brian Epstein and Bob Ezrin, but why not Shep Gordon? This man has had his hand in just about every element of show business for 45 years now. The most astounding part of Mike Myers’s Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon is that Shep is still alive. After all the drugs, booze, and women he has gone through, it would be expected that this Shep Gordon guy was being talked about in the past tense.
In a dizzy opening montage, an absolute who’s who of Hollywood and music royalty is spliced together extolling both the virtues and excesses of Shep Gordon. There is Sly Stallone, Steven Tyler, and Alice Cooper to name but a few who show up saying what a close, personal friend and savior Shep Gordon is to them. In his first time behind the camera as a director, Mike Myers creates an engaging documentary about a mesmerizing man with some of the greatest stories in Hollywood. I can only hope at least half of them are true. Kudos to Myers for interrupting the story to point out when a particular detail is untrue.
In a dizzy opening montage, an absolute who’s who of Hollywood and music royalty is spliced together extolling both the virtues and excesses of Shep Gordon. There is Sly Stallone, Steven Tyler, and Alice Cooper to name but a few who show up saying what a close, personal friend and savior Shep Gordon is to them. In his first time behind the camera as a director, Mike Myers creates an engaging documentary about a mesmerizing man with some of the greatest stories in Hollywood. I can only hope at least half of them are true. Kudos to Myers for interrupting the story to point out when a particular detail is untrue.
Characterized as a “JewBu”, Shep grew up in Brooklyn a Jewish kid but has since slid over into Buddhism, even cooking for the Dalai Lama; see, this guy truly has a personal relationship with everyone. That is surprising from a guy frequently photographed in the shirt, “No Head, No Backstage Pass.” Getting his start by mistakenly interrupting Janis Joplin mid-intercourse, Shep launched Alice Cooper to fame and the top of the charts with some genius moves.
How do you get kids to show up at your concert and buy your records? Scare their parents and wrap your LP in panties. You know you’ve made it when the press claims you tore the head off a chicken in concert, they describe it as a neo-Dadaist performance instead of animal cruelty. There are dozens of these head-shaking stories crammed into Supermensch. Thumbs up to Myers for figuring out how to pare them down and arrange them into some sort of a narrative.
Not everything flows smoothly though. There are some faulty reenactments, which are more distracting than illuminating. Having Shep or whomever just face the camera and tell the story would be more effective than sub-standard, sepia-toned re-enactors pantomime on screen. Reenactments are not required when you have the man credited both with breaking up music’s ‘Chitlin Circuit’ and creating the celebrity chef. The man instinctively knows how to market people. Shep considers it a personal slight when he meets an individual or group who are routinely exploited.
Not everything flows smoothly though. There are some faulty reenactments, which are more distracting than illuminating. Having Shep or whomever just face the camera and tell the story would be more effective than sub-standard, sepia-toned re-enactors pantomime on screen. Reenactments are not required when you have the man credited both with breaking up music’s ‘Chitlin Circuit’ and creating the celebrity chef. The man instinctively knows how to market people. Shep considers it a personal slight when he meets an individual or group who are routinely exploited.
Myers persistently displays his more altruistic stories in more reverential tones than his crazier debauchery tales. Supermensch’s pacing lags a bit as one person or another frequently laments Shep’s lack of offspring. Shep’s annulment, divorce, and string of high profile romances, especially with Sharon Stone, are profiled, yet there are one too many shots of Shep walking with his head lowered in the sun’s Golden Hour musing whether or not he still has time to reproduce.
I’m shocked Shep Gordon still walks this Earth. Usually, a film documenting a man carrying such monstrous stories would have some archival footage of him and be spliced together at least five years post mortem. Perhaps this is why Supermensch feels so refreshing and immediate. I like the idea that Shep continues to host folks and roam around his gorgeous Maui property. The best documentaries introduce us to someone we have never heard of or to a situation we have never seen. Supermensch introduces us to Shep Gordon; a man on the fringe of stardom solely responsible for creating dozens of stars.
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