That's the Way of the World...(the movie?)

anyone seen this? lurking in the Amazon Prime vids.....from 1975, starring Harvey Keitel and EW&F and Bert Parks.....as the leader of a Carpenters type group that the label is trying to push....how did I not know of this all these years. anyone seen it? its not perfect but pretty cool just to see old EW&F footage

That's The Way Of The World - Movie Trailer

 

I bought it on DVD a long time ago. I enjoy many Keitel performances and EW&F's '70s stuff. But this is just not a good film. The best parts were the band's performances, but even those felt a little forced or "trying too hard" and didn't make up for the awkwardness of seeing the band try to work as actors. The fact that they were awkward playing themselves didn't help.

 

oh there struggled lol, tbh I was just surprised I had never heard of it...right in my wheelhouse in the mid 70's....and Ive seen tons of 70's posters and somehow missed this one, im guess very limited release.
my fave part was Harvey creating the carpenters ripoff band song 'joy...;

 

Thanks for the heads up. I've been slowly exploring the EWF catalog over the past decade and the That's The Way of the World soundtrack is one of my favorites ... but I've never seen the movie. We have Prime so I may have to check this out, although I guess I shouldn't go in expecting a cinematic masterpiece.

 

its not great but worth it to see EW&F in person and Keitel drive a weird car!

 

Finally saw it today: what a disappointment! This film struggles to achieve the quality of a TV movie but, unfortunately, never succeeds in achieving that low bar. Other than seeing EWF in some scenes, this movie is awful.

The plot focuses far more attention on an intentionally bad Carpenters-type band than it does on EWF. Bert Parks(!) plays the patriarch of the white bread band known as "The Pages". Mush of the movie involves the main character (a music producer) trying to make a decent song out of a pathetic track titled "Joy, Joy, Joy". The audience hears that crappy song over and over as the producer uses his skill to slowly make the song a bit less awful. Maurice White is credited with writing the original music for the movie so it would appear that he wrote the intentionally lame song.

The movie was written by Robert Lipsyte. Although he would go on to achieve success writing books and appearing on camera at ESPN and PBS, he never wrote another movie. Director Sig Shore cast himself in a minor role as the main character's mentor. [Strangely, Shore chose to bill himself as "Mike Richards" in the acting credits.]

The movie was filmed just after the classic version of EWF had been assembled. EWF played a fictionalized version of themselves known only as "The Group". Record company politics prevented them from recording their debut. At one point in the movie, the main character (Harvey Keitel) walks down a Los Angeles street past a very large billboard for EWF's Open Our Eyes album.

EWF fans who know the band's history might be surprised to see manager/producer Charles Stepney at the piano in one scene. Stepney would die of a heart attack at age 45, less than a year after the movie's release.

 

May be the quickest switch to distribution in history. Was a United Artists release, but then switched to Bryanston Distributing Company.

 

I know I watched, but I guess I don't remember seeing it. I do remember the opening studio scene, and thinking, "Wow, this is gonna be great-!'...

-and then, it wasn't, I suppose...