Luke Korem: Last News

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic It’s one of the inside-out realities of our era that scandal, if you give it enough time, turns into myth. So it is with the story of Milli Vanilli, the German-French R&B pop duo of the late ’80s and early ’90s who, having sold close to 50 million records, were revealed to be a fake: a pair of lip-syncing Euro pretty boys who hadn’t sung a note on any of their hits or at any of their concerts. Once they’d been unmasked, the rise and fall of Milli Vanilli played out on two levels. The first was the spectacular embarrassing bad joke of it all — though it was never just a joke, since Milli Vanilli’s fans felt a tremendous sense of anger and betrayal at having been fooled. (The joke was on them.) The second level recognized a crucial and obvious truth: that the scandal wasn’t only about Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan, with their teenybop dreads and break-lite dance moves, getting up onstage and singing to prerecorded tracks, as if it had all been their idea. No, the brazen fakery of Milli Vanilli echoed, or at least rhymed with, various other kinds of fakery that were embedded in the music industry (the packaging of boy bands, the use of lip-syncing by established stars). This was certainly more extreme, and worthy of being called on the carpet for, but it wasn’t a stand-alone sin.

Addie Morfoot Contributor While gender, race and politically-themed documentaries are once again prevalent at Tribeca Festival, celebrity-driven docus dominate this year’s nonfiction lineup.David Gelb’s “Stan Lee,” Stephen Kijak’s “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed,” Luke Korem’s “Milli Vanilli,” Frank Marshall’s “Rather,” Betsy Schechter’s “Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive,” and Fernando Villena’s Oscar De La Hoya doc “The Golden Boy” are among the nonfiction titles focused on a bold face name screening at Tribeca, which kicks off on June 7.Marshall calls “Rather,” about longtime news anchor Dan Rather, a “very personal project.”“The collection of stories (Rather) has covered, it’s my history and the history of our country over the past 60 years,” says Marshall. “Dan dreamed of being a reporter and spent a large part of his career in journalism at CBS, including anchoring the CBS Evening News for twenty-four years, so it seemed natural to come to New York City and celebrate the world premiere of our film at Tribeca.”For director Michael Selditch, Tribeca Festival was also the perfect location for the world premiere of his latest docu “Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field,” about the iconic costume designer known best for her work on “Sex and the City.”“Tribeca seemed to make a lot of sense because it is a New York story and Patricia is a New York icon,” says Selditch.The director originally asked Field to be the subject of a documentary in 2019, but she declined.

A feature doc about controversial pop group Milli Vanilli has been picked up by Paramount+.

The strange story of Milli Vanilli is finally coming to light.