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"Dennis, We've Been Crying Too Much": Dr. Hook and the Untold Story of the Best Rock Movie Ever Made

Will Sheff · 02/05/13 10:00AM

I have seen Woodstock and I have seen The Last Waltz. I have seen Don't Look Back, Eat the Document, and No Direction Home. I have seen the Maysles Brothers' documentary about the Rolling Stones, as well as Jean-Luc Godard's semi-documentary about the Rolling Stones and Robert Frank's notoriously unreleased documentary about the Rolling Stones, which legend has it you're only legally allowed to watch in the presence of both Jagger and Richards. (It was only okay.) I have seen The Great Rock and Roll Swindle as well as The Filth and the Fury, Julien Temple's two different documentaries about the Sex Pistols. I have seen that double-DVD Tom Petty documentary. I have seen the special features. I have seen the movie where Chris Holmes from W.A.S.P. slowly drinks himself nearly to death in a darkened swimming pool enclosure and Ozzy pours the orange juice all over the counter. I have seen David Bowie's cocaine skeleton doing Burroughsian cut-ups on the floor of a luxury hotel in the difficult-to-find TV special Cracked Actor. To varying degrees, I enjoyed all these films, but if you asked me to tell you my very-favorite-ever cinematic document of a rock and roll band, I would have to break down and admit that it's a 10-dollar import DVD of Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show doing a live-for-German-TV performance sometime in 1974.