IDOLMAKER

I love this movie! Idolmaker is a 1980, amazing film that is the story of a ‘50’s Philadelphia-based rock 'n' roll starmaker. Ray Sharkey plays Vincent Vacarri, who takes a couple of raw young kids (Peter Gallagher and Paul Land) and molds them into teen idols. Tovah Feldshuh plays Brenda Roberts, love interest and all around girl Friday.


If Gallagher and Land seem to be clones of Fabian and Frankie Avalon, then you've gotten the point. Vacarri comes off as both maven and monster: He gives his boys everything they need professionally and everything they want personally, but it's subliminally clear that his interest is purely mercenary. It is gripping, beautiful and worth watching at least once a year.

All through the film we see the truth revealing itself, and in the end it is abundantly clear that Sharkey is, or would like to be the Idol. The Idolmaker is a brutal exploration of the creation, manipulation, and destruction of teen idols and their audience in the late 1950s and early 1960s.