Frank Sidebottom and the man behind the mask
Cult comic character Frank Sidebottom has inspired a film starring Michael Fassbender, while a documentary and biography are also in the works. Four years after his creator Chris Sievey died, why is Frank's legend growing and who was the man behind the mask?
The giant home-made head. The ridiculously nasal Mancunian voice. The anarchic and absurd humour. The deliberately naff pop songs.
That was Frank Sidebottom.
He was an unmistakable and irrepressible creation who found a following in the 1980s and '90s on late-night student telly and Saturday morning children's shows, as well as on the comedy circuit.
He was a strange mixture of eccentric comedy creation, surreal performance artist and cartoon character come to life. While he attracted a devoted following, he was destined to remain a cult concern.
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So it is stranger still that he should have inspired a film featuring Hollywood stars Michael Fassbender and Maggie Gyllenhaal, which gets its UK premiere at the Sundance London film festival on Friday.
The film, titled Frank, was co-written by journalist and broadcaster Jon Ronson, who spent three years playing keyboards in Sidebottom's Oh Blimey Big Band in the late 1980s.
In his movie, Fassbender plays a musician called Frank who wears an oversized comic-book head.
That, however, is where the similarities with the original Frank Sidebottom end. In the film, the title character is a misunderstood musical genius as opposed to a purveyor of Bontempi-swing novelty pop songs.
The Frank of the film hails from Bluff, Kansas, rather than Sidebottom's native Timperley, Greater Manchester. He also has a disconcertingly deep voice.
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Ronson changed the character because he did not want to make a straightforward biopic of Sidebottom and his creator. Chris Sievey, who was consulted before his death in 2010, did not want that either.
Sievey guarded his true identity and was worried that, in a straight biopic, "the reality of Chris would somehow undermine the mystery of Frank", Ronson says. So the writer kept the name and the head but fictionalised the rest.
However, Sievey's real story is arguably more interesting than the version that is about to hit the big screen.
Before Frank Sidebottom was born, Sievey was desperate to make it as a musician.
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