Composers
RON MAEL
RUSSELL MAEL
of
SPARKS

MODERATED BY BYRON BURTON (The Hollywood Reporter)

Screening Link available upon Registration

YouTube Live Stream Q&A
Tuesday, December 14, 6:30PM (PT)

Los Angeles, today. Henry (Adam Driver) is a stand-up comedian with a fierce sense of humor who falls in love with Ann (Marion Cotillard), a world-renowned opera singer. Under the spotlight, they form a passionate and glamorous couple. With the birth of their first child, Annette, a mysterious little girl with an exceptional destiny, their lives are turned upside down. A film by visionary director Leos Carax (Holy Motors) with story & music by Ron & Russell Mael of Sparks, this original musical is a journey of love, passion, and fame. R | 139 minutes

Ron Mael and Russell Mael comprise the band Sparks. Their most recent albums, 2017’s Hippopotamus and 2020’s A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, both reached the U.K. Top 10. Each album showed the stylistic breadth of Sparks’ oeuvre, from electronic pop to operatic rock, and drove new listeners deep into the Sparks rabbit-hole. Those listeners might discover 2002’s pioneering Lil’ Beethoven, a clever concept album built on repetitive refrains and loops, the sumptuous synth-pop of 1994’s Gratuitous Sax & Senseless Violins or their Art Deco classic Indiscreet, released in 1975. Sparks’ groundbreaking electronic album No. 1 In Heaven, a collaboration with Giorgio Moroder, was a modest success in 1979, but is now widely credited with having invented the synth duo. Without Sparks, it is likely there would be no Erasure, Soft Cell, Yazoo or Pet Shop Boys, to name but four. In recent years, the importance of their contribution has become more widely acknowledged, demonstrated by the acclaimed documentary The Sparks Brothers, directed by Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver), in which an array of famous Sparks devotees—from Beck to Duran Duran—line up to praise them. It may have taken fifty years, but the world is finally waking up to Sparks.

Since the Mael brothers Ron (keyboardist and chief songwriter) and Russell (vocalist and energetic frontman) began making art-rock records together in late-1960s Los Angeles, they’ve seldom shown much interest in looking back, or even standing still. Their sudden peaks of success have happened sporadically, in different countries at different times. In the U.K., Sparks’ breakthrough came with the staccato glam of 1974’s “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us.” In France and Australia it was 1980’s deceptively sweet “When I’m With You” and in their native U.S. it was the New Wave-adjacent radio hit “Cool Places,” a Jane Wiedlin duet. In Germany it was the elegiac, self-aware “When Do I Get To Sing ‘My Way’?” And so on.

*** IMPORTANT – PLEASE READ ***

FREE for current SCL members (click HERE to check membership status).

Attendees will be emailed a Screening Link upon Registration and a Q&A YouTube Live Stream link on Tuesday, December 14, 10 minutes before Q&A start.

Attendees can ask questions on YouTube chat, and the SCL Host will pass them on to the Moderator. The SCL Member Code of Conduct applies to online Q&As.

---