Editor’s Note: Vanyaland Film Editor Nick Johnston is out in Park City, Utah, covering the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Scan through our full coverage of Sundance reviews from this year’s festival as they go live, and check out our full archives of past editions.
The Lonely Island or Yacht Rock-style parody of Bao Nguyen’s The Greatest Night in Pop basically writes itself: Put 40 of any era-defining musicians in a room, and you’ll generally wind up with some hilarity or at least some intrigue. Put them under hot lights on a crowded riser and give them an unfinished song in the hours after they’ve just attended an award show, and you’ve got yourself a comedy goldmine full of tons of untapped ore. This is, of course, about the recording of “We Are the World,” the 1985 crossover event that put Avengers: Endgame on shame some 40 years before that movie ever hit screens, gathering some of the most iconic musicians of the time and putting their talents to use to craft a charity maxi-single, meant to raise money to help end a disastrous famine in Ethiopia. It is an oftentimes very silly putting-on-a-show doc, with occasional moments of profundity that burst through the stress and conflict, assisted by the fact that Nguyen takes “We Are the World” as seriously as its creators and performers did. Given that song’s infamous status in pop culture, it’s a double-edged sword in how the bright-and-wistful perspective will play for a crowd that is overwhelmingly cynical.
A few things are unassailably true and great about this doc: Nguyen was given access to all of the footage taken on the night of the recording, held at A&M Recording Studios immediately after the AMAs. It was all Harry Belafonte’s idea — whose good intentions are genuinely good, given his long-time involvement in social causes, and who had a deep relationship with charities in the affected areas — and after seeing “Do They Know It’s Christmas” skyrocket to the top of the pops, he figured he could one-up the Brits. In doing so, he and his business partner Ken Kragen turned to Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie to write the song and got Quincy Jones to produce it. It’s often lost on just how intense all of this was for Richie, whose interview here gives the doc its structure, given that he was hosting the AMAs on the very same night. But he and Jackson got to work — Jackson’s multi-track tape of him humming his way through the layers of the melody is a musical highlight – and within a few days, they had the framework for a song that impressed enough artists to give up their afterparty plans and head into the studio.
What resulted was polite and organized chaos. For nine-odd hours, Jones, his production team, session musicians, and the vocalists came together to get this thing out. The process is as boringly intense as it would be on a similar film set, like when an actor keeps blowing takes or equipment issues delay the production, only with the egos of the entire first three rows of the Oscar ceremonies staring you down, hungry, frustrated and competitive with those around them. There’s much more messy-bitch drama here than expected, and it is all incredibly funny. Professional downer Bob Geldof shows up to sing in the choir and lectures the entire group about the situation on the ground in Ethiopia in a hyper-serious monotone. When Stevie Wonder brings up the idea to sing some of the chorus in Swahili, Waylon Jennings dips, walking towards the exits, muttering about how “a country boy don’t speak Swahili.” A heavily drunk Al Jarreau blows his vocal solo across a dozen takes, each somehow being worse than the last. Cyndi Lauper’s jewelry causes equipment issues! There’s a silly amount of tension surrounding the fact that Prince might show up — will he? Won’t he? — and when he doesn’t, his part is given to Huey Lewis at the recommendation of Kenny Loggins. Lewis is the single best interview that Nguyen got in the making of this movie: He’s charming, self-effacing, and genuinely just happy to be there, astounded that he’s sharing space with Michael Jackson and other pop legends, and each one of his stories is just warmly sweet in a way that reflects the good intentions behind the recording in the first place.
Then, of course, there’s Bob Dylan, whose famously awkward presence in the choir has been regularly joked about — he’s sweaty, uncomfortable, and surrounded by significantly younger people who have significantly more energy than he does. But — in what proves to be the doc’s most valuable asset beyond its humor — he opens up and starts to have a good time when he has to record his solo. Working alone with Jones and Wonder (playing the part on the piano in the studio), he seems genuinely happy, hugging Wonder at the end of it, with a big grin on his face. These moments — when the vibe gets right, and everybody starts to embrace the enormity of the room that they’re in — are precious. The entire group serenades Belafonte with a silly rendition of “Banana Boat” to his bemusement once they’re finished with that part of the recording. Diana Ross asks Daryl Hall for an autograph and kicks off a frenzy in which the musicians sign each other’s sheet music like they’re high school yearbooks. Ray Charles — who was on fire with the quips that night — plays a gospel take on the song on the piano. And then there’s Huey, who’s so happy to be there that it gets infectious and, years later, still gets goosebumps that he was even involved.
This is why Nguyen went with the title The Greatest Night in Pop, after all. Rather than trying to sum up the effects or the influence of the song worldwide and through history (which is a mixed bag, all things considered), he shows the recording session for what it was: an incredible moment in the history of pop music. Even the most jaded motherfucker out there would find it hard to resist the allure (though the doc does its hardest to shame Prince for not being there, which seems, at least in contemporaneous accounts, to be allegedly Bob Geldof’s fault). How much you’re able to get out of this really depends on how endearing you find this mixture of awe, goofily saccharine pop-star hagiography, and messy-bitch backstage showbiz drama. But it’s presented in a swell way and maximizes its chances — I normally hate shit like this, but The Greatest Night in Pop is a fun time and worth it just to watch Huey Lewis alone. Who knows, maybe someone will discover that he’s more than just a punchline in American Psycho.