Review: the music history documentary ‘Bang! The Bert Berns Story’

Bang! The Bert Berns Story, the March selection for Hot Docs’ monthly Doc Soup subscription series of screenings, bears all the hallmarks of a film made by people too close to their subject to make an objective documentary. It’s an earnest, eager to please film about the short, but highly influential carer of record producer and publisher Bert Berns; one that places the focus squarely on the hit parade he produced across his truncated career to become a ghost producer, the first of his kind in this space. But any time the hitmaker’s darker tendencies get brought up, they’re just as quickly shifted to the side. It’s fine if all one wants are a bunch of talking heads delivering anecdotes about how some of the biggest R&B hits of the 1960s were created, but anyone looking for something with a bit more substance and a lot less bias would be wise to look elsewhere.

Born in The Bronx, Bert Berns didn’t set out early in life to become a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer (inducted in 2016) and one of history’s greatest music producers. Told by his doctors that he’d be lucky to live beyond his early twenties thanks to a heart damaged by childhood illness, Berns didn’t start dabbling in production until he was 31, shortly after a trip to Cuba left him inspired (and after some lacklustre efforts as an admittedly terrible singer didn’t pan out). Berns would tap into his Afro-Cuban influences, and the white and Jewish Berns – dubbed “the white soul brother” – would quickly establish himself with a slew of chart-toppers that would make him a sought after producer. “Twist and Shout,” “Tell Him,” “I Want Candy,” and his swan song “Piece of My Heart” are just a few instantly recognizable pieces of Berns’ handiwork. He became the go-to producer for Atlantic Records, but left to get into the publishing game and establish Bang Records, which would grant huge breaks to the likes of Van Morrison and Neil Diamond. But when Berns crossed over into publishing, it brought him closer to the darker aspects of the record industry, and his already talked about connections to known mobsters (which were common among industry types at the time in the payola days) and his own stubbornness threatened to destroy every personal relationship he ever had. Before the end of the decade and before he turned 40, Berns would be dead as a result of his increasing cardiac troubles. His career didn’t last a full decade, but his influence is unmistakable.

The story of Berns is a fascinating one overall, but it’s a shame that co-directors Brett Berns (son of Bert) and Bob Sarles can’t find ways to make Bang! The Bert Berns Story anything more than a surface level, bullet pointed, chronological look at their subject’s life. Brett Berns never directly makes it know to the viewer that the subject is his father (who even after his death still has a financial legacy that needs looking out for), but maybe if that was made clear upfront and the film was honest with the audience about its outright slant, a lot of the documentary’s shortcomings could be more easily forgiven.

Bang! The Bert Berns Story plays dangerously like a parody of a documentary in terms of how stringently it adheres to convention. Told almost entirely via interviews with talking heads who seem to only speak in hyperbole and cliché about their former boss, collaborator, acquaintance, or family member, no one acts like they want to say anything bad about Bert, when clearly from the start of the film it’s made known that he rubbed many the wrong way and burned almost as many bridges as he built. The platitudes are slathered on thick with an undiscerning trowel. These interviews are so self-congratulatory in nature that the film around them becomes an unchallenging, unsurprising, unapologetic puff piece designed to keep a brand alive instead of questioning how the brand was built.

This sycophantic slant isn’t surprising given that one of the directors is the son of the subject – which in a better film wouldn’t be a problem – but what’s surprising is how the film’s poorly written, constantly clunky, and overused narration grates. The narration is written by noted Berns biographer Joel Selvin – who by all accounts penned the definitive tome on the songwriter and producer – and read by the gravelly voiced, tough sounding Steven Van Zandt. If the interviewees are going out of their way to convince the viewer that Berns was a genius, then it says something about how the narration is doing even more to hammer home the same ideas. And Van Zandt, who’s normally adept at talking about music history on his justifiably lauded radio show “Little Steven’s Underground Garage,” can’t make Selvin’s hackneyed words sound organic or unforced.

Instead of a documentary that let’s things be, Bang! The Bert Berns Story goes out of its way to reinforce mythology instead of humanizing the person at the centre of it. By all accounts, Berns needed no help to cultivate a larger than life personality, and this film about his life and work feels like overkill. In the final third we learn about Berns’ darker personality traits and shady deals, but by then it’s literally too little coming too late in the film to make things more interesting. It’s of passing interest to hardcore 1960s R&B buffs, but it won’t mean much to anyone else.

Bang! The Bert Berns Story screens as part of Doc Soup at The Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema on Wednesday, March 1 at 6:30 and 9:15 pm and Thursday, March 2 at 6:45 pm. Filmmaker Brett Berns will be on screen for Q&As following all screenings.

Check out the trailer for Bang! The Bert Berns Story: