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I’m out of town at the moment, covering the Toronto International Film Festival, and this morning I snuck away from the film buffs for a couple hours to catch the world premiere of Murray Lerner and Paul Crowder’s Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who at the Royal Ontario Museum. The ROM’s screening room is pretty uncomfortable, but apparently the festival wanted to take advantage of the digital-projection and high-decibel sound system. Both the ROM and the nearby Cumberland multiplex are built over the subway system, and you can feel the trains rumbling beneath your feet, though in the case of the Who movie, I have a feeling the subway riders were the ones annoyed by the excessive noise.
Stein had the good luck to complete his movie just before Keith Moon keeled over, and to some extent Crowder and Lerner make their best contribution in covering the band’s sorry decline: Moon’s death, the dismal albums with Kenney Jones, the tragic 1979 Cincinnati concert where 11 people were trampled to death, the hollow Tommy and Quadrophenia anniversary tours, John Entwistle’s sordid death in a Vegas hotel room, and Pete Townshend’s trumped-up arrest on child pornography charges. The movie ends with Townshend and Roger Daltry issuing smoochy testimonials to each other and hugging it out onstage; it’s presented as an uplifting resolution, though as anyone familar with the Who knows, the band was a lot better when they were trying to deck each other.
