Now that everyone is getting reacquainted with their favorite Natalie Wood jokes, let us turn our thrift shop attention to another shooting star who failed as a floatation device. Or as one of the men who supposedly drowned him puts it, "He weren't at the bottom, but he weren't at the top, he was, like sorta halfway."
Never in his sweet, short life did Brian Jones ever get top billing over the Stones, but he does in this bargain basement "rock report" written by discounted rock bio hack Geoffrey Guiliano, the man George Harrison's widow likened to "a starving dog." Guiliano narrates this exposé, which provides the "death by misadventure" scenario that anyone who's read at least one researched book about the early Stones is familiar with — that drunk, burly laborers at Brian's house spoiled a perfectly good pool party by confusing horseplay with waterboarding. The only real scoop here is that the buffoonish Guiliano claims that "in a fit of paranoia," because of the controversy surrounding this project, he burned the original tape of his interview with one of the building contractors involved. So what we're left with is a doctored tape with the interviewee's sped-up voice sounding like Sméagol from Lord of the Rings meets Andy Capp, while the pretentious Guiliano's normal speed voice sounds like Rosalind Russell as Auntie Mame. So sit back and imagine this little bit of community theater, complete with heat-emitting desk lamp and cigarette holder thrown in.
Cue suspect grilling music.
Auntie Mame: "You're the kind of bloke who gains somebody's trust to the extent that they give you money for drugs that don't exist and when they come out of the pub, you beat them."
Sméagol: [indignant] "Who told you that?! Who told you that?!"
Auntie Mame: "You just did!"
Sméagol: "Did I?"
Auntie Mame: "You fuckin' just did it!"
Sméagol: [sheepish] "Well, I might've done a bit of that."
Cue suspicious orchestral music
Auntie Mame: "You seem to be a man with a lot of expenses. How did you keep it together? Were you given money? Was there any financial interest? I need to know that! I need to know if this is what you say it was. I'm convinced that I know how Brian Jones died, but I'm not convinced I know why fuckin' Brian Jones died. Why did you do it? Were you paid money? Was Frank paid money? What do you know about this?"
Silence
Auntie Mame: "Look, I can see you want to talk to me, don't fuckin' ponce about. Don't you be a ponce! Are you a ponce?"
Sméagol: [under his breath] "I'm no fag!"
As the real Sméagol might say, "Prehhhhh-shuss!"
