SPINNING GOLD:
A LOVE STORY

Spinning Gold, an epic roller-coaster ride through the excesses of the '70s music business, twirls around the unbelievable rise, fall and ultimate successes of Neil Bogart and his Casablanca Records, as presented lovingly by his son, director Timothy Scott Bogart.

This ode to a Jewish kid from Brooklyn credited with discovering such multiplatinum artists as KISS, Donna Summer and the Village People is your classic American rags-to-riches tale, save for the massive cocaine use, egos gone wild, lavish parties and run-ins with the mob and other menacing types.

Jeremy Jordan is perfect as idealist Bogart, who truly believes in every band he signs and is willing to go to the mat overspending on each of his artists. No request is out of the question. He even built the famous Mothership spacecraft for Parliament-Funkadelic's 1976 P-Funk Earth Tour (per Wikipedia, "Bogart gave George Clinton a $275,000 budget for production, the largest amount ever allocated for a Black music act to tour").

While the film takes some liberties and may portray a few well-known figures a tad two-dimensionally, the casting is on point; Wiz Khalifa as Clinton, Jason Derulo as Ron Isley, Pink Sweat$ as Bill Withers, Tayla Parx as Summer, Ledisi as Gladys Knight and Casey Likes and Sam Nelson Harris, respectively, as Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of KISS are all believable in their roles.

Likewise, there is embellishment and a little screwing around with the timeline, but in the end, you can’t help but root for the nebbish with the Jewfro. As was the case with disco—the music for which Casablanca became most famous—the ride could only last for so long. Bogart eventually sold his company to PolyGram for millions. He died of lymphoma at age 39. The Neil Bogart Memorial Fund, now the Bogart Pediatric Cancer Research Program, was founded in his name.

Spinning Gold hits theaters on 3/31.