Bill Wyman crosses the fine line between dreams and reality when his passion for documenting his life on computer is seen as an obsession for those around him. A rich, full tapestry of the life and times of Bill Wyman through which are woven whimsical fantasy sequences, historical slices of his career with the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band ever, the Rolling Stones, and intimate psycho-dramatic glimpses behind the public mask of this superstar.
A limited edition, of what was then known as the film Digital Dreams, was originally produced in 1983, following the massive Rolling Stones tours at the dawn of the eighties. Bill Wyman, already confirmed as the eternal archivist, purchased a computer that made him one of the first people in the UK to own an Apple home computer.
“It had just about enough memory to put half your address book on it,” Bill Wyman jokes, “but at the time it was quite magical and I started to enter my diaries and the whole history of the Rolling Stones.”
He then began to recall more memories of his childhood, which ultimately provoked the concept for what was to become a full-length feature film containing music, drama, comedy, fantasy, and historical content.
It’s a film laden with an all star-cast led by none other than Bill Wyman himself, the late, great Hollywood legend James Coburn and the exceptional Richard O’Brien. References paying tribute to classics such as The Good, The Bad and The Ugly movie and Doctor Zhivago movie are also threaded into the screenplay.
“It never crossed my mind to get into some serious acting career, but it was fun to be able to get away with a few things,” says former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman. “It’s all based on moments in my life, but in a tongue in cheek way, a slightly adapted life story, with some artistic licence of course.”
Bill Wyman adds: “I was able to get a lot of my favourite people of the time into the script; it’s a glorified home movie, made just for fun.”
Playing alongside Bill is Astrid Lundstrom, the self-proclaimed computer widow, and then girlfriend of Bill Wyman for 16 years.
“We were actually in the process of breaking up while the film was being shot,” Bill Wyman explains, “we had gone through some difficult times, and I thought we could do the film and pull it together but it didn’t really work.”
Richard O’Brien, of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Crystal Maze fame is heavily featured throughout the movie and also adopted the position of screenplay writer.
“I played a kind of butler figure, an orchestra leader, and a kind of strange horseback figure at one stage,” says Richard O’Brien. “It’s surreal, it’s an art movie.”
Bill Wyman adds further light to film making process by confirming: “It wasn’t a script that was set in stone at all; it was very ad-libbed all the way through.”
Bill Wyman recruited an eclectic group of fascinating personalities to complete the cast list in Digital Daydreams such as the late Stanley Unwin, well known for his gobbledy-gook speak, who famously glazed the Small Faces’ Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake album with his own inimitable narration, and world famous astronomer and TV presenter Sir Patrick Moore.
Scenes are lovingly connected with animation sequences from the expertise of Gerald ‘The Wall’ Scarfe and complemented by wonderful themes and orchestrations from film score prodigy Mike Batt, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. Additional tracks featured include the Rolling Stones music Satisfaction, Street Fighting Man, Miss You and Jumpin’ Jack Flash.
Rolling Stone Charlie Watts and Stranglers member Jean-Jacques Burnel feature briefly in scenes shot at the family home in Gedding, Suffolk, yet Bill Wyman admits: “We didn’t want to fill it with cameo parts its just so happens they were hanging around at the time.”
Un-earthed from Bill Wyman’s archives over 20 years later, the film, now re-named, re-cut and re-mastered at Shepperton Film Studios, UK will surely provoke interest and intrigue for music and film fans on many levels.
Special features
- The Making of Digital Daydreams
- Documentary featuring Interviews with Bill Wyman, Gerald Scarfe, Richard O’Brien and Mike Batt.
- Running time: 110 minutes approx
- Language: English
- Format: 4:3 / 16:9
- Audio: 5.1 Dolby Digital / 5.1 DTS / Dolby Stereo
- Region: PAL
Digital Daydreams DVD credits
- DVD director: Robert Garofalo
- Producer: Lyn Beardsall
- Associate Producer: Jo Garofalo
- Editor: Robert Garofalo
- Assistant Editor: Ben Gates
- Sound: John Buckley
- Authoring: Miles Tudor
- Menu and Print Design: Craig Whyte
- Production: Ben Williams, Mike Dunne, Katie Cullinan, Zoe Carlsen-Jones, Hesham Barr, Chris Wright, Debbie Wilmott
Film credits
- Produced by: Bill Wyman and Astrid Lundstrom
- Directed by: Robert Dornhelm
- Executive Producer: Eric Gardner
- Original Edit by: Tina Frese
- Screenplay: Richard O’Brien
- Music by: Mike Batt and Bill Wyman
- Orchestra performed by: The London Symphony Orchestra
- Orchestra conducted by: Mike Batt
- All original music (C) 1983: Ripple Music/Rondor Music Ltd
- Teardrop Waltz (Terry Taylor/Mike Batt)
- Penguin Parade (Patrick Moore)
- Miss You (Mick Jagger/Keith Richards) (Colgems/EMI Music Ltd)
- Satisfaction (Abkco Music Inc)
- Street Fighting Man (Abkco Music Inc)
- The Last Time (Abkco Music Inc)
- Have You Seen Your Mother Baby (Abkco Music Inc)
- Jumpin’ Jack Flash (Abkco Music Inc)
- Love Me (Jerry Lieber Music/Mike stoller Music/Bienstock Publishing Co)
- Gone Fishing (Bourn Music Co)
- Tonight (C G Schirmer Inc)
- Around & Around (Arc Music Corp)
- Nuclear Reactions (Ripple Music/Rondo Music Ltd)
- Director of photography: Karl Kofler
- Sound: Willi Buchmuller
- Production manager: Peter Kohn
- Choreography by: Arlene Phillips
- Make up by: Sarah Monzani
- Wardrobe by: Pip Newbury
- Still photography: Tony Kent
- Classic Pictures DVD8054x
Released (UK): October 31st, 2005 (Classic Pictures DVD8054x)