I'll be watching you

Stewart Copeland took the reels and reels of Super 8 film he shot while on tour with the Police and turned them into a documentary. But don't expect an exposé on why the band broke up. It's really just a cozy home movie

Sting wasn't interested. Drummer-composer Stewart Copeland had sent him a couple of early edits of his nostalgic, home-movie documentary about their old band, the Police.

"And he'd sent me a nice e-mail back. Then I pressed him, 'Well, what's your favourite part about the movie?' He finally had to confess he hadn't seen it, and he wasn't going to see it because he doesn't watch himself on the screen. He gets all twitchy. But his kids told him that it's cool, and, most importantly, that he looks cool in it," Copeland said by phone from his studio near Los Angeles.

"Back in the Police days, it was part of his job to check himself out. We used to tease him about that. It was all our jobs. It would be unprofessional of us to leave our hotel room looking like we'd be safe to be with children."

But if looking edgy or mean was the intention, Copeland's assortment of Super 8 footage pieced together to make his new documentary, Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out, may not have succeeded, because the band comes off as utterly human and child-friendly. The life of a rock star, at least life in the Police, had about the same level of rowdiness and misbehaviour as, say, a Jamie Oliver cooking show.

It was strangely tame in its way, and that's the film's appeal.

There's Sting being awkward and self-conscious, nervous about the mass of fans around the corner. And there's guitarist Andy Summers, giving hilariously wry travel commentary to the camera from various picturesque tour spots.

From the film, it's obvious that Summers was the one that gave the band that extra little sophistication that took them to the top.

But there are none of the legendary fights on film. There's a coziness in Copeland's home movies -- goofing around backstage, goofing around on trains and buses, being a little more serious in the studio -- all shot for want of something to do during the endless hours of downtime as much as an attempt to document it all for posterity.

The film, which airs Sunday night on Movie Central and the Movie Network and will be available on DVD next month, isn't an exposé into the ultimate breakup.

"There are those who may accuse me of avoiding the big subject, which is, 'What about all the fighting?' " Copeland said. "But I don't have any fighting on camera. Maybe I forgot to pick my camera up when I was in the middle of a screaming match. It would have been really cool if I did actually, and it would have been in the movie if I had."

Copeland, who is now 54, admits that in the years after the band members split in the mid-1980s, he began to believe the stories that they had fought all the time. Yet poring over the 50 hours of footage protected by plastic wrap in his garage, he realized that the opposite was true.

"It's not my intention to say that we laughed and chuckled all the time. But that's pretty much the reality. It's surprising to me, in all that footage that I have, I don't have anything other than laughing and chuckling," he said.

Since the Police broke up, Copeland has been heavily involved in film composing, and he originally opened up the boxes of old Super 8 movies to get some footage for a TV program being made about him. But then he found himself digging into what amounted to a trove of found footage. He hadn't watched much of it before.

Still, like any home movie, the documentary has its omissions. There's some great footage of Sting teaching Summers the chords for De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da in the studio for the first time, as well as a self-photographed scene of Copeland on stage taken from behind his drum set with the camera on a tripod. It's as if you are sitting right next to him during a concert.

And scenes of mass adulation are always fascinating, such the shots of British New Waver kids, too young and therefore a little behind the cutting edge, shouting for the band backstage. But where are the groupies?

"Well, I guess I put my camera down for some of those scenes. I haven't got any Tommy Lee footage," Copeland said. There is one brief scene with the band sitting on a boat with a bevy of bikini-clad fans. It's enough for you to get the picture.

Despite Copeland's insistence that the documentary doesn't follow the typical, melodramatic docu-plot of the rise and ultimate fall of the Police, like an episode of VH1's Behind the Music, that's the general trajectory.

What comes through is the isolation that occurs. Perhaps it's the same kind of isolation we all feel in our jobs. But for Copeland, Sting and Summers, it all happens on a world stage, cliché as that may sound.

As Copeland says in the movie, "The tours are so intense that the space between them -- life at home -- seems unreal, like a cartoon. Sure, we'd bought houses and tried to make families in them, but it's just going through the motions. Reality for us is the road.

"Half the time, I don't know where we are . . . and it's not like we're really there anyway. It's just scenery for the next video. Every now and then, I look over my shoulder and I see a pyramid or Parthenon or some other wonder of the world. . . . There's a growing notion that there's something wrong with this. It's been years since I've bought groceries or drove my own car. Am I missing something?"

What they were missing was an understanding of where the band fit in with what was truly hip at the time. For instance, the footage of the Police headlining the 1982 U.S. Festival shows is telling and contains a small piece of Canadiana. While both Sting and Summer were dressed in early eighties finery,Copeland performed in a CFOX T-shirt, complete with that Vancouver classic-rock radio station's old cartoon logo. It was an obvious coup for CFOX.

But as any Vancouver New Wave or New Romantic type would have told you at the time, CFOX was the antithesis of new music and totally un-cool. Of course, that was a long time ago and the T-shirt today would be retro and ultra-hip to wear. However, it illustrates Copeland's point about staying in touch with what was happening outside the band's cocoon.

It also means that his relatively ordinary life today feels quite separate from the Police. "There's a world out there that I don't really inhabit that much, which is the Police world. There's no Police world. There's no context in my life of 'the Police.' The band broke up 30 years ago."

However, "over my shoulder there is an avatar or a creature or a picture of the rock star of all those years ago. And it's invisible most of the time. When I walk down the streets of Santa Monica or wherever, it's invisible."

That's not to say Police fans still haven't given up hope that the three will re-emerge together. Unlike Sting, Summers encouraged Copeland along the way with the documentary, and interest in the band seems to be building once again. Is there any chance they will they play together? "Andy and I have at various times because we live nearby. Haven't jammed with Sting since [the band's 2003 induction into the Rock and Roll] Hall of Fame."

We'll take that as another of Sting's polite no-thank-yous.

It's surprising to me, in all that footage that I have,

I don't have anything other than laughing and chuckling.
Stewart Copeland

Credit: Theglobeandmail.com