SUNDANCE WITH THE POLICE - StingUs - News on The Police, Sting, Steward Copeland and Andy Summers

Fri Jan 20 2006 | SUNDANCE WITH THE POLICE

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Stewart Copeland's documentary on the history of his former group The Police in the new film "Everyone stares: The Police inside out" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. The film features Super 8 movie footage Copeland shot from the band's early days in the mid-1970s through to the early 1980s.
Sting surprised his former bandmates Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers by turning up at the party for Copeland's documentary about their old band, The Police on January 22nd.
Copeland is in talks with Universal Music & Video Distribution about releasing the soundtrack, which would include the derangements, and the DVD.

In fact, Sting and Trudie Styler arrived with many of their children, plus friends, some days earlier for e.g. the premiere of "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints." The movie opened yesterday morning. But by the end of the day, the whole village was going ga-ga over "Sunshine." People who saw it last night said "Sunshine" was one of the funniest comedies they'd ever seen and that the film would be sold for the highest amount in Sundance history.
Jennifer Aniston was also at Sundance to promote her new film comedy, Friends With Money. A movie insider said: "Sting and Trudie have been tremendously supportive of Jennifer and have spent a lot of time with her at the Sundance festival."
Source: StingUs, Fox

Some additional information can be found in following article. Canoe.ca reports this:
Stewart Copeland rocks Sundance
By KEVIN WILLIAMSON -- Calgary Sun
PARK CITY, Utah -- Back when everything they did was magic, The Police bickered as well as they made music.
At least that's what everyone thinks.
And certainly it's what you expect to see in Stewart Copeland's new documentary about his years as the drummer of the seminal rock group.
Even Copeland, who assembled Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out from Super 8 footage he shot during the band's early years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, admits he couldn't have anticipated what he found.
The Police -- Sting, Copeland and Andy Summers -- getting along.
Having, of all things, fun.
"The main thing (that surprised me) was how damn cheerful it was. It looks like we're having so much fun. It hasn't got a frame of ugliness. I had started to believe the myth about The Police -- that we fought all the time -- and I actually think we didn't," says Copeland, now with dark-rimmed glasses and greying hair.
"We did some of the time. There's creative tension in any band and when you're in that strange bubble, things are exaggerated ... But as you can see from this film, we were having a great time. It was a wild ride, an excellent adventure."
Does Copeland, here for the movie's premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend, hope Everyone Stares will counter the image of the band as a squabbling brotherhood?
"I couldn't care less about (that). I just think it's a fun movie. And it's not about The Police so much as it's about what it's like to ride that rocketship."
The Police enjoying each other's company?
What's next? A reunion tour?
Don't hold every breath you take waiting for that.
The Police, one of the few former chart-toppers not to leap aboard the all-American gravy reunion train, will never regroup, Copeland says.
"There may be a charitable event or wedding or Bar mitzvah where we get drunk enough to get up on stage and play ... But there certainly won't be a new album and tour."
Which is not to suggest animosity between the bandmates.
Both Sting and Summers have seen and support the film, Copeland reports.
After all, it was originally intended as merely an extended home movie for family and friends.
The footage collected dust for decades until Copeland, a self-professed "obsessive computer geek" tackled it with such moviemaking software as Final Cut Pro.
Copeland, now a film and television composer, then submitted a very rough cut to Sundance.
By the time festival organizers contacted him to let him know he'd been accepted, "I'd forgotten I'd applied. I was in the middle of my day job, totally into what I was doing."
As soon as the news broke, however, "My e-mail filled up from every lawyer, every producer, every publicist, just overnight."
Both Summers and Sting are also presently in Park City, although only Summers travelled expressly for Copeland's film.
Sting's wife, Trudie Styler also produced the festival entry A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints.
"We're kind of giving each other a wide berth," Copeland says. "He's also very graciously let me be the belle of this ball."
Besides which, he adds, it is Summers who steals the show. "Andy has all the cool scenes and gets all the laughs."
While a Police reunion seems out of the question -- and Copeland admits he's now mulling more non-Police-related film projects -- that doesn't mean he's stopped playing.
In fact, he travels to Italy every summer to perform "big, open-air shows in beautiful places. I play my drums and enjoy the adoration and go back to my day job (as a composer) reinvigorated and validated and affirmed. I'm playing way better than I did back then.

Also:
Police doc to show at Sundance
Drummer Stewart Copeland to unveil project culled from Super 8 movies he shot as band soared to stardom from mid-'70s to early '80s.

Add "filmmaker" to drummer Stewart Copeland's list of credits. His documentary, Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out, will debut January 22 at the Sundance Film Festival.

The 74-minute film is culled from Super 8 movies Stewart shot from the band's early days in the mid-'70s through the early '80s.

The project started as a love letter that he intended to share only with his fellow Police-men, Sting, and Andy Summers, as well as a few close friends.

But more people viewed the footage, and, as Copeland puts it, "My little toy escapes from the playpen and becomes a monster."

Final Cut Pro and other software programs helped him see the project to completion. "This Super 8 film sat for 20 years in shoeboxes while I waited for a good medium to download it," he says.

The images, including lots of performance footage, are accompanied by a voice-over from Copeland that gives a firsthand view of what it was like to go from nearly empty in-store appearances to 60,000-capacity sold-out stadiums in a few short years.

More important, the film shows how getting everything you wished for can be wonderful and deeply disturbing at the same time. Perhaps, he suggests, once you've reached the stratosphere, it may be time to quit before the inevitable decline begins. "It got to the point where there was no more up to go."

For Copeland, visiting his past brought many thoughts to mind. "It's very cheerful," he says of the footage. In fact, when he looked for scenes to accompany his narration about the band's demise, he could not find shots "of us looking pissed off at each other."

However, he admits that "I put my camera down the last year or two. I felt like I should be living it instead of shooting it."

Looking back was bittersweet. "I wish I'd enjoyed the ride more," he says. "The concerts where I was playing with the best band in the world--we were given the biggest gift in the world--why am I not cracking a smile?"

Also, he says, as the band was disintegrating, he regrets all the arguing. "We could have been nicer about it ... there was a lot of shouting."

None of that comes across in the documentary. Summers seems like a lovable scamp, and Sting appears playful and pleasant, but often preoccupied. Copeland says the pair have seen the documentary "and are very keen on it," but that he never planned to include narration from them.

"If I'd made it partially their documentary as well and we'd all gotten together, it would have been, 'Why don't we record another record?,' and since that ain't going to happen, I guess the band movie isn't going to happen, so I just made it on my own."

While there may never be a new Police album, there may be some new interpretations of vintage Police material. Everyone Stares includes what Copeland calls his "derangements" of Police songs, seven mash-ups of sorts that he created using the original multitracks of the songs.

Story Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

Posted on Jan 20, 06 | 6:50 am

check wireimage.com. there you can see Sting, Stewart and Andy sitting at a table without their hands at each others throats :-)) LOL what a clever media move this is!!

Regarding those tabloid stories about Sting's rocky marriage...well, as long as we have our 3 Ex-The Police members doing clever media stuff like that, we don't need to worry about them at all;-)))

Posted by: TarAncalime on Jan 23, 06 | 5:35 pm

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let's hope he comes to his senses and regroups the police

Posted by: davidbbbbb on Feb 06, 06 | 6:52 am

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