Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story
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M, 111 minutes
3 stars.
It is hard to imagine exactly what the Australian music industry might look like today if it weren't for the Melbourne-based music entrepreneur behind Mushroom Records and the Frontier Touring Company, the late Michael Gudinski.
Skyhooks, Split Enz, Barnsey, Kylie Minogue, and even Ed Sheeran - the makers of this engaging flick don't argue a music industry executive gave them their talent. But without his career nurturing and the platform Gudinski built for them to succeed upon, they might have been one-album wonders, not making it past home-recorded demo cassettes, curios to be remembered as difficult questions on RocKwiz rather than part of the music firmament and a ubiquitous presence on radio and YouTube.
![Ed Sheeran with Michael Gudinsky in Ego: the Michael Gudinski Story. Picture by Brian Purnell Ed Sheeran with Michael Gudinsky in Ego: the Michael Gudinski Story. Picture by Brian Purnell](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/MxhEgQKUJhZgHxwVaKiqcq/9142635b-ef4a-4eb5-a537-eaf729026b29.jpeg/r0_205_5760_3456_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
This documentary celebrates the man's many achievements, told in first-person interviews from family, friends and music industry luminaries who benefited from his attention, and in Gudinski's own voice sourced from decades of media interviews and home movies.
Those music industry luminaries include Sting, Shirley Manson, Jimmy Barnes, Ed Sheeran, Kylie Minogue, brothers Tim and Neil Finn, and these big stars provide the film's most accessible moments.
Sting, Manson and Billy Joel talk about how family dinners thrown for them by Gudinski and wife Sue would make them feel less homesick while on the road.
The Finn brothers remember that Gudinski signed the eccentric Split Enz to his Mushroom Records label and then, for years, ignored all advice from friends to drop the obscure New Zealand band before they finally rewarded his belief in them with their 1980 chart-topping album True Colours.
Minogue admits the entire Australian music industry was angry with Gudinski when he championed the Neighbours soap star and teamed her with British hit-makers Stock Aitken Waterman and then subsequently stole the top of the Aussie music charts for the next decade from the rock acts that had previously been his bread and butter.
Sheeran implies that Gudinski helped take him from playing small rooms to outdoor stadiums, while Barnes, who gets the bulk of the film's interview time, credits Gudinski with his post-Cold Chisel solo career.
Indigenous musicians Christine Anu and Dan Sultan talk about Gudinski championing Archie Roach and Yothu Yindi, Anu wondering about the current "truth-telling" of Indigenous artists without Yothu Yindi's Treaty.
With son Matt Gudinski as executive producer and other members of his friendship circle taking other crew and credit roles, this film is a celebration of the life and career achievements of Gudinski rather than a warts-and-all documentary. Overwhelmingly positive, it leaves many stories untold, or at least merely hinted at, which might be a great entree for another enterprising documentarian to fill in these blanks.
The filmmakers assume so much knowledge on behalf of the audience they don't trouble to explain what might be significant milestones or roadblocks along the music entrepreneur's path or to flesh out his character a little more fully than a series of famous musicians very genuinely gushing about how terrific they thought he was.
One talking head does share one line about how Gudinski wasn't everyone's cup of tea, but we don't get to hear from any of those people, and perhaps it is their absence that is telling.
Gudinski himself, in archival interview, isn't afraid to conduct autopsies on his missteps when it comes to identifying talent, joking about his twice being asked to sign Men at Work and passing.
Director Paul Goldman and his team do tell a rollicking good story though, one completely enmeshed in the past half-century of Aussie pop culture. Goldman knows Gudinski and his pals - he directed Kylie's Better The Devil You Know music video - and so draws out honest yarns and some emotional recollections.
Aussie music fans, be they pub-rock or Kylie-pop, will be touched by the nostalgia.