I just thought of another true story that would make a good movie. Granted, this is probably more a TV movie than a theatrical one. I’d like to see a movie about the Mamas and the Papas. The VH-1 Behind the Music episode about them was probably the best of that entire series. It has all the usual elements of Behind the Music - struggle followed by fame followed by disintegration, drug addition, affairs and unrequited love between the group members, a tragic death, a stupid rumor about the death that wouldn’t go away, and some great scenery in the Virgin Islands as they put together their early songs. Michelle Phillips is still so stunningly beautiful at 60 that she could almost play herself at 16.
One anecdote that Michelle Phillips told on the Behind the Music episode is great just in itself. When she was 16, she lived in Southern California, but she had gone to spend the summer with a friend in San Francisco. She and the friend went to a folkclub to hear a folk group lead by the 24-year-old John Phillips, who lived in New York with his first wife and their two daughters. John and Michelle had an affair over the two weeks that his group played in San Francisco. John left for his group’s next gig in another city. Michelle wrote him several letters over several months and couldn’t understand why he didn’t reply to them, so she took off to New York by herself and went to John’s apartment to confront John’s wife. She told the wife, “John and I are in love, so you should let him go so that we can get married.” John’s wife, more in pity than in anger, told Michelle, “Don’t you understand? John has a girl like you in every city he’s played.”