Watch a Drug-Fueled Clip From ‘Super Duper Alice Cooper’ – Premiere
The original Alice Cooper group formed in Phoenix but their career didn’t get moving until they moved to Los Angeles and met the man who would become their manager, Shep Gordon, in a marijuana-smoke-filled hotel room along with some major rock stars of the late Sixties. The highly stylized documentary Super Duper Alice Cooper, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Fest and is getting theatrical screenings throughout the U.S. beginning April 30th, chronicles frontman Alice Cooper’s history from his humble beginnings to his triumphant comeback after kicking addiction. In the clip above, he talks about meeting Gordon, as well as Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin at Hollywood’s infamous Landmark Motor Hotel, where Joplin eventually overdose in 1970.
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“You have to remember we were a young band from Arizona, and we could make a joint last for a week, ’cause that’s all we had,” Cooper told Rolling Stone about the clip. “And you walk into a room that you can’t see from me to you because of the smoke, and then when the smoke clears, [whispers] ‘Hey look, it’s Jimi Hendrix over there.’ And Shep, our manager, he opens the drawer, and there’s a drawer [of marijuana], and he takes a handful. ‘This is our manager. This is gonna be great.’ In ’68, ’69, that was the coolest thing ever.”
Super Duper Alice Cooper blends animation and commentary from the likes of Elton John, Bernie Taupin, Johnny Rotten, Iggy Pop, Cooper’s mom, members of the original Cooper lineup and Cooper himself. It was directed by Scott McFadyen and Sam Dunn, who made the Grammy-nominated Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, along with Reginald Harkema, who won the Toronto International Film Festival Special Jury Prize for the 2006 film Monkey Warfare.