If Frank Sidebottom is an unfamiliar name, I recommend the short audiobook Frank by Jon Ronson as an entertaining story. Jon played keyboards in his band and is an entertaining writer.
oh wow thanks for sharing that! I had never heard of frank but i definitely have heard of jon ronson from his research and look into psychopathy. oh and the men who stare at goats, of course. anyway i must now add yet another line to my ledger of things i really should be looking into
The movie Frank is a fictionalized version of the character (written by Ronson), and there was a documentary about the guy as well:
http://www.beingfrankmovie.com/info.html
I watched the movie and was shocked to learn the movie was based on a real life phenomena.
I don't think the film has all that much to do with Frank Sidebottom, beyond the name and the head. It's more a take on more troubled outsider geniuses like Captain Beefheart and Daniel Johnston. As far as I can tell Chris Sievey was maybe quite eccentric and probably a bit frustrating, but Sidebottom was a piece of art he was doing and not an artifact of mental illness like the film's Frank.
