PAUL STANLEY Talks Forthcoming KISS Biopic - "I Would Rather Not Do It Than Do It Half-Assed Or Poorly"

June 2, 2021, 3 years ago

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PAUL STANLEY Talks Forthcoming KISS Biopic - "I Would Rather Not Do It Than Do It Half-Assed Or Poorly"

In the clip below, KISS frontman Paul Stanley chats to Download host Kylie Olsson about Download Festival memories, the band's End Of The Road Tour, and more 

On the forthcoming KISS biopic, Shout It Out Loud

Paul Stanley: "I would rather not do it than do it half assed or poorly. Our director is the real deal; he did Maleficent 2 and he's not some hack. He knows how to make movies. It should be great. Casting hasn't begun yet, but that will be interesting, too. As the casting process goes on, I'll certainly be there and watching. It'll be interesting to see how someone else - be it the casting people or the director - how they view who I am and who they see doing that. I think I'll learn a lot about their perception of me by who they cast."

In April, Deadline exclusively reported that Netflix is near a deal for Shout It Out Loud, a film package that aspires to do for the iconic hard rock band KISS what Bohemian Rhapsody did for Queen.

According to sources, Netflix is tying up a deal after a bidding battle for a film that will be directed by Joachim Rønning, the Norwegian filmmaker whose credits include Kon-Tiki, Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil and Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. The script is written by Ole Sanders. Pic will be a co-production of Mark Canton’s Atmosphere Entertainment and Universal Music Group.

Shout It Out Loud will have close cooperation from bandleaders Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. The band’s concert arena anthems will be a big part of this, but the film will focus on that duo going back to when they were two misfit kids from Queens who formed an unlikely friendship, starting KISS after enlisting guitarist Ace Frehley and drummer Peter Criss. Trying to set themselves apart from the ‘hair’ bands of the day, they accented their power chords and pyrotechnics with makeup. At heart, their formative story is in the vein of The Commitments, if that Irish soul band employed makeup and spiked heels.

Picture the fire-breathing, blood-dripping demonic and growly voiced bass player Simmons at the age of 12, when he was a Hasidic Orthodox Jew from Israel who found a new faith one fateful day while exiting the yeshiva. “I remember walking out onto the street, seeing this Spanish girl jumping rope across the street, and staring at her long black hair slapping against this great butt,” he once said. “It occurred to me this was better than religion. How could I get near that?”

Stanley, the lead singer with the jet-engine vocals, wasn’t always sex symbol material. “I was deaf in one ear, and had a slight deformity that made me look different,” Stanley said. “I was this short fat kid, and music became my salvation, a place to hide and dream. And when I played music, there were always girls around.”

Read more at Deadline.com.


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