PRINCE
PAISLEY PARKED
Five Prince film projects that never saw the dawn
Prince film projects
Stills from Happy Birthday Mr Christian
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR
CHRISTIAN
(1985)
PRODUCED by Prince at the height of his post-Purple Rain clout, this mini musical strings together four songs by girl group Apollonia 6. The director was Brian Thomson – an Australian production designer who collaborated with Jim Sharman on The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Shot in LA, a version that surfaced on YouTube plays like a giddy, trashy mashup of Busby Berkeley and Sharman’s new-wave oddity Shock Treatment. Appearances by Edy Williams, Buck Henry and Ricky Nelson add to the fun. Thomson tells Uncut he was only able to complete a very rough 18-minute edit. “Then Nelson died in that plane crash, so the whole thing just got put on a shelf,” he laments. He’d still love to finish it.