"If it weren't for us, there wouldn't be no Phil Spector." So spoke the Crystals' La La Brooks at Johnny D's last fall. But Brooks is mistaken: as a musical genius turned recluse turned convicted murderer, Spector is a character nobody could have made up. Vikram Jayanti's suitably weird film is built around a single interview from 2007, when Spector was on trial for the shooting of Lana Clarkson, and Spector's rambling chat says a lot about the relation between creative insanity and the garden-variety kind. He equates his work to Bach and Leonardo, dwells on perceived feuds with various peers, and gets surprisingly eloquent when his records are brought up. Asked about the now-notorious Afro he'd worn in court, he explains that it was both an attempt at levity and a tribute to Ben Wallace of the Detroit Pistons. (Yes, during a murder trial.) Songs by the Crystals, the Righteous Brothers, and Ike & Tina Turner are about all that come out of this movie unscathed.
