Mystify: Michael Hutchence (2019) on Netflix
NR20191h 42mDocumentaryMusic
Michael Hutchence, lead singer of INXS, is the subject of a documentary built from private home video and rare archive footage. Friends, bandmates, former partners and family remember him.
- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.3/102,958 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
Mystify: Michael Hutchence follows the life and career of Michael Hutchence, lead singer of the Australian rock band INXS. Built mainly from rare archive footage, outtakes and private home video, it sets those images against audio interviews with around sixty people, among them band members, friends, former partners, record producers and relatives. Home movies show him in Hong Kong harbor, aboard the Orient Express and at a house in the south of France. Conversations for the film were recorded as audio only, each person speaking alone in a studio. Concert clips and television appearances from his years with the band sit alongside that private material.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Mystify: Michael Hutchence (2019)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Long negotiations for the rights to use INXS music in Mystify ended with no deal because of a dispute with Murphy of Petrol Records over the documentary's ownership, so director Richard Lowenstein cut a version of the film with none of the band's catalogue.
- Director Richard Lowenstein flew to London in October 2018 to meet Hutchence's daughter, and after she viewed a rough cut of the film she contacted the band's management and record company; a day later a deal was struck to use nine INXS tracks.
- Tapes of archival footage of varying quality used in the film were found in director Richard Lowenstein's attic, where they had been lost for twenty years.
- Mystify began as a planned biographical drama with a script by Richard Lowenstein, but casting an actor as Hutchence proved so difficult that the announcement of the miniseries INXS: Never Tear Us Apart pushed him to make an archival documentary instead.
- For the interviews, director Richard Lowenstein recorded only audio, placing individual interviewees in a dark recording studio; around sixty people were interviewed in total.
