Prince: Sign 'o' the Times (1987) on Netflix
PG-1319871h 24mDocumentaryMusic
In 1987 a musician's album sells well in Europe but meets resistance in America. He films a live concert of the new songs with his touring band and dancers.
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- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb8.0/103,031 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes84%
Trailer
Plot summary
The album sold well on a 1987 European tour, but American audiences proved resistant. To reach theaters across North America, the musician filmed a live concert of the new songs with the band and dancers from that tour. Concerts taped in Rotterdam and Antwerp were judged unusable, so the performance was staged again at Paisley Park Studios, where a few hundred extras filled the soundstage and the group lip-synched to a pre-recorded concert recording. A themed narrative links most of the songs, and one number appears as its promotional music video.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Prince: Sign 'o' the Times (1987)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Sign o' the Times was meant to be built from live footage shot at the Ahoy in Rotterdam and the Sportpaleis in Antwerp, but the film came out grainy and unusable and Prince was unhappy with the sound. The performance was therefore reshot at his Paisley Park Studios, where the between-song segues were also filmed.
- Saxophonist Eric Leeds estimated that around 80% of the finished film came from the Paisley Park reshoot. A few hundred extras filled the soundstage as Prince and the band lip-synched to the pre-recorded concert recording.
- Plans to include the full concert, which featured non-Sign o' the Times songs such as "Kiss", "1999" and "Purple Rain", were abandoned and those songs were cut from the finished film.
- The concert film's "U Got the Look" is not a live performance: the song, which features Sheena Easton, is represented by its promotional music video.
- In the coda of "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man", Eric Leeds and trumpeter Atlanta Bliss lift a horn section from "Rockhard In a Funky Place", an unreleased Camille track that was later heard on The Black Album.
