Arena

Arena (1985)

Arena (An Absurd Notion)

Call my name, and I'll be there. Dr. Duran Duran escapes the punishment of the Matmos at the height of British rock group Duran Duran's 1980s popularity. Mistaking the cries of teenage girls at crowded concerts for devotees screaming his name, the Doctor makes his way to Earth so he can lead his faithful masses. Once he discovers the kids don't want an evil Doctor, he goes about trying to destroy the source of the real desires a rock concert taking place at the Oakland (Calif.) Colesium.

Date of release
1985-03-01
TMDB
8.3 / 10 (3)
Runtime
58m
Genres
Science Fiction, Music
Director
Russell Mulcahy

Casting

Interesting facts

Arena (An Absurd Notion) is a concept concert video filmed during the course of Duran Duran's 1984 Sing Blue Silver North American Tour in support of the album Seven and the Ragged Tiger.

Background

Instead of releasing a straight concert video, Duran Duran and director Russell Mulcahy chose to play with the origins of the band's name (the 1968 film Barbarella), and added a storyline and surreal elements that are interwoven with footage of the band performing on stage.

The film's villain, the evil Dr. Durand Durand (played by Milo O'Shea, reprising his role from Barbarella) has crash landed on Earth and is surprised and confused to find teenagers chanting his name. When he discovers that they are not chanting for him, but for an upstart pop group, he sets up shop beneath the concert arena and attempts to wreak havoc on the band that stole his name.

The video also included Russell Mulcahy's long-form video for "The Wild Boys". It was meant to be a teaser for a full-length feature film of the same name, based on the 1971 novel The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead by William S. Burroughs. However, that film was never made.

The expensive sets for the conceptual portions of Arena and "The Wild Boys" were built at Shepperton Studios. Some of the segments were also filmed at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, where free tickets were given to fans.

In addition to O'Shea, the American actress Jennifer Connelly also appears in the video, walking across an empty stage in one segment.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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