Movie #605 ........................."How do you write a Joe Sherman song?"

Movie #605 "How Do You Write A Joe Sherman Song?" is a second film seen by us at the Phoenix Film Festival 2012, and we found it quite enjoyable. The lead guy who wrote the movie and directed it is none other than Joe Sherman, who also wrote all the music. He looks like a young Stephen Sondheim and sings like Mandy Pantinkin and boy can he play the piano!!! He wants to write the most original next hit musical on Broadway, and he's talented enough to do that (we think we might see this particular movie made into a musical on Broadway some day) but he's now busy putting in his time ----- goes to play for auditions (one funny moment is when some careless girl comes to the tryout and tells him to change the key 2 seconds before he is to play --- he says you aren't supposed to do that, she whispers what am I supposed to do, and he says, "You shouldn't be trying out in a key you can't sing" and the end result? he ends up playing it! He also gives voice lessons at home, and meanwhile he's writing his show. Well, he lives with a woman who goes from one audition to the next, yet she's very talented in the big 3 --- acting, singing and dancing, and she still can't find a show! And her live in boyfriend is a writer so there's an expectation that he write a show, heck even a song for her! And she sings about it while he plays in the living room. It's very creative how the songs are woven into the movie, while not getting too hokey about it! Anywhere, one day at an audition for an off broadway show Joe is asked to write, a bluesy type singer comes in and moves Joe's heart through music! She gets his music and he wants to write more for her and he does! She becomes his muse, and thus a big conflict --- whom should they cast in the show --- his very talented girlfriend or the new muse? Joe learns a lot more than he figures in this movie, and we found it a lot of fun. It won a couple of awards at this festival, and we think you might be seeing it on the netflix queue in the future, but not right now --- not yet. I would rate it 3.8 out of 5, very creative and well executed. A few negatives, though, one in particular is a lot of extra dialogue that wasn't necessary, so the film tended to lag in a few places.