The Mayor of the Sunset Strip

When Rodney Bingenheimer was just a teenager -- a diminutive, long-haired kid who was picked on a lot -- his mother, a divorced autograph hound, dropped him off in front of the home of actress Connie Stevens and essentially said, "Good luck." Stevens was on location shooting a movie and Bingenheimer ...more

George Hickenlooper's The Mayor of the Sunset Strip is a fascinating examination of fame and celebrity worship -- a sporadically amusing, wonderfully entertaining, but inexorably sad portrait of L.A. music scene demi-legend Rodney Bingenheimer. Early on in the film, asked if there's anything he wishes he could change about his life, Bingenheimer forlornly says, "Yeah, actually." His obsession with celebrity started at a young age and seems to have been the driving force behind his life. We live ...more