When Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan—the German-French pop duo known as Milli Vanilli—signed a record deal at music producer Frank Farian’s Frankfurt recording studio in January 1988, they sealed their fate and set a series of events in motion. that would bring them enormous success. But at a terrible price.
After achieving fame with his debut album All or Nothing, Six-platinum-selling, Milli Vanilli won a 1990 Grammy Award for Best New Artist. Later that same year it was revealed that they had been lip-syncing during their live performances and did not sing on their records, resulting in a spectacular drop and triggering 27 fraud lawsuits.
Milli Vanilli became the laughing stock of the decade and fell into oblivion. Rob Pilatus passed away in Munich in 1998 due to an overdose of drugs and alcohol.
More than 30 years later, it seems that public opinion is changing. A new documentary titled Milli Vanilli and directed by Luke Korem has premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. It tells its story from the perspective of Morvan, the living member, who has become a competent vocalist and protagonist of a not inconsiderable solo career.
“There were a lot of sensational headlines, but very little in-depth work on what happened,” says director Luke Korem. “I started to investigate and I came across Frank Farian. I realized that he had done this before with the band Boney M. At that moment, I knew there was a lot more to the story than we know about.”
In addition to Morvan, the documentary also features interviews with the album’s actual vocalists: Brad Howell, Charles Shaw, Linda and Jodie Rocco. Producer Timbaland also makes an appearance.
According to Korem, it took eight months to persuade Morvan to take part in the documentary. “It’s been addressed, as you can imagine, many times over the years,” says Korem. “He realized that I didn’t just want to tell Fab’s story, and I didn’t just want to tell Frank Farian’s, but I wanted to tell everyone’s story. And that’s what he wanted too.”
The film openly singles out Farian and comments on the exploitation of black artists in the music industry in the 1980s. “Artists are exploited no matter what color their skin is, that still happens even today,” says Korem. “However, the hate and anger that Rob and Fab faced was largely because they were black, because it was a mostly white audience that bought Milli Vanilli. Then when they realized these two guys weren’t singing, there was an added layer of racism.”
Stories about professional con artists continue to delight audiences. That is why the documentary comes shortly after the successful Netflix series about the New York con artist Anna Delvey and the documentary about the Fyre Fest, that catastrophic festival that took place on an island full ofinfluencers and celebrities, hosted by Billy McFarland. However, the difference is that Milli Vanilli’s cheating shows that the duo were also scammed. The documentary ends with Morvan on stage at a music festival, singing in her own beautiful voice in front of a crowd of people. It’s a beautiful and exciting story of redemption of an artist who finally stopped being a joke in order to be himself.
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