In the 1980s, DJ Gary Crowley introduced his good pal Simon Halfon to a youthful George Michael, then a fledgling pop star and one half of Wham! alongside Andrew Ridgeley. The pair went to the flashy London West End restaurant Langans and found that they hit it off.
“He [George Michael] only lived up the road from me. I lived in Swiss Cottage and he lived just up the road in Hampstead,” explains Halfon.
This was the beginning of a friendship which has now led to new movie Wham! (world premiering June 17 in Sheffield Doc Fest’s Rhythms section). The film is directed by Chris Smith and executive produced by John Battsek, but Halfon is the producer and the person who hatched the idea.
Halfon is a graphic designer as well as a movie producer. He is celebrated for his record covers for such bands as The Jam, The Style Council and Oasis.
One night several years after that first meeting, when George was dropping Halfon home after a night out, Halfon told him, “I’d love to have a crack at doing your next album. He [George] said ‘definitely, let’s do it.’” That’s how Halfon came to create the album cover for George’s classic LP, Listen Without Prejudice.
George Michael died in 2016. However, the documentary has pulled together such rich and arresting archive material that it seems as if George is still around, telling his own story in his own words.
“When it is an archive film, it’s like finding many needles in many haystacks,” the producer observes. Halfon was able to draw on unedited tapes of interviews with George and Andrew which had been kept for years by his friend, the DJ Mark Goodier. One was almost three hours long.
“I just sat there [listening to it] and I felt quite dewy-eyed to be honest. I kind of felt I was having lunch with George again because he would tell these fantastic stories that always ended with some self-deprecating punchline and a laugh. Hearing that again, it really felt I was sitting on the other side of a table in Villa Bianca in Hampstead or something.”
In this old interview, George was also very honest. He answered nearly all the questions that the filmmakers would have asked him today (if he had still been around), touching on everything from his sexuality to his shyness as a teenager to his sometimes difficult relationship with his father Jack (who wanted him to pursue a more conventional career and disapproved of Andrew).
“You couldn’t write it. It was just like, wow!” Halfon says of the George Michael tapes.
On the visual side, there was plenty to draw on too. Andrew’s mother had kept scrap books in which she had preserved every photo and cutting about Wham’s journey.
As soon as Andrew Ridgeley confirmed to Halfon that he wanted to make a documentary out of this treasure trove, Halfon cold-called the Oscar winner producer John Battsek, who runs London and LA-based documentary outfit, Ventureland.
“It was the same as when I did Supersonic, the Oasis film. The first person I called on that was James Gay-Rees [producer of Senna and Amy]…with John, I had seen his body of work, [he is] a storming producer and I had heard lovely things about him.”
At the same time, Halfon also contacted Kate Townsend who oversees documentaries at Netflix. Both were immediately keen to do the film. US director Smith (whose credits include everything from Sundance hit American Movie to Tiger King) signed on swiftly too. “Within a heartbeat, we had this dream team of Chris Smith, John Battsek and Kate Townsend.”
Halfon made it clear that the film was intended as a celebration. There was no seamy underside. Wham! existed as a pop band from 1981 to 1986. They had a fervent and very youthful following and went on to sell more than 30 million records with songs like Young Guns, Club Tropicana, Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, Freedom, I’m Your Man and Last Christmas. When the band dissolved after a huge farewell concert at Wembley Stadium, George went on to have an even more prodigious career as a solo artist. Andrew, though, harboured no bitterness at all. After all, the duo had been best friends since school days.
“When they first signed their record deal, they had two and a half songs,” Halfon points out that George and Andrew hadn’t exactly been prolific songwriters on a Lennon-McCartney scale. However, it quickly became apparent that George had the songwriting gift. Andrew was happy to let him run with it. On the one hand, George was his pal. On the other, he knew that the songs George was beginning to write would make Wham yet more successful. “It was hit after hit after hit,” Halfon says.
Aside from interview snippets with music impresario Simon Napier-Bell and George’s dad, the film is almost entirely comprised of George and Andrew. It’s as if they are telling their own story in real time.
Halfon has worked with many bands over the years and says that Wham is the only one that broke up at its peak. “With a handshake, a hug and a kiss on each cheek. They realised they were a band all about youth. They were never going to be singing those songs, coming on stage in espadrilles and half-length Levis at the age of 40, singing Young Guns. George was obviously ready for the next stage of his career. Andrew knew that and Andrew had had the best time. They had the best time together. It’s a very rare example, in fact perhaps the only example,” Halfon marvels at the harmonious way in which the Wham boys took their final bow.
After Sheffield, the film releases in UK cinemas for one night only in UK cinemas on June 27 2023 and premieres globally on Netflix on July 5 2023.
