Tension, triumph in Matt, Luke Goss’ ‘After the Screaming Stops’
Updated September 6, 2018 - 10:51 am
What happens after the screaming stops?
You bicker. You play a wild concert. You hug it out.
That is if you are Matt Goss and is twin brother, Luke Goss, long ago of British pop sensation Bros. The twin brothers’ new feature documentary, “Bros: After The Screaming Stops” has a just-announced worldwide Nov. 9 release date. The film is already a hit; it currently tops Amazon Prime’s best-selling list for pre-ordered DVDs.
A U.K. sensation in the late-1980s Bros (as always, rhyming with Goss) re-united over the summer of 2017 to perform a brief U.K. tour, ending with a pair of sold-show at O2 Arena in their hometown of London. They were tailed by a crew from Fulwell 73, the U.K. production company behind the “Late Late Show” with James Corden, which produced the project.
David Soutar (behind “Harry Styles Behind The Music,” and, “I Am Bolt”) and Joe Pearlman (“Mo Farah: No Easy Mile”) directed the new doc. “After the Screaming Stops” will have its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on Oct. 17.
The film’s trailer was released this week, just ahead of Matt Goss’s appearance at Saturday’s Proms in The Park, a festival headlined by Gladys Knight at Hyde Park. As the clip shows, the tension of the Bros tour (and possibly even the ever-present cameras,) spilled over in the scene opening the film’s trailer.
The brothers are shown backstage shouting at each other, “Don’t shut me down! I’m going to speak! No, I’m going to speak!” before Matt skulks away. The two talk directly to the camera about the band’s messy split (original member Craig Logan, who left the act in 1989 and later sued for back royalties, declined to take part in the recent tour).
Matt Goss addressed the ongoing obstacles by saying, “Family can be challenging, but we are brothers. We’ll find a way.”
We know Matt, of course as an established Strip headliner, most recently with his fiery residency at 1 Oak Nightclub at the Mirage. Luke is an accomplished actor who has appeared in more than 50 films (among them “Blade II,” “One Night with the King” and “Hellboy II: The Golden Army”).
Matt was more willing than his brother to peel back the veneer of the Bros phenomenon. The reunion was inspired by the death of the death of the brothers’ mother, Carol, in 2014.
“I’m a private person, and I was nervous,” Luke Goss said during Matt’s opening night at the Mirage last December. “But it turned out great.”
Matt performed at London Palladium on Aug. 26 filling that famed venue, too. He has also been enlisted to write lyrics for Stephen Endelman’s music for a West End musical version of the British TV drama “Upstairs/Downstairs,” the precursor to “Downton Abbey.”
Taking a break from his Strip show, Goss is cruising at high altitude in his home country.
Asked to comment about the film and his recent adventures, the man we call Gossy said in text, “I’m very proud of the movie, the Palladium. Many, many things to tell you about, but for now you can see the chart position speaks for itself.”
John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on Twitter, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.