POP-A-LOOZA: The BAY CITY ROLLERS Movie That Never Was

Each week the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares a post from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. This week's shared post is a look back at an imaginary film called Catch Us If You Can, my own clueless 1970s teen notion for a Bay City Rollers movie.



This unrealized fancy of a Bay City Rollers flick was the first post in The Notebook Notions, my series of reminiscences about the notebooks I kept as a teenage wannabe writer during the Me Decade. It was followed by two more studies of movies I wanted to write: Notebook Notions # 2 was about three separate film fancies, a TV show starring Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart, a frothy jukebox movie starring Bo Derek, and The Undertones in a movie called Jump Boys; Notebook Notions # 3 covered my 1940s movie serial The Further Adventures Of Captain Marvel, my Justice Society of America radio show, and The Marx Brothers collaborating with either Charlie Chaplin or The Beatles. 

All of the above and some of my subsequent Notebook Notions were also part of a larger series called Unfinished And Abandoned, dredging up memories of writing projects I considered to some flighty degree before cutting my losses and moving on to some other shiny-shiny instead. These included the sputtering beginning of a mystery novel Our Lips Are Sealed, the first two pilot entries of a never-completed Goldmine column with the now-familiar title Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), some pop compilations CDs, a book about the 500 Definitive Albums Of The 1970s, and my superhero creation Jack Mystery.

Catch Us If You Can was also a precursor to a couple of other movies in my mind. Justice Society Of America: The Movie was previously featured at Pop-A-Looza. And I'm stupid proud of Jukebox Express, a 100% phony 1958 jukebox movie made by fictional people from movies, books, TV shows, and comic books. "Movies In My Mind (Behind The Scenes): The Fictional Players In Jukebox Express" identified the back stories of all the Jukebox Express actors, musicians, writers, director, and producer I lifted from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Gilligan's Island, That Thing You Do!, Marvel's Agent Carter, Happy Days, Funnyman, King Kong, and many more.

Actress Ginger Grant in Jukebox Express

As for the shoulda-been stars of Catch Us If You Can, The Bay City Rollers were the subjects of my very first feature article for Goldmine in 1987, a piece later updated and reprised here. I also wrote about their 1979 album Elevator, and selected their fab song "Rock And Roll Love Letter" for celebration in my eventual book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). I remain a Rollers fan.

But meanwhile, it's lights, camera, S! A! T-U-R! D-A-Y! Night!! My fake Bay City Rollers movie Catch Us If You Can is this week's Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.



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