This film originated in the invention of a synthetic girl group called The Pinups. The music producer later successfully used this formula to devise Milli Vanilli. The Pinups, which only existed in a studio, were booked to tour Germany to promote their album. The idea was to make a film to make the group known to create interest in the album and tour to support it. To this effect three 'actresses' were hired in L.A. and flown to Frankfurt and styled and trained to be The Pinups' I.e. To dance sexily and lip synch. A director was hired, Yoel Zilberg, an Israeli who was best known for MY MOTHER THE GENERAL. There was an existent script available. I believe it had been co-written by Zilberg and his partner Eli Tovar, with its locus changed from Tel Aviv to Berlin (filmmaking was heavily subsidized in the Republic and in Berlin). The producer, Artur Brauner's son read the script and protested that it was utterly unacceptable as a 'youth movie'. There were brassiere jokes. I was writing jungle movies in Munich at the time. A script I had written had attracted the producers attention. I used voluminous amounts of profanity in it and he thought- Ah, someone who knows how to talk to youth. The picture was about a hustling record promoter in Berlin trying to sell his new band while burning the candle at both ends. It was to star Horst Buchholz. Two of my jokes, (I've forgotten which ones) survived into the final film. Horst Buchholz did not. He was replaced by a very pretty, very wooden, much younger actor. I believe the film was written by the choreographer and his mother (I'm not joking). The film wasn't released except for one week in Frankfurt as a courtesy to the music producer. The theatre was the type where the patrons sat on high stools at tables from which they drink beer. On the last day I checked at the box office to find out how many paying customers there had been for the week and was told 'fourteen'.
