STONED
Year: 2005
USA: Screen Media
UK: Vertigo Films
Cast: Leo Gregory, Paddy Considine, David Morrissey, Ben Whishaw, Tuva Novotny, Amelia Warner, Monet Mazur, Luke De Woolfson, David Walliams, Gary Love, Johnny Shannon, Melanie Ramsay, Ruediger Rudolph, Will Adamsdale, Ralph Brown, Alfie Allen, Guy Flanagan, Josef Altin, James D White, Vanessa Langford, Lisa O'Reilly, Jenna Aarons, Tom Espiner, Anna Madeley, Gerard Bell, Angela Sims, Paul Raffield, Dirk Vom Bruck, Lisa Dolan, Simon Chandler, Nathalie Cox, Tim Flavin, Simon Minihane, Ras Barker, India Weber, Matt Gogarty, Abdsaker Tabaa
Director: Stephen Woolley
Country: UK
UK: 102 mins
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong language, sex and drug use
USA Release Date: 24 March 2006
UK Release Date: 18 November 2005
Synopsis
"Brian Jones was the best bunch of guys I ever met" - Keith Richards
"Brian Jones lived on a higher plane than anyone else" - Pete Townsend
"Without Brian Jones there would be no rolling stones" - Bill Wyman
Brian Jones was more than just "a Rolling Stone". He was their founding member in 1962. Jones (played by Leo Gregory) was their leader, their visionary, their most gifted musician His blond, ambiguous glamour and obvious talent inspired enormous curiosity.
Brian was the face of the Sixties revolution, resplendent in the sumptuous fabrics and furs, scarves, hats and jewellery with which he fearlessly blurred the distinction between male and female acceptability. A true pied piper of fashion, he daringly led and legions followed.
Just a few years later, at the age of 27, Jones was dead in the deep end of his own swimming pool. Officially, he drowned by misadventure under the influence of drink and drugs.
Director and Producer Stephen Woolley has spent the last 10 years researching the events surrounding Brian's ill-fated dip on the night of Wednesday July 2, 1969. In STONED, Woolley charts the rise of the intelligent Cheltenham teenager who excels in music and girls as wholeheartedly as he resists the disciplines of his grammar school. Moving to London at 19, Jones finds fame and fulfilment as he steers The Rolling Stones to their first great musical successes, but it's a short-lived happiness.
Re-creating the nightmare as it plummets out of control, with the fragile but tempestuous and increasingly unpredictable Jones hounded by the authorities, busted for drugs, embroiled in controversies and indiscriminate sexual encounters, passionately, bizarrely and sometimes violently besotted with his great love Anita Pallenberg (Monet Mazur), who abandons him for Keith (Ben Whishaw), and finally fired by the band he had formed and obsessively nurtured to their coming of age.
His final days are played out at Cotchford Farm, Jones' East Sussex country retreat and the former home of Winnie the Pooh author AA Milne, who Brian Jones revered. He shared his idyll with latest flame, Anna Wohlin (Tuva Novotny). Still closely monitored by the Stones' organisation, who regarded him as a loose cannon, Brian decides to make some home improvements and on the advice of his road manager Tom Keylock (David Morrissey), he hires Frank Thorogood (Paddy Considine), to carry out the work.
Stephen Woolley, making his directorial debut, views the story of Brian Jones as "a parable for the times". STONED was filmed on location in London, Haslemere, Pinewood and Marrakech.
