When Paul Simon Bombed at the Movies

Last night, MGM+ premiered the first chapter of its two-part documentary “In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon.” (Part Two airs this Sunday.) It’s an exhaustive look at the 82-year-old singer-songwriter’s career—or, at least, the first chunk of it, starting with his days in Simon & Garfunkel and continuing through his solo years, ending around 1990 and the release of The Rhythm of the Saints.  The documentary, directed by Alex Gibney, mostly focuses on the successes, but there are occasional peeks at the low points. One of them, many may not remember. In October 1980, Simon wrote and starred in a movie that wasn’t autobiographical but was definitely close to his heart, telling the story of a singer-songwriter at a crossroads. “One-Trick Pony” got mixed reviews and bombed at the box office, proving to be one of the legend’s biggest failures.  For years, it wasn’t easy to find the film, with even the accompanying soundtrack (written by Simon) mostly known for its bouncy Top 10 hit “Late in the Evening.” But its mention in “In Restless Dreams” may inspire fans to seek the movie out. If you do, you’ll be greeted by a curious, muted little misfire that demonstrates that, no matter his prodigious talents, filmmaking and acting may not be among them. And yet, “One-Trick Pony” has this odd poignancy running through it—an acknowledgement of the path not taken by Simon, one in which a life in music was mostly filled with disappointment and heartache. Paul Simon is a superstar, but his onscreen character is far from it. “One-Trick Pony” is about Simon wondering how the other half lives. It had been five years since Simon’s last album, 1975’s acclaimed hit Still Crazy After All These Years, which won the Grammy for Album of the Year. But in the interim between records, it wasn’t as if Simon was floundering. Memorably appearing on the hip new variety series “Saturday Night Live”—yes, of course, his turkey-outfit bit is legendary, but have you seen him play one-on-one with NBA great Connie Hawkins?—he soon became one of its most popular guests. He was also quite amusing in 1977’s “Annie Hall,” playing a corny L.A. music executive who lures Woody Allen’s singer girlfriend away from New York. That same year, he also released a best-of, Greatest Hits, Etc., which included a new song, “Slip Slidin’ Away,” that went Top 10. Things were going well for Simon. What was also notable about Greatest Hits, Etc. was that it had completed his contractual obligations to his longtime label, Columbia. He signed a lucrative new deal with Warner Bros. and, as part of that agreement, Simon was itching to get out of his comfort zone. He was curious about making a movie.  “I wanted to do something other than just record an album,” he told Rolling Stone’s Dave Marsh shortly before the release of “One-Trick Pony.” “I felt my choices were either to write a Broadway show or a movie. I chose the movie because I thought it would be closer to the process of recording. You get a take, and that’s your take. I don’t have to go in every night and see whether the cast is performing. Also, I could still record and use the movie as a score. But if I’d written a show, I couldn’t have recorded my own stuff—other people would have had to sing it.” “One-Trick Pony” follows the struggles of Jonah, a mid-30s rock musician who, back in the 1960s, had written a generational anthem, an acoustic antiwar protest song called “Soft Parachutes.” But that was a long time ago, although Jonah is still out there touring with his band, gigging wherever anyone will have them. Unfortunately, his style of rock is losing popularity, as evidenced by the fact that a cool new band, the New Wave-leaning B-52’s, blow away the same crowd that was, before, only politely receptive to Jonah. (You can see why: Performing “Rock Lobster,” the Athens unit absolutely slays.)  Things aren’t much better on the home front—that is, when he’s actually home. Jonah is separated from his wife Marion (Blair Brown), who not unreasonably wonders when he’s going to stop chasing a young person’s dream. Engaged in random hookups on the road, Jonah makes gestures toward reconciling with Marion, but it’s clear they’ve done this dance before, many times, and if it wasn’t for their young son, Matty (Michael Pearlman), whom Jonah loves dearly, he wouldn’t try that hard. With the possibility of getting to record another album looking iffy, Jonah is facing both a professional and personal reckoning. As “In Restless Dreams” makes obvious, outside a similar penchant for romantic turmoil, Simon’s and Jonah’s life trajectories didn’t have much overlap. (In the late 1970s, Simon was dating soon-to-be-wife Carrie Fisher, leading to an endearing moment in “One-Trick Pony” in which Jonah and Matty go to the movies to check out the then-brand-new blockbuster “The Empire Strikes Back.”) But if Simon played Jonah, some audiences and critics would inevitably assume that he was the main character—and that, by extens