Stoned

Brian Jones was the consummate artist, pop star, fashion icon & womanizer. During the seven short years of his glittering rise to stardom and fateful plummet between 1962 – 1969 he became a music legend, creating The Rolling Stones one of the greatest rock and roll bands ever. Having reinvented the Blues, he nonchalantly turned his back on the world of pop and found more pleasure in scoring movies and recording ethnic music in Morocco. This is not a film about one of The Rolling Stones – this is a murder mystery about the death of one of the most talented musicians of the 60’s who couldn’t or wouldn’t write pop songs. 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 jewelry 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 fulfillment 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’ organization, 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.