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The huge boom in music documentaries over the past decade or more has seen everyone from big name artists to long-forgotten stories make the leap to the silver screen.
Rarer, however, are docos focusing on the figures behind the musicians. But if there's anyone deserving of the treatment it's famed Australian music mogul, Michael Gudinski, a rock promoter whose personality and presence loomed as large as any of his star clients.
Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story – currently screening as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival before a national release – is billed as the definitive documentary covering the life and career of one of the most formidable figures in Australian music history.
A trailblazing hustler who founded Mushroom Records at age 19 in the late '60s, Gudinski was a fearless advocate for Australian music who revolutionised the local industry, launching the careers of our country's biggest acts – from Jimmy Barnes and Kylie Minogue, Paul Kelly to Amy Shark – to promoting tours from international icons like Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Foo Fighters, and Ed Sheeran.
All of those musicians, and many more, eagerly line up to speak about Gudinski as a "force of nature" – just as they did when he died suddenly in 2021 at age 68.
He is fondly remembered as an influential and important powerhouse who didn't just masterfully play the music industry-game but practically forged its rule book Down Under as he tirelessly committed himself to championing music at home and abroad.
There's no doubt it's essential viewing for anybody working in music but Ego does a terrific job of explaining the why's and how's of that reverence, making it a thoroughly entertaining document of Australian pop culture history for a broader audience.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains names of deceased people.
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A star-studded affair
The film kicks off with a lively montage that's bold, loud, abrasively passionate and irreverent — just like Gudinski.
Enriching the narrative with interviews, archival imagery, as well as animated sequences, Ego is largely narrated by the man himself. Fitting, given his love of inking his own mythology as he was living it, his voice getting gruffer in interviews across the years.
It's a masterfully assembled viewing experience, expertly pulling us through a career spanning six decades and many milestones, whether it's Gudinski's early fostering of Indigenous Australian greats, such as the late, great Uncle Archie Roach, Ruby Hunter, and Yothu Yindi, or his knack for forging close, life-long friendship with pop superstars like Ed Sheeran and Kylie Minogue.
The son of European Jewish immigrants who'd survived World War II, Gudinski upset his parents when he quit high school to learn the music trade, touring with blues legend Muddy Waters and hosting his friends' dance events.
From Mushroom's unorthodox first release – a costly triple live LP of the infamous 1973 Sunbury music festival that meant business partners "nearly had a stroke" – Gudinski forged a reputation for doing what others deemed too risky.
He's depicted as a family man, inviting Sting, Billy Joel, Garbage and many more into his home to share in family meals and elaborate parties.
He's portrayed as an exhaustible energy source, spending his days pacing office spaces, brokering deals over the phone, to scouting up to six nights a week at gigs, watching side-of-stage for what could be his next big break.
Ego even has to cut back on the long list of acts Gudinski shepherded from small pubs to stadiums. "It must be an addiction of some sort," muses 'Riptide' sensation Vance Joy later in the piece, "never stopping trying to make it happen for someone."
We hear how he fought hard to give his artists creative control and allowing them freedom to develop over time, the inverse of conventional music-exec wisdom. The result? They trusted and respected Gudinski for being in their corner.
Like the time he gave away some of his rights in order to free Minogue from a complex British contract, which paid back dividends when she evolved into a global megastar.
Or his "obsession" with The Temper Trap, starting a UK indie label around the band's breakout anthem 'Sweet Disposition' in order to break them overseas and legitimise them in Australia.
Spending his youth racketeering parking spots near the Caulfield racecourse inspired a career where Gudinski poured increasingly eye-watering sums into backing horses that nobody else saw as winners.
The compelling part is that he was often right.
The highs and lows
A recurring thread of Ego is how Mushroom was able to avoid impending failures through a series of lucky successes. Or as its subject puts it, "through the bleak times there would always be an artist that would pull us through."
From the early success of Living In The '70s glam-rockers Skyhooks saving Gudinski from bankruptcy, to a mid-90s Hail Mary where Garbage, Peter Andre and Ash all went to number one, reversing the fortunes of Infectious Records, Mushroom's UK wing.
The biggest comeback of all? In 1998, around Mushroom's 25th anniversary, Gudinski had sold his baby to News Corp baron Rupert Murdoch for a reported $40 million – much to the displeasure of his artist roster.
It was the worst thing that happened to him, according to his wife Sue Gudinski, who weathered her husband's wild ride for over 40 years.
But the film hop, skips, and jumps a few years to Gudinski bouncing back with Liberation Records, and eventually the rights to the Mushroom name once more.
It's this rollercoaster of ups and downs that makes the documentary so thoroughly entertaining, peppered with plenty of great yarns and laughs, some playfully made at Gudinski's expense.
There's the sigh of an older Gudinski getting chastised for swigging from a bottle of red during a Zoom meeting, or the hilarious edit of someone praising his "gift for negotiation" before cutting to him bellowing down the phone at some hapless business associate.
Does Ego hit hard enough?
Credit where its due to director Paul Goldman, an acclaimed music video and Australian film-maker who has toiled over Ego since 2017, timed to coincide with Mushroom's 50th anniversary celebrations this year.
He first met Gudinski in 1978 (approaching him with the clip for 'Shivers' by Boys Next Door), marking the beginning of a "tumultuous relationship" that saw the pair going to court twice over contract disputes.
"I'm happy to say I won," Goldman told the audience at Ego's world premiere in Melbourne.
"He was loud and brash and I sometimes found him very obnoxious. But I also loved him."
The same sentiments are echoed across Ego's nearly two-hour run time, which leads to the main criticism of an otherwise terrific watch – it often shies away from Gudinski's bad side.
It's hardly a full-blown PR puff piece but only Bruce Springsteen's manager, Jon Landau, gets to say anything remotely negative, describing the music mogul as a "complicated man" with "strong moods" and "personal demons."
Gudinski clearly worked hard and partied hard, although the film only really gestures to the latter as a lot of very naughty fun that happens off-screen. Granted, there's a few rogue mentions from Jimmy Barnes about lines of cocaine and Michael being the only person "who could keep up with me".
Elsewhere, Garbage singer Shirley Manson and Christine Anu talk up Gudinski's prowess for surrounding himself with women who "stood their ground", a powerful man who "never flaunted it".
Then again, there's no denying Gudinski came up in the same white, male-dominated business school that saw intimidating and bullying those who stood in your way as valid tactics.
There's a telling moment where Paul Kelly jokingly likens Gudinski's family values to that of the Italian mafia. The wider subtext Ego presents is that just as he fought tirelessly to protect those close to him, Gudinski bitterly clashed with those who were outside his circle, or worse, disloyal.
A ferociously independent figure that famously didn't take no for an answer, Gudinski saw himself in opposition to the major label structure, yet he wielded as much power and influence.
When the doco turns to the '90s, we see the first press shots of mixed gender while Gudinski admits he missed the alt-rock wave of bands like Spiderbait, You Am I and Magic Dirt, groups who didn't necessarily want a part of the monopoly that Mushroom and Frontier Touring held over the industry.
He also recounts missing out on signing Silverchair, who'd go on to huge success in America – something that Gudinski craved but regularly eluded him – while the band's manager, John Watson, says Mushroom seemed out of touch as a decade-defining movement happened right under him.
If Ego pulls a few of its punches, it's because nobody wants to disrespect the dead, showing Gudinski was more of an outrageous eccentric than a difficult tyrant, the good far outweighing the bad.
Plus, there's no denying his passion, driving him to create arguably some of his best work right up until the very end.
For example, creating opportunities during the COVID pandemic through ABC TV live music series The Sound and Music From The Home Front, a televised concert during the lockdown era that became a chart-topping album (and in a nice piece of symmetry, a triple vinyl LP set).
The Mushroom empire has expanded to today include a film and television division, artist management and booking, merchandise, as well as the ongoing success as arguably Australia's biggest touring company and record label group.
But it all started with one man who had the confidence and passion to build something much, much larger than himself.
As Gudinski himself told ABC Radio Melbourne's Jon Faine in 2019.
"It's gonna go on way after me, and that makes me feel very proud."
Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story is in cinemas August 31.