Frankly, I think you'd have to be an idiot to watch 10 minutes of this movie -- what with Frankie's drunken monologue about the many uses of "spunk," or the pompous meanderings of Eric Banning (Dan Antopolski), a scholar who has supposedly written several books about Frankie's career -- without understanding that it's a full-on piss-take, as the Brits would say. But the packed houses of boogieing Ibiza nubiles are real enough, and trashily exciting, and indeed, if you start spelunking on the Web, you'll find all kinds of testimonials to the extraordinary career of Frankie Wilde.

Chat rooms about pop music, movies and dance culture are packed with Frankie questions (many of them strikingly similar in tone): Have you heard about the amazing deaf DJ? How can I find his records? Even Alfonse and Horst, the two clownish Austrians who serve as Frankie's chief musical assistants, have a Web site for their post-Frankie outfit Ladder Hause. No one ever went broke by overestimating public ignorance, it's said, and a surprising number of critics and real human beings have been taken in by "Pete Tong" already.

I have one word of advice for those marketing mavens who constructed this game: Amazon. If Frankie Wilde really had all these hit records, albeit quasi-obscure Euroclub mixes, wouldn't some of them be for sale somewhere? Anyway, Paul Kaye gives an amazing performance, the first half of the movie is crudely hilarious, and the love story with the lithe and lovely Batarda works surprisingly well. (Kate Magowan and Mike Wilmot get special props for their roles as Frankie's Dolce-and-Gabbana-laden trashbag wife and skeezeball, bottle-tanned manager, respectively.)

Director Michael Dowse (whose previous movie, "Fubar," took a similar approach to heavy metal) blew through New York this week, and I grabbed him for a few minutes. He insisted on staying on message, at least officially. When I asked him if he wanted to discuss the real deal behind "Pete Tong," he said, "You mean the fact that I'm not really Canadian? Go ahead. Say whatever you want to about that."

No, but really, Mike, what kind of movie is this?

It's a bio piece about an amazing DJ. It's a comedy, too, but I think comedy is a great way to treat it. Something as tragic as Frankie's story requires a sense of humor. I'm sick of movies that take a dour approach to tragic subject matter. I wanted to make a film that the guy himself would have appreciated.

Um, OK, let's move on. You shot in real Ibiza clubs with real crowds. That must have been an essential part of the production. Without that, the movie wouldn't have worked at all.

Yeah, that was the element I was most nervous about. We needed access to the clubs to make it feel authentic. Otherwise, we would have died. You know, our musical coordinator was Lol Hammond, who's a part of that club world. He was our shepherd, and people were like, "Well, if Lol's doing it, it must be all right."

My worst nightmare was having those club scenes look like a beer commercial. You know: "Now everybody have fun!" So the cast and crew had to be portable and adaptable, no big circus, no trailers. We had to shoot on the spot and we had to shoot fast. No way were we going to try to re-create an Ibiza nightclub on a set. I hate movies where they do that, like in "Go" or whatever, where they hire a warehouse and put 200 extras in it. It always looks so fake.

Tell us about the Coke Badger. He's the latest in a line of fuzzy, scary creatures in film.

Yes he is!

I was thinking about the rabbits, of course. In "Sexy Beast" and in "Donnie Darko."

Yeah, but nobody uses them for comedy. I really wanted the beast to attack and kill, but also to be a comic character. I guess he's a gag: Cocaine is a very badgering drug. But we've all seen those preachy movies about drugs, where four addicts end up in the fetal position. Yes, drugs are bad, but I didn't want that to be the message of the film.

Obviously Paul Kaye is the heart and soul of this film, and it feels like a breakout performance. He's well known in Britain but not at all over here. How'd you find him?

Well, Paul came very well recommended, so we exchanged tapes and mutually disliked each other's work. [Laughter from Kaye, who is nearby.] Seriously, I love that he tends to "improvise toward the stupid," as he puts it, which was just perfect for the character of Frankie.

Isn't this movie a tough sell in the United States? In Britain and Europe, club music is huge and DJs are big stars. But it's still a small niche audience in America.

Yeah, well, it's harder in some ways. But you don't have to know anything about club music, or like it, to enjoy the film. The club kids are our core audience -- we just had a screening with BPM magazine, and they went nuts for it. But I also had a 70-year-old couple at the Aspen Film Festival tell me it was the perfect movie. They were like: "We don't listen to that kind of music, but there we were, tappin' our toes!"

"It's All Gone Pete Tong" opens April 15 in New York, April 29 in Los Angeles and May 13 in at least 24 other U.S. cities.

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