Director: Marah Strauch
Writer: Marah Strauch and Chris Campion
Producer: Eric Bruggemann and Marah Strauch
Logline
Tipped to be bigger than Elvis as a young man, singer-songwriter Scott Fagan is taking one last shot at success in his seventies.
Synopsis:
In the vein of Searching For Sugarman and Twenty-Feet From Stardom, Soon tells the remarkable untold story of Scott Fagan, one of the greatest, unrecognized musical talents of his generation, and his re-emergence 50 years later, in his late 70s, still hungry, trying to catch that elusive break.
It is the story of a singer-songwriter raised in grinding poverty in the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, who moves to New York City in the mid-1960s and finds himself mentored and managed by legendary songwriter Doc Pomus.
Scott pursues success as if his life depended on it to lift the rest of his family out of poverty. But he somehow never quite makes it. Every break ends… broken, sometimes from his bull-headed refusal to compromise his art and songwriting.
Tipped for great success, he records his debut 1968 album for Atco, a heavily autobiographical calypso-folk record entitled South Atlantic Blues. The album lands with a thud, but is so beloved by pop artist Jasper Johns that he immortalizes it as a lithograph artwork, Scott Fagan Record.
Scott turns his experiences in the music industry into a rock opera entitled Soon, which opens on Broadway. Critics savage it, and it shuts in three days. After Soon closes, Scott flounders for years, eking out a living as a performer and working blue-collar jobs to feed his family.
Scott’s debut album, South Atlantic Blues, was reissued in 2015 to rave reviews. The arc of his career seems to be turning.
Then… almost 50 years after Scott’s Broadway musical closed, 1968 demos from Soon are found in an attic. Plans are made to record the second Scott Fagan album that never was: the soundtrack to his Broadway musical.
After decades in obscurity, will Scott Fagan finally receive recognition SOON
