REVIEWS
Red Carpet Crash
March 22, 2023
What would you do if you could be totally, unapologetically “you?” If you could, how would you fulfill every one of your dreams and desires to their wildest potential? In theory, we could all live this way, if not for the limitations imposed by modern society- and oftentimes, our own minds. I’m An Electric Lampshade, an awe-inducing documentary/narrative written and directed by John Clayton Doyle, is the inspiring story of a man who abandons the typical retirement tradition in order to attain an outlandish dream.
The AU Review.com
November 22, 2021
I’m An Electric Lampshade is a docu-narrative that delightfully blurs the lines between what’s fact and what’s fiction: Los Angeles International Film Festival Review
Billed as a docu-narrative, indicating that both fact and fiction will be blended throughout, I’m An Electric Lampshade is a bizarre take on the age-old “It’s never too late to follow your dreams” tale, focusing on the unlikeliest of pop star wannabes.
Doug McCorkle is the most basic of nondescript American men. 60-years-old, with the type of manner that wouldn’t be worth stopping in the street for, he’s lived the corporate 9-5 life as an accountant for the majority of his working life. Married but with no kids – meaning the dual-income household for him and his wife has had its perks – Doug’s ready to retire early and put himself first. And the next chapter of his life looks to encapsulate his love of music, with the DJ enthusiast set to follow through on his desire to be a musician.
Film Threat
September 23, 2021
McCorkle presses the enroll tab, and suddenly I’m an Electric Lampshade transports us to the Philippines. We follow a young man to his job at a garment sweatshop, which he is hopeless at. After getting chewed out, he steals some of the fiercest clothes from the place and transforms into the amazing Fandango (Isra-Jeron Ysmael), drag juggernaut, and student at the school. We get a rundown of each drag student replete with their own flashy animated logo. All pupils of Sin Andre (Cesar Valentino), who McCorkle has traveled far to learn the art of being glorious from.
Meanwhile, Gina McCorkle waits at home in New York, proud of her husband for pursuing his dreams but missing him badly. All the while, she is taking care of an ailing companion (Darnell Bernard) who may or may not be real. I suspect he is supposed to be a physical expression of her inner turmoil.
The rest of McCorkle’s climb up the spiral staircase of stardom gets more and more strange, and the whole affair starts skewing cult hard. Doyle starts laying on the fabulous in doses that would normally be lethal in lesser hands.
Indie Documentary Review (on runpee.com)
October 17, 2021
My word…this makes a change! Normally I spend the first couple of paragraphs bitching on about how this film is not the genre I usually like, or that film is aimed at a totally different demographic to the one I inhabit, and then go on to use that as my reason for not liking it — or to highlight my surprise at enjoying it. I’m An Electric Lampshade, unusual title notwithstanding, rings quite a few bells with me! It’s a case of “there, but for the grace of (insert personal choice of deity), go I”.
Watch or Pass
September 23, 2021
Director John Clayton Doyle’s acclaimed documentary-narrative hybrid I’M AN ELECTRIC LAMPSHADE is embarking on a widescale festival run this fall across North America. Called both “one of the best documentaries of the year” (on-magazine.co.uk), and “One of the best films we’ll see all year” (KQED), the mind-bending music odyssey tells of Doug McCorkle, a buttoned- up, mild-mannered corporate accountant. After retiring at age 60, Doug puts his marriage and life savings on the line to chase his wildest dream.
Hoy Sale Cine
September 27, 2021
Widwest Film Journal
September 22, 2021
Doug McCorkle is a nondescript 60-year old American, the sort of man you’d never take notice of on the street. He’s held a fulfilling but unexciting 9-to-5 corporate office career as an accountant and a long-term marriage of love and devotion to his wife, Regina. The pair stuck together through thick and thin. Although they’d hoped to be parents, the opportunity just never came. It’s OK. Because they stayed dual-income with no kids, Doug is ready to retire early and he has big plans for the next phase in his life. For the past few years, he’s moonlighted as a local DJ. Now, at 60, he’s ready to make some music of his own.
I’m an Electric Lampshade is billed as a “docu-narrative,” blending reality and fiction. Doug, the musician, is real. The story told, however, is an extrapolation of his anxiety and his artistic ambitions. It’s hard to tell what parts are real and which parts are embellished for effect. It doesn’t really matter, though. The result is a visually and sonically arresting, and thematically moving, story about finding a new identity long after you’d settled for a self you didn’t love.
Director John Clayton Doyle reportedly started working with Doug on a music video before they expanded the project into a feature, a bold move that has paid off.
Berkleyside
(Associated with Decibels Music Film Festival)
By John Seal
October 27, 2021
This is an excerpt from the full article which also reviewed other films.
Even better is I’m An Electric Lampshade, an apparent blend of fiction and documentary about New York accountant Doug McCorkle’s post-retirement career in electronic dance music. Yes, you read that right: this softly spoken 60-something hung up his spreadsheets a few years back and traveled to the Philippines, where he learned to dance and perform, was hired to appear in a yogurt commercial, and became the unlikeliest of EDM stars.
I have no idea which parts of I’m An Electric Lampshade were staged (maybe all of them?), but it ultimately doesn’t matter: Director John Clayton Doyle’s film is a pungent reminder of the boundless possibilities of cinema. Eschewing the stale conventions of three-act narrative storytelling, talking head-driven documentaries, and impenetrable arthouse cinema, Lampshade is the best film I’ve seen so far this year. After watching it, you’ll be in nirvana … or darn close.
Movie-Blogger.com
September 20, 2021
If Doug McCorkle’s story is actually a true story, and I’m not saying it isn’t, you won’t believe it’s 100% true at first. You will have to see and digest Doug’s realization with a more reflexive perspective. It’s only when you overcome the initial feeling of wonder and “prudent envy”, and start admiring him for what he was able to do, that you can understand the power of his drive. If films can have the power to modify how you want to see yourself in the future, this is one of them.
Contrary to what you may be thinking, I’m an Electric Lampshade goes beyond a regular journey of self discovery. Sure, it begins on the verge of McCorkle’s “rebirth” through the consequences of his retirement. And just when you think the film is going towards the expected direction, it makes a violent turn. You won’t believe where it goes.
John Clayton Doyle writes and directs this docu-fiction approach and achieves a triumph in every sense of the word. It’s not that he paints Doug’s path and forces the audience to accompany the man in the materialization of a dream. The director rewrites the standard this film could have followed to make us accept Doug and his will. Instead he takes a dreamlike approach and goes over the edge with an overall risky film.
Wasteland Review
September 22, 2021
Mother of Movies
September 2021
Doug McCorkle is a married accountant who always wanted to be a rockstar. He just decided one day, he was going to pursue that dream and when he reached retirement age, dumped life savings and pure willpower into it and dived in headfirst. It doesn’t matter that when the mostly sedate narrative about Doug and his transformation doesn’t lead him into worldwide fame. What matters is that most of us spend our lives doing things that don’t make us insanely happy. We indulge in the ho-hum doldrums of a nine to five job. We put our biggest desires on the backburner or on a bucket list that is never checked off. Doug is the type that spent his working life crunching numbers day in and day out. His wife, who he adores, battles with her mental health. I’m an Electric Lampshade takes you on a trip, because “everybody wants to be somebody.”
His coworkers smile in a bemused kind of pitying way when news of his mission is laid out. There is little fanfare during his first performance that is neither good nor bad. It’s just that middle-of-the-road type of thing similar to when you see someone at karaoke who isn’t half bad.
KQED San Francisco
23 March 2021
One of the more jaw-dropping debuts you’ll ever see, I’m an Electric Lampshade, begins as an intriguing though conventional verité portrait of newly retired, happily married, 60-year-old accountant Doug McCorkle as he embarks on a song-and-dance career. Before you know it, we’re transported to a queer-positive Manila performing arts class where McCorkle’s transformation begins in earnest and the movie steps into the fabulous dreamland of music videos.
Harlem, NYC-based director and co-writer John Clayton Doyle was born in Oakland and raised in the East Bay burbs, and he successfully meshes middle-class stability and drag flamboyance into a lush fantasia. McCorkle delightedly takes his EDM clubland fantasy to the limit in the lavish Mexico City finale, applying a Leonard Cohen-ish spoken-word approach to sexualized lyrics.
By its triumphant end, I’m an Electric Lampshade has long since abandoned documentary realism and leaves us wondering, not unhappily, where McCorkle’s footlight dream ends and Doyle’s tale-weaving begins.”
The Movie Gourmet
31 March 2021
In the winning and surprising documentary I’m an Electric Lampshade, we meet the most improbable rock star – a mild-mannered accountant who retires to pursue his dream of performing.
60-year-old Doug McCorkle is fit for his age and has an unusually mellifluous voice, like a late night FM DJ or the announcer in a boxing ring. Other than that he looks like a total square.
There may be no flamboyance about Doug McCorkle, but it thrives inside him. His own artistic taste is trippy, gender-bending and daring. Think Price Waterhouse Cooper on the outside and Janelle Monáe on the inside.
We follow Doug as he goes to a performance school in the Philippines (where most of his classmates are drag queens) and the montage of his training resembles those in Fame and Flashdance. Doug is a good enough sport to wear MC Hammer pants in a bizarre Filipino yogurt commercial. It all culminates in a concert in Mexico.
The Reviews Hub
17 June 2021
Life used to begin at 40, now it begins at 60 – at least for accountant Doug who embraces his retirement by transforming into a pop musician and travelling to a performing arts school in the Philippines to hone his craft alongside a class of drag queens. John Clayton Doyle’s often surreal documentary I’m An Electric Lampshade is the Avant Garde rise to fame of an ordinary man immersing himself in a different culture and finding artistic inspiration in the people he meets.
Doug McCorkle is retiring from his job to pursue his dream of becoming a performer and during his big corporate leaving party a colleague recommends a school in the Philippines run by Sin Andre teaching vocal performance, dramatics and ‘professional realness’ to his clients. Parted from his beloved wife Gina, Doug is inspired, and his music evolves in unexpected directions.
Clayton Doyle’s film in some ways is an art installation with a plot, as a series of set pieces chart the journey to celebrity for one fairly ordinary man who embraces the visual aesthetics of performance. In one of the film’s longest music-video-like sequences, Doug passes through and dances with groups of people in wigs and face paint, is dazzled by the rainbow nightlights of the city, and explores how make-up and costume create identity, anonymity and community.
On: Yorkshire Magazine
June 2021
I’m not sure what a ‘documentary-narrative hybrid’ is, but I do know the star of this one, Doug McCorkle, is my new hero. He’s a buttoned-up, mild-mannered corporate accountant whose life looks like something from The Office, the sublime American version.
After retiring at 60, Doug puts his marriage and life savings on the line to chase his wildest dream.What opens with an in-your-face visual assault on the senses soon becomes a look at his everyday life. And while he may not have the most scintillating job, his passion for life and trying new things is infectious.
Doug is one of the countless, balding sixtysomething guys who spends his life doing a good job, in this case for a company that values his worth with a bunch of folks who really like him. But like so many guys of a certain age, they think he just conforms to a stereotype. Reliable, trustworthy Doug. And he’s all that, but under the surface is wild, daring, experimental Doug who wants to do crazy things rather than just crunch numbers. So he decides to record a song, and make a raunchy pop video, to the amazement of his fellow workers at his retirement party. The looks between one another say it all: Doug must have lost the plot.
Quays Life
June 2021
Doug McCorkle was the nice but instantly forgettable kid in school. Years later, he’s worked his way up the corporate ladder as a big-firm accountant. He lives with his wife, Gina, who he clearly loves, in a sprawling property in New York State, the size of a UK stately home. But inside he still feels like he’s a nobody.
After his 60th birthday, with retirement looming, Doug decides to make his leaving speech one his colleagues will never forget. So, Doug’s transformation begins, from a staid, unassuming accountant to an avant-garde, electro-pop star.
He meets with a couple of music producers to explain his dream. It sounds ridiculous, but they go with it. He takes singing lessons; swaps his suit for a T-shirt and shades; has his ear pierced, and gets a spray tan still wearing his white, baggy Y-fronts. It’s both heart-warming and hilarious. Most of his corporate team of 18 years think so too. Except one, who suggests if Doug is serious about following his dream of being a performer, he needs to go to a school to learn the ropes properly. And that’s what he does – in the Philippines.
The Indiependent
June 2021
A bizarre fusion of documentary and fictional storytelling, John Clayton Doyle’s directorial debut, I’m an Electric Lampshade, transcends most shortcomings thanks to its inventive construction and peculiar rhythms.
Doyle’s film begins somewhat plainly with Doug McCorkle, a well-off, white, happily married, 60-year-old corporate accountant who dreams of becoming a pop star à la Michael Jackson or David Byrne. Beneath Doug’s bland, mild-mannered demeanor lies a surprising creative spirit ready to burst into the spotlight. To help commemorate his retirement, Doug produces a short music video with scantily clad women and sexual, “alpha male” lyrics for his signature song, ‘I’m an Electric Lampshade’, to present at his going-away party. He receives enough encouragement from family and co-workers to further explore his musical career. Before too long, Doug is enrolled in a performing arts school in the Philippines, where most of the students are drag queens. As he continues to hone his skills and connects with a multitude of diverse artists, I’m an Electric Lampshade switches from a traditional documentary format to a wild tapestry of dance, music, and blunt symbolism that’s less focused on depicting reality than illuminating art’s liberating power. While lacking an especially compelling protagonist, then, I’m an Electric Lampshade is still memorable, at least when Doyle embraces the weirdness of it all.
The Edge
2 July 2021
Making its rounds at UK Film festivals this summer, I’m An Electric Lampshade is a fun amalgamation of reality and illusion, dance and song, and passion and feeling.
The story follows unexpected protagonist Doug McCorkle as he pushes himself to achieve his lifelong dream of being a performer. Pushed by his wife and coworkers after he reveals his passion at his retirement party, Doug traverses the globe in search of understanding. While away learning how to perform with a cast of drag performers in The Philippines, we are taken from a strict documentary-style viewing into an eyeful of inventive and subverted frames; we learn more about the inner workings of Doug’s mind, just as he begins to learn more about himself. We see many a performance from Doug himself as well as the varied cast, capturing the celebrations of many different people.
There is a real subversion to what a viewer would come to expect from a documentary, especially one about a retired 60-year-old man. We are snatched away from the norm of documentaries by adding in psychedelic drug use into Doug’s narrative. This subverts reality and blurs the lines of what is actually happening. If I’m being honest, I’m still so unsure what is actually real.