I know that I am jumping on the bandwagon a bit late, but I only managed to watch this last night. I had heard rave reviews pre the Oscar award and of course more rave reviews post the Oscars.
The first thing that surprised me was that hardly anyone outside of South Africa had heard of Rodriguez. He was one of those artists, like The Beatles, that our parents grew up listening to and because they liked him, our childhoods followed suit. I was so surprised that I actually emailed my token American friends and asked if they really hadn't heard of Rodriguez.
The plot is also one of those that you just cant make up: unbeknown to Rodriguez he was famous in South Africa and never saw any of the royalties. All of the South African's said that they did send royalties to the record company, Sussex. When the former owner of the record company was interviewed, I think a dead giveaway of his dishonesty, was when asked about the money he blurted "What's more important? The music or money". He couldn't recall any money.
What I liked most about the documentary, besides that fact that I got to hear South African accents on film (you cant beat a South African accent), was that throughout all of this Rodriguez remains so humble. Even when he performed to a sell out crowd for the first time in South African in 1997, he remained cool and just did his thing.
So what about now, after Searching for Sugarman won an Oscar?
In true Rodriguez style, he is back performing around the globe, has appeared on numerous talk shows and is still the same old Sugarman.
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