'Dirty Pop' review: Netflix series profiles Lou Pearlman, con man who created the Backstreet Boys
Let’s first deal with the A.I. in the Netflix documentary series “Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam” because it's a distraction throughout an otherwise intriguing and well-made chronicle of the life and times of the late, disgraced boy-band impresario Lou Pearlman.
At the outset of the first of three episodes, we see an old video recording of Pearlman in which he sits at a desk and says, “Hi, I’m Lou Pearlman, chairman of Trans Continental.” Graphics tell us:
THIS IS REAL FOOTAGE OF LOU PEARLMAN
THIS FOOTAGE HAS BEEN DIGITALLY ALTERED TO GENERATE HIS VOICE AND SYNCHRONIZE HIS LIPS
THE WORDS WERE WRITTEN BY LOU IN HIS BOOK, “BANDS, BRANDS & BILLIONS”
What does that even mean? We’re told in the closing credits that an actor named Chris Banks is doing the line readings from the book excerpts. The credits also say: “Picture: INSCREEN, INC.” and, “Voice: Resemble AI.” (The latter is an artificial intelligence platform.) Every time the series cuts to that video of Pearlman sitting at his desk, manipulated so he’s effectively narrating his own story from the grave, it comes across as a superfluous and weird gimmick.
Techno nonsense aside, “Dirty Pop” does a terrific job of taking us through the various stages of Pearlman’s astonishing and bizarre and scandalous career, from being the primary architect for bands such the Backstreet Boys and *NYSNC to orchestrating one of the largest and longest-running Ponzi schemes in U.S. history, scamming clients out of at least $500 million before he was nabbed by the FBI in Bali in 2007 and sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2008. (Pearlman died in 2016 while in custody.)
As we see in archival footage (we’re told some of it has never been seen before), Pearlman was anything but the Hollywood mogul type. An oversized man with crooked glasses and unfashionable clothes, he looked like a traveling salesman who had wandered into the wrong party — but he had a keen eye for talent, tireless ambition, and a way of getting everyone from family members to longtime friends to aspiring pop stars to believe in his vision. Pearlman made a fortune (or at least claimed to have made a fortune) leasing blimps to the likes of McDonald’s for advertising stunts and renting private planes to pop royalty. Inspired by the phenomenal success of New Kids on the Block in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he envisioned a boy band wave, and conducted a talent search that led to the creation of the Backstreet Boys.
Cut to early footage of the Backstreet Boys, with band member A.J. McLean watching in present day, chuckling and saying, “Oh God, ‘Loverboy.’ Hey man, you gotta start somewhere, right?”
As the Backstreet Boys hit it big in Germany before returning home to conquer the United States in the mid-1990s, Pearlman funded the rise of a group called *NSYNC. (In one clip, we see a very young Justin Timberlake circa 1995, spinning a basketball on his finger in his bedroom and pointing to a poster on the wall: “That’s my Janet Jackson poster, 'cause I love that woman.”)
He continued to build his pop empire, mentoring the careers of LFO, Aaron Carter, Take 5 and Natural, and he was also involved in a myriad of other businesses, including the Church Street Station entertainment complex in Orlando, a pizza parlor, a dance studio, a nightclub, the Orlando Predators of the AFL, Chippendales — and a fake airline, a fake investment program and a fake accounting firm.
With Chris Kirkpatrick from *NSYNC, former Pearlman attorney Cheney Mason (who became a major adversary after Pearlman stiffed him out of millions) and a number of former friends and employees providing context and sharing recollections, “Dirty Pop” takes us through the paces of Pearlman’s downfall.
The Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC were making tens if not hundreds of millions but seeing very little of the profits, leading both acts to part ways with Pearlman. Eventually, hundreds of investors who had trusted Pearlman with their nest eggs, their life savings, their futures, would learn when they tried to withdraw their money that there was no money. For decades, Pearlman had been running an elaborate Ponzi scheme until he finally ran out of excuses, ran out of money and ran out of places to hide.
The real victims, of course, are all those people who lost everything to this con man, but there’s also something tragic about Pearlman’s downfall, which was entirely of his own doing and utterly unnecessary. He could have made a fortune and lived an incredible life just by virtue of his unique ability to find and nurture and promote talent. Says Michael Johnson of the boy band Natural, “Lou could meet you and identify your dream, and within minutes could be selling that dream back to you in a way that was magical.”
Unfortunately, that magic was built on a foundation of lies.