Milli Vanilli Archives

Review: ‘Girl You Know It’s True,’ starring Tijan Njie, Elan Ben Ali, Matthias Schweighöfer, Bella Dayne, Graham Rogers, Ashley Dowds and SteVonté Hart

August 13, 2024

by Carla Hay

Tijan Njie and Elan Ben Ali in “Girl You Know It’s True” (Photo courtesy of Vertical)

Directed by Simon Verhoeven

Some language in German and French with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Germany and in the United States, from 1986 to 1998 (with some flashbacks to previous years), the dramatic biographical film “Girl You Know It’s True” (based on the story of pop duo Milli Vanilli) features a cast of white and black characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: German native Rob Pilatus and French native Fabrice “Fab” Morvan form a pop music duo called Milli Vanilli and agree to German music producer Frank Farian’s demands to pretend to the world that Pilatus and Morvan sang the vocals on Milli Vanilli’s first album.

Culture Audience: “Girl You Know It’s True” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Milli Vanilli, late 1980s pop music and dramas based on real-life celebrity scandals.

Matthias Schweighöfer and Bella Dayne in “Girl You Know It’s True” (Photo courtesy of Vertical)

The biopic “Girl You Know It’s True” has both tawdriness and gravitas in chronicling the rise and fall of lip-syncing pop duo Milli Vanilli. Some scenes are very rushed, but the acting is solid, and there’s some satirical comedy that’s handled well. The movie’s combination of tabloid spectacle and tragic downfall can be expected because it’s a reflection of the real-life story of Milli Vanilli, a musical act that flamed out after just two years of hit-making stardom, when it was revealed in 1990 that the two members of Milli Vanilli didn’t sing any of their vocals on their smash debut album. In 1998, former Milli Vanilli member Rob Pilatus died of an overdose of alcohol and prescription medication, after years of battling substance abuse. Pilatus’ year of birth has been disputed, but he was believed to be 32 or 33 when he died.

Written and directed by Simon Verhoeven, “Girl You Know It’s True” was released less than a year after the 2023 Paramount+ documentary “Milli Vanilli” (directed by Luke Korem), which has a fuller story than this low-budget biopic. Several of the people who participated as interviewees in the “Milli Vanilli” documentary are among the associate producers for “Girl You Know It’s True” and are portrayed by actors in this biopic: Ingrid Segieth, who was part of Milli Vanilli’s music production team; Brad Howell, one of the singers who did the real vocals on Milli Vanilli’s first album; Todd Headlee, who was part of Milli Vanilli’s management team; and Carmen Pilatus, who was the adoptive older sister of former Milli Vanilli member Rob Pilatus.

Also listed as an associate producer of the “Girl You Know It’s True” movie is John Davis, one of the singers who did the real vocals on Milli Vanilli’s first album. Davis died in 2021, at the age of 66. Two of the co-producers of the “Girl You Know It’s True” movie are Fabrice “Fab” Morvan (one of the former members of Milli Vanilli) and Milli Vanilli fraud mastermind Frank Farian, who are obviously two of the main characters in the movie. In real life, Farian died on January 23, 2024. He was 82.

Because so many of the real-life people involved with Milli Vanilli were also involved in the making of “Girl You Know It’s True,” this movie is essentially an authorized biopic. Most of Milli Vanilli’s hits (the original recordings and/or versions recorded by the movie’s actors) are in the movie, such as “Girl You Know It’s True,” “Blame It on the Rain,” “Baby Don’t Forget My Number” and “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You.” The recreations of Milli Vanilli concerts and music videos are mostly faithful to what they looked like in real life, but you never forget that you’re watching actors. For the purposes of this review, the characters in this movie are referred to by their first names.

“Girl You Know It’s True” opens with Rob (played by Tijan Njie) and Fab (played by Elan Ben Ali) lounging in a recording studio in Germany and looking back on their Milli Vanilli journey in a somewhat morbid context. In these hindsight scenes, Rob is supposed to be a “ghost” who shares the narration with Fab, who says in the introduction, “There’s another side to the story” about the Milli Vanilli scandal. Actually, there’s nothing in “Girl You Know It’s True” that hasn’t already been revealed in documentaries and news reports.

Rob is the more flamboyant, reckless and extroverted member of the duo. Fab is quieter, more thoughtful and more level-headed. It’s shown repeatedly that they both treated each other like brothers. However, “Girl You Know It’s True” (which is somewhat jumbled in the beginning of the movie) only shows Rob’s childhood and his family. Fab’s childhood (he was born in 1966 in Paris) is never shown. In real life, Morvan has given interviews saying that he had an unhappy childhood, and his family was not supportive of him wanting to be an entertainer. In the movie, Fab is shown making phone calls to his mother.

Before showing the early years part of Rob’s life, “Girl You Know It’s True” does a quick run-through of the origins of music producer Frank Farian (played by Matthias Schweighöfer), the music producer who created the Milli Vanilli concept and co-wrote much of Milli Vanilli’s songs. As Fab says in a voiceover: “Without this guy, our story wouldn’t have happened.” The movie then does a brief flashback to 1953 to Kirn, West Germany, to show 12-year-old Frank (played by David Verhoeven) playing outside somewhere. This scene lasts for less than two minutes before the movie abruptly fast forwards to 1973, when 32-year-old Frank is working as a producer with the German pop/R&B group Boney M, his first big successful music act.

Boney M’s best-known songs (which were mostly hits in Europe in the late 1970s and early 1980s) included “Daddy Cool,” “Ma Baker,” “Belfast,” “Sunny,” “Rasputin,” “Mary’s Boy Child/Oh My Lord” and “Rivers of Babylon.” Boney M, just like Milli Vanilli, was later exposed as a lip-syncing music act whose songs were sung by other people because Farian wanted more physically attractive people to be presented as the singers instead of the real singers. There are implications of racial exploitation in both cases, because Farian was white and Boney M and Milli Vanilli were black.

As a child, Rob (played by Romeo Guy Da Silva) wasn’t fully accepted by the racist people in the community where he grew up in Munich because he was biracial. (His single mother, who gave him up for adoption, was white. His father was black. What the movie doesn’t mention is that Rob’s mother was a stripper.) Rob lived in an orphanage for the first four years of his life until he was adopted by spouses Hans Pilatus (played by Thomas Bading) and Antonie Pilatus (played by Ulrike Arnold), who considered themselves to be progressive because they adopted a child of another race.

“Girl You Know It’s True” downplays the racism that Rob experienced as a child. By most accounts, in real life, Rob was viciously bullied by people in his school and other people in the community because he wasn’t white. However, in the movie, the only “racism” that Rob experiences as a child is he gets hostile stares from white people who look at him as if he’s some type of alien.

Rob is very close to his adoptive sister Carmen (played by Tijan Marei), who has to tell underage Rob that he’s not related to Boney M, a group that he greatly admires and is one of the few black German entertainment acts that he sees on TV. Carmen is also the one who tells Rob that his biological father is an American military soldier who had a short-lived relationship with Rob’s biological mother. Years later, after Milli Vanilli became famous, this biological father—Andrew Harrison (played by Cornell Adams)—makes his identity known.

“Girl You Know It’s True” then fast-forwards to 1986 and 1987 in Munich, during the early years of Rob and Fab’s relationship. The movie depicts Rob and Fab (a recent immigrant from France) meeting at an audition to be backup dancers for a pop singer. The two young men instantly become friends and move in together, as they struggle to make it in showbiz. Rob is depicted as the one who came up with the idea for them to get their famous long braids because he said that all superstar music artists have well-known hairstyles.

As Rob and Fab live in obscurity and poverty in Munich, successful music producer Frank is doing an interview with a magazine journalist named Ingrid Segieth (played by Bella Dayne), who asks him if the rumors are true that the members of Boney M aren’t the real singers of Boney M songs. Frank gets defensive and tells Ingrid that no other media outlets have questioned Boney M’s validity. Ingrid then goes from interrogating Frank to asking if she can work for him.

The movie shows what happened in real life: Ingrid, whose nickname was Milli, became Frank’s lover and his most trusted assistant. What’s fabricated or exaggerated for the movie is a scene where Ingrid sees Rob and Fab dancing at a Munich nightclub and tells Frank about this charismatic and good-looking duo. Frank then invites Rob and Fab to his studio. More likely in real life, Frank found out about Rob and Fab through some of the local media exposure that the two pals were getting as dancers and DJs.

During this first meeting, Rob and Fab assume that Frank is interested in them to be singers for his next album project. But, as the movie depicts, Frank had already planned (with Ingrid being in on the plan from the beginning) for this album to be recorded by other singers, while Rob and Fab would be “front men” impersonators because of Rob’s and Fab’s good looks. “Girl You Know It’s True” makes it look like Frank thought of the name Milli Vanilli because it was a combination of Ingrid’s nickname Milli and because she was eating vanilla ice cream during this first jubilant meeting where Fab and Rob agreed to work with Frank.

All of the real singers of the first Milli Vanilli album were from the United States: Brad Howell (played by David Mayonga), who did the vocals that Rob Pilatus lip synced in public; Charles Shaw and John Davis (played by Samuel S. Franklin), who did the vocals that Morvan lip synced in public; and twin sisters Linda Rocco (played by Ramona Gianvecchio) and Jodie Rocco (played by Bonita Lubliner), who both did backup vocals on the album. In real life, Shaw was the first to go public (in 1988) about Rob Pilatus and Morvan not singing on Milli Vanilli’s first album. But by Shaw’s own admission, Farian paid him off, and Shaw retracted his statements at the time. Shaw (who is mentioned but not depicted by an actor in “Girl You Know It’s True) was replaced by Davis.

In “Girl You Know It’s True,” Frank offers to pay for everything to develop the career of Milli Vanilli. But when Fab takes a closer look at the contract and sees that he and Rob will not be singers on the album, Fab is hesitant to sign the contract and thinks an attorney should look at it. By contrast, Rob is eager to sign the contract because he wants to be a star as quickly as possible. Rob tells Fab that they can convince Frank to have Rob and Fab sing vocals on the second Milli Vanilli album.

Many people watching the movie know the rest: Milli Vanilli’s 1989 debut album, “Girl You Know It’s True,” was an instant smash, first in Europe (where the album was released in 1988, under the title “All or Nothing,” with a slightly different track listing) and then in several other continents. As depicted in the biopic, Rob and Fab relocate to Los Angeles, where they get caught up in a “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll” lifestyle. (“Girl You Know It’s True” was filmed in Los Angeles, Munich and Berlin.) Rob is shown as the Milli Vanilli member who became seriously addicted to drugs (especially cocaine) and living a hedonistic lifestyle.

In the movie “Girl You Know It’s True,” Milli Vanilli’s manager Benny Dorn (played by Ashley Downs) is depicted as an opportunist who knew about the singing scam, but only after the first Milli Vanilli album was recorded. In real life, Sandy Gallin (who died in 2017, at the age of 76) was Milli Vanilli’s manager at the height of Milli Vanilli’s fame. It can be assumed that Gallin’s name was changed for this movie for legal reasons.

Gallin’s real-life assistant at the time was Todd Headlee (played by Graham Rogers), who is portrayed as someone who spent more time with Rob and Fab than anyone else in Milli Vanilli’s Los Angeles entourage. There’s also a vocal coach named Lisa (played by Natasha Loring) who is part of Milli Vanilli’s Los Angeles-based team. Todd and Lisa are portrayed as enthusiastic employees who did not know about the lip syncing scam until it could no longer be kept a secret. Even so, Lisa noticed early on that Rob’s and Fab’s heavy European accents and real vocals didn’t match what was heard on the recorded songs that were released under the Milli Vanilli name.

Kevin Liles (played by SteVonté Hart), one of the writers of the “Girl You Know It’s True” song, has a small role in the movie, which depicts Liles’ early career in the music industry, before he went on to high-ranking positions at Def Jam, Island Def Jam and Warner Music Group. Liles is one of the executive producers of the movie “Girl You Know It’s True.” As shown in the movie, he and the co-writers of the song “Girl You Know It’s True” were involved in a copyright legal dispute with Frank, who initially used the song for Milli Vanilli without permission.

Throughout the Milli Vanilli fraud, Frank is depicted in “Girl You Know It’s True” as a tyrannical control freak who was paranoid about people finding out about the scam and who would fly into rages if he thought he was losing control over Rob and Fab. For example, Frank is furious about Rob and Fab’s move to Los Angeles because Frank won’t be able to supervise them as much as he would if Rob and Fab stayed in Germany. Ingrid is depicted as a cheerful accomplice who repeatedly describes this scam as being one big “art project.”

Milli Vanilli was signed to Arista Records in the United States. In the “Girl You Know It’s True” movie, Clive Davis (who was president of Arista at the time) is not portrayed by any actor, but he is mentioned as someone who knew about the fraud all along. The record company executives who appear briefly in the movie are depicted as soulless and greedy corporate types. “Girl You Know It’s True” undoubtedly portrays Frank as the person who is most to blame for the scandal, but the movie lets a lot of other people off the hook (such as Segieth and record company executives) too easily.

As for the performances in the movie, Njie is more convincing as Rob than Ben Ali is as Fab. That’s because Njie has a credible German accent, while Ben Ali’s French accent isn’t very consistent. Still, Njie and Ben Ali have very good chemistry together and effectively portray the brotherly bond between Rob and Fab. There’s also some comic relief in the film when Rob and Fab bicker over petty things, or when something ridiculous happens that can only happen to people living an over-the-top celebrity lifestyle.

“Girl You Know It’s True” checks all the boxes of well-known moments in Milli Vanilli’s career. These moments include the notorious Club MTV concert in Bristol, Connecticut, on July 21, 1989, when the on-stage recording malfunctioned, and Milli Vanilli cut short the concert in embarrassment; Milli Vanilli winning the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in February 1990; and Milli Vanilli returning the Grammy Award in shame at a Los Angeles press conference in November 1990, after Milli Vanilli was exposed as lip syncers. Farian had gone public with the scam in a separate press conference held six days earlier because Milli Vanilli had threatened to go public first if Farian didn’t let Rob Pilatus and Morvan sing on Milli Vanilli’s second album.

Although “Girl You Know It’s True” has plenty of these expected career moments of Milli Vanilli, what’s missing from the movie is a deeper sense of who these people were apart from their music careers. It’s mentioned briefly that Frank Farian grew up in poverty, but there is no information on what led up to him becoming such a big fraudster in the music business. Likewise, Rob and Fab are rarely shown interacting with anyone who isn’t making money off of them or who isn’t a hanger-on. It might be the movie’s way of showing how empty a celebrity’s life can be without real friends or family for emotional support. But it still comes across as a little too superficial, when lesser-known aspects of Milli Vanilli’s lives could have been explored in this movie.

Milli Vanilli’s post-scandal existence is rushed in at the end of the movie, with no depiction of Rob and Fab’s real-life failed attempted comeback under the stage name Rob & Fab. There’s a brief portrayal of Rob’s downward spiral, including his three-month prison stint in 1996, for assault, vandalism and attempted robbery. Ingrid is shown asking Frank for money to help Rob with these legal problems, and she is the one to take Rob home when he is released from prison. As it stands, “Girl You Know It’s True” competently follows the usual celebrity biopic formula. This movie could’ve gotten so many things wrong in telling this real-life story, but “Girl You Know It’s True” gets things mostly right.

Vertical released “Girl You Know It’s True” in select U.S. cinemas on August 9, 2024. The movie was released in Germany on December 21, 2023.

Review: ‘Milli Vanilli,’ starring Fab Morvan, Brad Howell, Charles Shaw, Ingrid Segieth, Linda Rocco, Jodie Rocco and Ken Levy

June 11, 2023

by Carla Hay

“Milli Vanilli”

Directed by Luke Korem

Culture Representation: The documentary film “Milli Vanilli” has a group of black people and white people, mostly with ties to the music industry, discussing pop duo Milli Vanilli, whose career peaked in 1989 and 1990, before the duo was exposed for not singing any of the songs on Milli Vanilli’s blockbuster debut album.

Culture Clash: Milli Vanilli members Rob Pilatus (from Germany) and Fab Morvan (from France) say that they were exploited by German music producer Frank Farian, who came up with the idea for this fraud.

Culture Audience: “Milli Vanilli” will appeal primarily to people who used to be fans of Milli Vanilli and anyone who wants to watch a documentary about how the music industry was in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Fab Morvan in “Milli Vanilli” (Photo by Luke Korem/Paramount+)

“Milli Vanilli” is a riveting, must-see documentary that goes deeper than any “Behind the Music” episode because it exposes the exploitation behind the scandal. Music producer Frank Farian, the story’s chief villain, is absent, but the damage he caused is on full display. The movie is a scathing indictment of not just Farian but also other people behind the scenes who knew that Milli Vanilli was a fraud but went along with it because they were personally profiting off of this fraud. Some of those people are interviewed in the documentary, which had its world premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Festival.

Even though former Milli Vanilli member Fabrice “Fab” Morvan has told his story in interviews many times since Milli Vanilli was disgraced in 1990, the documentary allows Morvan to have more of a voice than previous Milli Vanilli documentaries. Rob Pilatus, the other member of Milli Vanilli, died in 1998, of an overdose of alcohol and prescription medication, after years of battling substance abuse. Pilatus’ year of birth has been disputed, but he was believed to be 32 or 33 when he died.

Directed by Luke Korem, the “Milli Vanilli” documentary fills in some of the blanks that were noticeable in VH1’s “Behind the Music” episode on Milli Vanilli, the artist profiled in the very first “Behind the Music” episode in 1997. Pilatus was still alive and participated in that “Behind the Music” episode, but there were some unanswered questions in the “Behind the Music” episode that the “Milli Vanilli” documentary mostly answers, such as record company involvement in covering up the scam. (MTV Entertainment Studios, the production company behind the Milli Vanilli documentary, is owned by Paramount, which also owns VH1.)

Morvan (who was born in 1966 in Paris) says he wanted to be a singer and a dancer from an early age. He describes his childhood as being an “abusive environment.” Morvan adds, “So, I ran away.” Morvan met Pilatus at a dance seminar at a club in Munich, Germany. The two immediately bonded over similar backgrounds and shared goals.

Morvan says of Pilatus, “Just like me, he was looking for family.” Pilatus, who was biracial, was adopted by a white family in Germany. His white biological mother was a stripper, while his black biological father is unknown.

In the documentary, the story is retold about how Morvan and Pilatus, both struggling and desperate, met German producer Farian in 1988. Morvan had relocated to Germany by then, and he and Pilatus were getting small gigs as DJs and dancers. Pilatus also worked as a model. At the time, Morvan and Pilatus were part of a short-lived trio called Empire Bizarre, whose other member was a woman named Charliene. Morvan says that he and Pilatus were living together in poverty and were close like brothers.

Farian’s main claim to fame at the time was Boney M, a pop/R&B group that had a string of hits (mostly in Europe) in the late 1970s and early 1980s, such as “Daddy Cool,” “Ma Baker,” “Belfast,” “Sunny,” “Rasputin,” “Mary’s Boy Child/Oh My Lord” and “Rivers of Babylon.” Just like Milli Vanilli, Boney M was later exposed to be a group that had other people recording the vocals on the songs.

Morvan and Pilatus had been getting some local publicity in Germany, which is how Farian heard about them. Farian invited them to his recording studio in Frankfurt, Germany. Pilatus and Morvan recorded a demo with Farian, who dictated what his vision for them would be. He said that we would sign them and give them all the funds that they needed to launch a music career but they could not sing on their first album.

After Milli Vanilli was exposed as a singing fraud, Morvan and Pilatus (when he was alive) repeatedly said in interviews that at the time they signed the contract with Farian, he had promised them that they could sing on Milli Vanilli’s second album, but Farian reneged on that promise. This dispute ultimately led to the downfall of Milli Vanilli. Morvan and Pilatus said that before they became famous and had signed with Farian, they had regrets about the contract and tried to back out of it, but Farian threatened to sue them for all the money he had already invested in them.

Milli Vanilli’s rapid rise to success is a well-known story that is repeated here. Milli Vanilli’s 1989 debut album, “Girl You Know It’s True,” was an instant smash, first in Europe (where the album was released in 1988, under the title “All or Nothing,” with a slightly different track listing) and then in several other continents. The album had major hits, including “Girl You Know It’s True,” “Blame It on the Rain,” “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You” and “Baby Don’t Forget My Number.” In 1990, Milli Vanilli won the Grammy for Best New Artist. In the end, it was Farian who exposed the Milli Vanilli vocals fraud when Morvan and Pilatus threatened to expose the fraud because Farian wouldn’t let them sing their real vocals on Milli Vanilli’s second album.

Farian, who now lives in seclusion, is not interviewed in the documentary. He did not respond to the filmmakers’ requests for an interview. However, the “Milli Vanilli” documentary has interviews with several people who knew the truth behind the scenes, including Ingrid Segieth, whose nickname Milli was the inspiration for the Milli Vanilli name.

Segieth was Farian’s secretary and girlfriend at the time. She says she was very close to Pilatus, although she denies that she and Pilatus ever had a romantic relationship. The most she will admit to is that she and Pilatus would platonically cuddle and sleep in the same bed on many occasions. “We loved each other without the sex,” Segieth comments.

Segieth was the person who found Pilatus dead of an overdose in Friedrichsdorf, Germany. She cries in the documentary over this memory and says she is ashamed of any part she played in his downfall. She denies any claims that Farian threatened to sue Morvan and Pilatus if they backed out of the contract. Segieth also says in the documentary that Morvan and Pilatus willingly signed the contract and didn’t object to having other people sing Milli Vanilli songs on the first Milli Vanilli album.

Morvan admits it, up to a point, because he still claims that he and Pilatus regretted the contract soon after they signed it, but they tried to justify those regrets after success came quickly for them. Morvan says that he and Pilatus “got sucked into the fame, power and adoration … We embraced the lie … It was difficult not to say no to this new life … That became very addictive.”

Other people interviewed in the documentary who knew the truth from the beginning are the people who sang on Milli Vanilli’s first album: Brad Howell, who did the vocals that Pilatus lip synced in public; Charles Shaw, who did the vocals that Morvan lip synced in public; and twin sisters Linda Rocco and Jodie Rocco, who both did backup vocals on the album. They don’t have much to say that they haven’t already talked about in other interviews.

Shaw was the first to go public (in 1988) about Pilatus and Morvan not singing on Milli Vanilli’s first album. But by his own admission, Farian paid him off, and Shaw retracted his statements at the time. Shaw was replaced by John Davis, who died in 2021, at the age of 66.

And what about people at Milli Vanilli’s record companies? This is where the “Milli Vanilli” documentary gets interesting. Milli Vanilli was signed to Arista Records (led by Clive Davis at the time) in the United States. Davis is not interviewed in the documentary.

However, Ken Levy, who was a senior vice president at Arista at the time, is interviewed and essentially admits that high-ranking people at Arista (including Davis) knew that Pilatus and Morvan didn’t sing on Milli Vanilli’s first album, but only after the album was released in Europe and after Milli Vanilli had signed with Arista. Thomas Stein, who worked for Ariola Records (Milli Vanilli’s record company in Germany), denies knowing that Morvan and Pilatus did not sing on Milli Vanilli’s first album before the album was released in Europe.

Richard Sweret, who worked in artist A&R at Arista, says that people from the record company weren’t allowed in the studio for Milli Vanilli sessions, which he says were under Farian’s tight control. Mitchell Cohen, another former A&R executive for Arista, echoes that claim and says that although it was weird not to see Morvan and Pilatus do any recordings in the studio, Arista took the album “on faith” from Farian that everything was legitimate.

Arista had signed Milli Vanilli after Milli Vanilli’s first album was a success in Europe, so these former Arista executives say that they didn’t question the validity of the vocals at the time that Milli Vanilli had completed the album. The “All or Nothing” album released in Europe actually didn’t have the names of Morvan and Pilatus on it, but the former Arista executives interviewed in the documentary say that they didn’t notice that detail at the time.

When it came time for Milli Vanilli to do live performances, that’s when more people behind the scenes found out that Morvan and Pilatus didn’t sing the vocals on the album. The former Arista executives say that by then, Milli Vanilli was a success for a lot of people, and it would’ve been too embarrassing for the secret to be exposed. When Milli Vanilli went on tour or performed on TV, it was common for several artists to lip sync to recordings, so there were many people behind the scenes who didn’t question when Pilatus and Morvan did that too.

However, Mill Vanilli’s backup touring musicians knew the truth early on. Keith Yoni, the bass player for Milli Vanill’s backup band, says in the documentary that he knew something was “off” in their first rehearsals when the backup musicians were there but the “singers” were not. It’s easy to see how these backup musicians would not tell this secret because they wanted to keep their jobs.

The documentary mentions the infamous incident on July 21, 1989, in Bristol, Connecticut, when Milli Vanilli was performing on stage for the Club MTV tour. The recording that Pilatus and Morvan were lip syncing to got stuck and repeated loudly. Pilatus and Morvan ran off stage in embarassment. The crowd got angry and rowdy, not because of the lip syncing but because Pilatus and Morvan cut their performance short. “Downtown” Julie Brown, who was a VJ on MTV at the time and was on the Club MTV tour, says in the documentary that Pilatus had a meltdown backstage over this incident.

However, this public glitch didn’t slow down Milli Vanilli, since many people who saw this mishap assumed that Morvan and Pilatus still recorded the songs on Milli Vanilli’s first album but were lip syncing to the songs in concert. Lip syncing in concert is a common practice that is looked down on by critics but accepted by most fans. Lip syncing in concert was less accepted then as it is now. Artists in pop music tend to get a more leniency about lip syncing in concert, compared to other genres where artists are expected to have more authenticity.

The usual perils of sudden fame are detailed in the documentary. Morvan says that he and Pilatus indulged in a lot of drugs and promiscuity. Pilatus’ ego began to get out of control, as he began making statements in interviews that Milli Vanilli was better and more talented than legendary artists such as Elvis Presley, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger.

The beginning of the end for Milli Vanilli was winning the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. Shaw comments, “Once they won the Grammy, they hung themselves.” Documentary interviewees who knew Farian at the time say that that Farian did not want Milli Vanilli to be submitted for any Grammy Awards consideration, out of fear that the vocals fraud secret would be exposed.

However, Todd Headlee, who was the assistant to Sandy Gallin (Milli Vanilli’s manager at the time) didn’t know that. (Gallin died in 2017. He was 76.) Headlee went ahead on his own initiative and submitted Milli Vanilli for Best New Artist and other Grammy categories. Headlee says in the documentary that he thought he was doing a good thing for Milli Vanilli with these Grammy submissions and was confused when many people in Milli Vanilli’s inner circle were upset over Milli Vanilli being submitted for the Grammys.

The Recording Academy, which was then known as the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), is the industry group that votes for the Grammys. NARAS had a policy at the time that any artist performing at the Grammy Awards ceremony had to perform live. However, Segieth says in the documentary that people at Arista Records (she doesn’t name names) bribed Michael Greene, who was NARAS CEO from 1988 to 2002, to let Milli Vanilli lip sync on the Grammy Awards in 1990. Twelve years later, Greene resigned from NARAS in disgrace over allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

After Farian exposed Milli Vanilli for being vocal frauds, Pilatus and Morvan did a notorious press conference in November 1990, when they gave back their Grammy Award trophies that they won in February of that year. The media people at the press conference asked tough questions, and many of the reporters were visibly angry. However, the documentary does a very good job of pointing out that while most people in the media and the general public focused their wrath on Pilatus and Morvan, the person who masterminded this fraud (Farian) escaped relatively unscathed. There are also racial implications to what Farian did, since he built his entire career on exploiting black artists.

Farian would go on to produce a band called the Real Milli Vanilli, with members that included Davis and Howell, but that band flopped. And so did comeback attempts by Pilatus and Morvan, who renamed their act Rob & Fab, which released a self-titled album in 1993. Pilatus died before doing a promotional tour for Rob & Fab’s “Back and in Attack” album, which was never released.

Morvan has been a solo artist for several years (he says he no longer lip syncs when performing live), and he seems content with his current life, although he’s still obviously affected by Pilatus’ death and the highs and lows of Milli Vanilli. The documentary includes an interview with Morvan’s Dutch partner Tessa van der Steen, who is the mother of Morvan’s children and who works as a health coach/orthomolecular therapist. She says she didn’t know who he was when she first met him.

Carmen Pilatus, Rob’s adoptive sister, comments on what led to Rob’s downward spiral: “He sought attention that he didn’t get as a child.” She also describes Rob in his youth as someone who would make up elaborate stories about himself. She says that Rob felt tremendous guilt about the fraud from the beginning of Milli Vanilli.

Morvan comments on how Rob dealt with the guilt: “He drank and took more drugs to black out.” Carmen says that Rob could be “vicious when he was on drugs.” Most of her disgust is for Farian, whom she says showed up at Rob’s funeral, after the service was over, just so he could be photographed by the media.

Other people interviewed in the documentary include recording engineer Tom Gordon, who worked on the “Fab & Rob” album; songwriter Diane Warren, who wrote “Blame It on the Rain” and says she didn’t know about the lip syncing until after the song was a hit; music producer/songwriter Timbaland; former BET executive Stephen Hill; music producer/songwriter Toby Gad; and music journalists/critics Rob Sheffield, Hanif Abdurraqib and Gil Kaufman. “Milli Vanilli” is a documentary about one of the biggest scandals in the music industry, but it’s also a cautionary “be careful what you wish for” tale for entertainers who want to be rich and famous at any cost.

UPDATE: Paramount+ will premiere “Milli Vanilli” on October 24, 2023.

January 23, 2024 UPDATE: Frank Farian died in his Miami home on January 23, 2024. He was 82.