East St. Louis native makes Bieber documentary

Selecting pop sensation Justin Bieber as a documentary subject was a no-brainer for filmmaker Thomas Gibson, who sees Bieber, 17, as being bigger than the Beatles.

That's right, he said it: bigger than the Beatles.

"The hoopla surrounding the Beatles was similar to what Bieber has been experiencing, but it's even moreso with Bieber because of social media," says Gibson, an East St. Louis native. "John Lennon and Paul McCartney couldn't send out a text or go to Twitter to talk to fans. Bieber can, and fans feel like they know him personally. He has more power if you compare the two eras. His popularity is bigger because of his reach."

Gibson, who lives in Los Angeles after living locally and writing for a number of St. Louis publications, is executive producer of the new Bieber documentary "Biebermania!" (available at Amazon.com, Walmart, Kmart and other outlets).

"My whole thing was I've done music documentaries on everybody, and I thought he was an interesting subject, this little kid with this swag," Gibson says. "Why is everybody so interested in him? I started reading about him and said, OK, why not?"

Gibson loves the story of a Canadian boy rising from obscurity after his mother puts clips of his singing on YouTube.

"It was preparation meets opportunity, and he took full advantage of that," Gibson says. "It was really just the perfect storm that took off. That rarely happens, if ever. It's an against-all-odds story of the underdog, and I like the underdogs. And now the underdog is on top."

Grammy-nominee Bieber has released best-selling albums such as "My World," "My World 2.0," "My Worlds Acoustic" and "Never Say Never — the Remixes," with hits like "Somebody to Love" "Baby" and "U Smile."

Gibson started working on "Biebermania!" in December through his company, Lapdog Entertainment, shooting and editing in under a month.

"I threw the idea out there, and people were clamoring for it," says Gibson, who went with Xenon Pictures for distribution.

He says his biggest issues in making the documentary were time and budget and that there were "a lot of moving parts to make this happen." One potentially big moving part, whether Bieber would participate, was resolved quickly with a no.

Gibson says he normally gets the subject to participate in his documentaries, but Bieber was an exception. Bieber's camp was knee-deep in its own documentary, "Never Say Never," which opened this year.

"I was in an awkward position," Gibson says. "I just had to move forward."

He shot around Bieber and relied on archival footage of the singer.

Gibson says he showed the finished movie to Paramount Pictures, which produced "Never Say Never," after they asked to see it for legal reasons.

"I knew what to say and what not to say," says Gibson, a film school graduate of Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

"Biebermania!" is not Gibson's first foray into documentaries. But before filmmaking, he worked from 1994-98 as a freelancer for a number of St. Louis publications, including the Post-Dispatch.

Gibson got into producing at KPLR-TV (Channel 11). He produced specials for the station that were hosted by Rikk Idol (who went on to become Todd Newton on cable's E!).

While at KPLR in 1998, Gibson shot and wrote a passion project, his documentary "Bloody Island" about the East St. Louis riots of 1917.

After Gibson sold it to the Filmmakers Library, he got a call from the executive producer of "E! True Hollywood Story." The producer saw "Bloody Island" and wanted to hire him as a producer.

"He said if I wanted it, I had two weeks to get to LA," Gibson says. "I packed up my car and drove to LA and never came back. My entire life changed in two weeks."

His first assignment was as segment producer for an "E! True Hollywood Story" on Hollywood Associated Press correspondent James Bacon. He left E! after 2 1/2 years.

"Those specials were hard to do, a grind, and I wanted to do something more urban," he says.

In 2001, he was offered a 20-week gig at BET. The show was "How I'm Living," BET's black version of MTV's "Cribs," and Gibson stayed with it for three years. He left when the show moved from Los Angeles to New York.

Since then, Gibson has produced specials on the greatest skits in "Saturday Night Live" history and on musicians Chris Brown, Mary J. Blige and Faith Evans; a documentary, "Letter to the President," about hip-hip and politics; and episodes of the BET show "Access Granted."

He's also behind "Kiss and Tail: The Hollywood Jump Off," the story of infamous urban music groupie Karrine Steffans, who had a best-selling book about the famous rappers she bedded. That special has aired on Showtime. He says "Kiss and Tail" may be the most talked-about thing he has ever done, and the raunchiest.

It's also his least favorite.

"I didn't like 'Kiss and Tail' at all," Gibson says. "It had to grow on me. It's the most unimportant thing I've ever done, doing something so mindless and ridiculous. I'm a thinking guy."

Source: STLToday