Milli Vanilli, the popular duo of Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus in the 1990s, were celebrated R&B figures in the music industry. They achieved immense success, selling millions of records and even securing a number-one hit with their catchy tune, Girl You Know It’s True, in 1988. However, their career took an unexpected turn in 1990 when an incident of lip-syncing, captured during an MTV broadcast, led to a startling revelation.
German producer Frank Farian confessed that neither Morvan nor Pilatus had provided the vocals for their highly acclaimed album, Girl You Know It’s True, which had achieved six-times platinum status. Due to public shame, the duo had to return their Grammy Award for Best New Artist, which they earned in 1990, thus leading to Pilatus’s death from a fatal drug overdose in 1998. Recently, a new documentary, Milli Vanilli, by Filmmaker Luke Korem, is attempting to tell the story of the iconic duo from a new perspective.
Luke Korem reveals his reasons for making the documentary, ‘Milli Vanilli’
While discussing the motivations behind creating the documentary, which had its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival recently, Korem shared with Variety that he desired to narrate the story in an unbiased fashion. “I felt the story had been reduced in popular culture to a headline, so I started digging through the various layers, especially the human aspect,” Korem told the news outlet. “I wanted to tell a very personal story, not only of Rob and Fab, but everyone involved in Milli Vanilli and how it impacted their lives.”
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Korem further revealed that the documentary is an opportunity for all parties involved to own their truth. “I wanted to offer everyone a chance to tell their story, what they remember and how they feel about it now,” the filmmaker confessed. “A great many people did things that were wrong. Some people in the film admit what they did was wrong — even Fab admitted he and Rob embraced the lie.”
Morvan hopes the documentary will capture the story in its unfiltered form
The filmmaker disclosed that Milli Vanilli is aimed at uncovering the whole truth about the iconic duo of Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus. “For over 30 years, the story of Milli Vanilli – in particular Rob and Fab – has been reduced to sensational headlines,” Korem explained. “With this documentary, we pull back the curtain on pop music. Featuring interviews with the real singers, record executives, the producer mastermind behind the deception, and exclusive interviews with Rob and Fab, we unveil the truth of this complex, exciting, and dramatic story.”
However, the only surviving member of the group, Morvan, also expressed his anticipation that the documentary will bring about a complete revelation of the truth. “When we did ‘Behind the Music,’ I wasn’t as strong as I am today,” he admitted to Variety. “I can look at it with some distance now. There’s no pain attached to it anymore. There was a part of me that felt guilty and insecure. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but people didn’t know the whole story. This documentary overturns many misconceptions, and it’s just the start. It was very difficult to look at ourselves in the mirror back then, with all the jokes and ridicule.”
“To see this story from our perspective was important because we were portrayed as the villains for so long. This fills in some of the pieces of the puzzle,” Morvan concluded. “Nobody wanted to spill the beans and stop the gravy train. But that’s the business of pop music. Money is more important than human beings.”