Street Of Dreams (Martin Sharp Film)

''Street of Dreams'' is an unfinished documentary film about the musician Tiny Tim and the 1979 Ghost Train fire at Luna Park Sydney, directed and produced by Australian artist Martin Sharp.

Themes and content

The film first features Tiny Tim, showcasing footage of his record-setting, two-hour-and-seventeen-minute professional singing marathon at Luna Park Sydney in January 1979. It tells Tiny's life story, framed around the marathon performance footage, while highlighting his many eccentricities, religious convictions and sexual hangups as captured by Sharp's camera crews in both Australia and the United States.

The film's other major theme is the 1979 Ghost Train fire at Luna Park, which occurred five months after Tiny's visit. Sharp became convinced the two events were somehow linked, and so the film covers the perceived synchronicities and theological underpinnings of the fire while also telling the story of Luna Park in general. As filming went on, Sharp also began to gather evidence, also presented in the film, that the fire was not an accident as had been originally reported but was in fact deliberately lit by associates of Abe Saffron.

''Street of Dreams'' explores all of the above themes - Tiny, the marathon performance, his life in general, the Ghost Train fire, potential causes of the fire and the history of Luna Park in general - in an interconnected, theological way, with heavy Christian motifs and joined by a narrative in which Tiny makes his way through the park's mirror maze.

Post-production and incomplete status

Sharp obsessively worked on ''Street of Dreams'' after 1979. By 1985, an entire room of his Wirian residence was dedicated to the project, which Sharp had custom painted in shades of blue, yellow and pink.

In 1988, a rough version entitled "The Brighton Cut" was compiled at Tiny's insistence so that the film could be shown at the Brighton Festival, with Tiny commenting that Sharp had "maybe made a cult movie which at the very least will survive as a museum piece". This version was played at various other film festivals in the late 1980s and early 1990s and occasionally aired on TV in both Australia and the United States though Sharp still considered it a work in progress.

In 1989, Sharp told James Cockington of the ''Sydney Morning Herald:'' "I think I've got the form there now. It's just a matter of making what's between the beginning and the end flow a bit better". In the same joint interview, Tiny also suggested that the film should centre more on Luna Park and that "more concentration should be held on the nude scenes... (they) should last longer and be heavier". In 1990, Sharp spoke with Nikki Barroclough of the ''Herald'', saying: "People have often said it's two separate films, but I think the challenge is to make it one film. When it's ready, it will let me know. If the worst comes to worst, it will stand as it is now."

Sharp continued to work on the film up until his death in 2013 and never finished it. As of 2024 his estate continue to consider it an incomplete work and have never released it officially, although poor-quality bootleg copies of the Brighton Cut from a VHS transfer circulate online.

In 2014, footage of Tiny's complete Luna Park marathon performance shot for ''Street of Dreams'' was released on streaming services as ''The Non-Stop Luna Park Marathon'' by Planet Blue Pictures. As of 2023, it can be viewed for free on Vimeo.

Selected cast

Songs performed by Tiny Tim

:''As per the Brighton Cut.''

Selections from the Luna Park Marathon

External links

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References

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Australian musical documentary films
Films shot in Sydney
1970s unfinished films
1980s unfinished films
1970s Australian films