Shep Gordon struggles with Supermensch movie version of himself

Shep Gordon
Shep Gordon (Image credit: Getty)

Shep Gordon admits he struggles with the on-screen version of himself in 2013 documentary Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon.

The 2013 Classic Rock Award winner and longtime Alice Cooper manager says director Mike Myers didn’t include many of his “failures” in the film, and instead painted him in a “beautiful, heroic” light.

He tells Rolling Stone: “Mike’s a storyteller. He took the parts of my life and turned it into this beautiful heroic story and built in a lot of sympathy and some drama.

“What the film didn’t do was deal with the failures. When I saw the movie, Mike was very nervous – did I like it, did I hate it? I said, ‘You know, Mike, I’d love to have lunch with this guy.’”

The film also serves as a how-to guide for living, and explores the 71-year-old mogul’s “compassionate business” concept – but he insists no one has all the answers in life.

Gordon says: “The hardest part of the documentary was accepting this outpouring of love that came after it. Some of it was self-serving, singers who wanted me to manage them.

“But then there was this whole world of people who were asking these really deep questions about how to be happy, and how to be successful and not hurt people. My whole life, I’ve always been very wary of anybody who thinks they know anything – because none of us do.

“What’s life all about? How do you get happy? What’s the right way to live? Those are big questions and they are questions that don’t have answers. But that doesn’t mean you can’t live your life believing in something.”

Gordon launched his memoir They Call Me Supermensch: A Backstage Pass to the Amazing Worlds of Film, Food, and Rock ‘N’ Roll last month.

Shep Gordon: from Alice Cooper to the Dalai Lama

Former TeamRock news desk member Christina joined our team in late 2015, and although her time working on online rock news was fairly brief, she made a huge impact by contributing close to 1500 stories. Christina also interviewed artists including Deftones frontman Chino Moreno and worked at the Download festival. In late 2016, Christina left rock journalism to pursue a career in current affairs. In 2021, she was named Local Weekly Feature Writer of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards.