BECOMING BRANSON is an offbeat musical comedy about BILLY BROWN,a member of 1980s boy band pop sensation, 2 REAL 4 SURE -- his rise and fall, rise and fall, only to find, with failure, something better than what he was striving for.
Synopsis:BECOMING BRANSON is an offbeat musical comedy about BILLY BROWN,a member of 1980s boy band pop sensation, 2 REAL 4 SURE -- his rise and fall, rise and fall, only to find, with failure, something better than what he was striving for.
The film opens with a segment from VH1’s “Where Are They Now?” detailing Billy’s rocket rise to teen idol-dom and inevitable fall to ego, drugs and outlandish spending. The other members of 2 Real 4 Sure are still huge stars, while Billy has fallen off the map.
We pick up with him, in the current day, trying to make his big comeback, older and perhaps wiser, back in his hometown of Orlando. He pledges that everything will be different this time; he will not let his insecurities and ego get between him and the people who really care about him. What he wants more than anything is a successful comeback, the kind not chronicled on “Where Are They Now?” but rather “Behind the Music”: the roller coaster ride of fame, the artist at peace, back on top.
At a boy-band reunion show at an Indian casino, Billy meets WAYNE OSMOND, who tells him about the success he and his brothers have had with their theater in BRANSON, MISSOURI, the redneck-Vegas. Billy hits on an idea - he will move to Branson and open a theater. Like Bobby Vinton before him, this is how he will make his comeback.
Despite his best intentions, Billy succumbs to his own fears about himself and winds up replaying what had happened 20 years before. When the roller coaster ends, he in a valley, broke and alone. It is only when he hits bottom for the second time that he realizes that the love of millions of strangers cannot fill the emptiness inside him. The man whose only real desire was to be the guy on “Behind the Music”, comes to understand that family, friends and the love of a good woman are what success and happiness are all about.