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Milli Vanilli, the hitmaking ’90’s duo of Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus were music industry darlings who sold millions of records and had a #1 hit with the 1988 earworm hit “Girl You Know It’s True.” But in 1990 after lip-syncing incident captured by an MTV broadcast, German producer Frank Farian admitted that neither of the men sang on their six-times platinum album of the same title.
Pilatus and Morvan were forced to return their Best New Artist Grammy and the resulting public humiliation contributed to Pilatus’ 1998 fatal overdose at the age of 32.
Filmmaker Luke Korem is behind the new doc Milli Vanilli which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday.
“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 Variety. “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.”
Milli Vanilli’s album was released by Arista Records under the aegis of renowned music executive Clive Davis, who was instrumental in the careers of several major artists, most notably Whitney Houston.
He says he didn’t know the duo wasn’t singing on the record, but the doc reveals that all parties involved likely did, as multiple Arista executives say that they knew and that no one wanted to reveal the truth once the group took off.
Neither Farian nor Davis would agree to be interviewed for the documentary, which has secured a deal to air this fall on Peacock+.
“For over 30 years, the story of Milli Vanilli – in particular Rob and Fab – has been reduced to sensational headlines,” Korem said in a statement. “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.”
Some of the more eye-popping revelations that the documentary uncovers are that then Recording Academy president Mike Greene was bribed by Farian (through legendary manager Sandy Galllin) to let the group lip-sync on the Grammys and that Todd Headlee, who worked for Gallin’s agency submitted a personal letter to Greene to consider the duo for a Grammy nomination. Per Variety, this apparently incensed Davis who knew it would lead to the deception coming to light.
Morvan says he’s looking forward to the whole truth being told.
“It was very difficult to look ourselves in the mirror back then, with all the jokes and ridicule,” Morvan, now 57, says. “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. 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.”
A Milli Vanilli biopic, Girl You Know Its True was completed last year starring Elan Ben Ali and Tijan Njie as Morvan and Pilatus, directed by Simon Verhoeven. It’s expected to be released by the end of this year.
