“The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story charts the life and crimes of boy band impresario Lou Pearlman. The film tracks his life from discovering NSYNC and Backstreet Boys, to his perpetration of one of the largest ponzi schemes in US History.” – SXSW
Review
If you’re a product of the 90s, you undoubtedly experienced the infamous boyband craze with NSYNC, The Backstreet Boys and a slew of others through the 2000s. You probably spent your time memorizing lyrics, hanging posters on your walls, practicing their dance moves and deciding the Sophie’s Choice of boy bands: NSYNC or The Backstreet Boys. If you’re like me, though, you might not have had any idea what was going on behind the scenes in those early years. For example, while they did get all kinds of free stuff like expensive dinners and choreographers, they didn’t get paid for three years. Specifically, for NSYNC, while they may have worked their tails off for three years and sold 10 million albums, their first check was only $10,000 for each member. Sure, that may seem like a lot of money, but for the amount of work they put in over three years, that wasn’t even minimum wage. Where did all their money go? Lou Pearlman, the man who essentially founded the boy bands and acted like a father-figure to the boys, but it was all scam.
The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story dives into Pearlman’s childhood and how his professional career, involving his discovery of boy bands, revolved around one of the largest ponzi schemes in U.S. history. So, how did he pull it off? The documentary details, through a variety of interviews of people close to Pearlman, how he did it. As Lance Bass (NSYNC) says, Pearlman made himself the sixth member of the band, and while Pearlman would say the choreographers and lavish dinners were on him or the label, all the free stuff really came out of the bands’ pockets without their knowledge. Then it was later revealed that Pearlman also conned innocent people out of millions of dollars by convincing them to invest in his company, Trans Continental Airlines Inc., which never existed. When Pearlman was finally found, he was convicted of conspiracy, money laundering and making false statements before dying in 2016.
Being a fan of both NSYNC and The Backstreet Boys, I found the documentary extremely interesting. It reveals so many things that I didn’t know and so much more than I can detail here. Sometimes, as fans, we don’t really think about what’s going on behind the scenes of the music. We mostly scream lyrics at the top of our lungs, fangirl over our favorites, and cry if we can’t see them on tour (I’m still sad I never got to see them in concert). Little did our pre-teen/teenager hearts know, these guys were dealing with a nightmare while simultaneously living out their dream. If you’ve ever been a fan of the 90s/early 2000s pop music era, then I really recommend watching this documentary.
The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story is on YouTube Premium.
