We owe much of the remarkably fecund musical period of the mid to late 1960s to composers such as John Barry, Burt Bacharach, Herb Alpert, Neil Diamond and Jimmy Webb. The hyper-groovy bubblegum visionaries Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart rank right alongside the best of them. With Rachel Lichtman's new documentary The Guys Who Wrote 'Em, the potent duo gets a comprehensive examination, enhanced by home movies and material long hoarded in their personal archives. To call them prolific would a ludicrous understatement: Their deliciously economical, deftly crafted, boundlessly appealing music was everywhere, from classics such as Paul Revere & the Raiders' “(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone” to a preponderance of The Monkees' earworms, and they frequently turned up playing themselves on the small screen, most memorably singing “I'll Blow You a Kiss in the Wind” on Bewitched. From their beginnings as down-on-their-luck New York wannabes to their reign as princes of the Sunset Strip, Boyce & Hart did it all, even dabbling in political activism with their LUV (“Let Us Vote”) campaign. Along the way, naturally, they got burned by unscrupulous management, making the entire safari a particularly cinematic saga. Although we lost Boyce a few years back, chances of a personal appearance by Bobby Hart and veteran pop compadre Keith Allison make this screening a proposition as irresistible as the tunes they wrote. Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., Beverly Grove; Thu., Aug. 7, 7:30 p.m.; $12, members free. (323) 655-2510, cinefamily.org.

Thu., Aug. 7, 7:30 p.m., 2014
(Expired: 08/07/14)

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