Street of Dreams (Martin Sharp film)

Street of Dreams is an unfinished documentary film about the musician Tiny Tim and the 1979 Ghost Train fire at Luna Park Sydney, directed and produced by Australian artist Martin Sharp.

Street of Dreams
Luna Park Sydney, filming location, circa 1980s.
Directed by	Martin Sharp
Produced by	Martin Sharp, Deanne Judson, Jo Sharp
Starring	Tiny Tim
Edited by	Paul Healy, Marilyn Karet
Running time	107 minutes (Brighton Cut)
Countries	Australia United States
Language	English

Themes and content

The film firstly features Tiny Tim, showcasing footage of his record-setting, two-hour-and-seventeen-minute professional singing marathon at Luna Park Sydney in January 1979. It tells Tiny's life story, framed around the marathon performance footage, while highlighting his many eccentricities, religious convictions and sexual hangups as captured by Sharp's camera crews in both Australia and the United States.

The film's other major theme is the 1979 Ghost Train fire at Luna Park, which occurred five months after Tiny's visit. Sharp became convinced the two events were somehow linked, and so the film covers the perceived synchronicities and theological underpinnings of the fire while also telling the story of Luna Park in general. As filming went on, Sharp also began to gather evidence, also presented in the film, that the fire was not an accident as had been originally reported but was in fact deliberately lit by associates of Abe Saffron.

Street of Dreams explores all of the above themes - Tiny, the marathon performance, his life in general, the Ghost Train fire, potential causes of the fire and the history of Luna Park in general - in an interconnected, theological way, with heavy Christian motifs and joined by a narrative in which Tiny makes his way through the park's mirror maze.

Post-production and incomplete status

Although Sharp obsessively worked on Street of Dreams in the years that followed, a final product did not materialise. In 1988, a rough version entitled "The Brighton Cut" was compiled at Tiny's insistence so that the film could be shown at the Brighton Festival. This version was played at various other film festivals in the late 1980s and early 1990s and occasionally aired on TV, though Sharp still considered it a work in progress.

Sharp continued to work on the film up until his death in 2013. The Sharp estate considers it an incomplete work and has never released it officially, although poor-quality bootleg copies of the Brighton Cut circulate online.

In 2014, footage of Tiny's complete Luna Park marathon performance shot for Street of Dreams was released on streaming services as The Non-Stop Luna Park Marathon by Planet Blue Pictures. As of 2023, it can be viewed for free on Vimeo.

Selected cast

• Pleasure Aims
• Dave Ellis
• Doug Gallagher
• Jennifer Godson
• David Gulpilil
• Ted Hopkins
• Don Lane
• Jeannie Lewis
• Marvin Lewis
• Philippe Petit
• Adrian Rawlins
• S. John Ross
• Martin Sharp
• Tillie Staff
• Tiny Tim
• Nathan Waks

Songs performed by Tiny Tim

As per the Brighton Cut.

• "Street of Dreams"
• "The Harbor of Love"
• "Love's Ship"
• "Welcome to My Dream"
• "There'll Always Be An England"
• "Lonely Troubadour"
• "M-O-T-H-E-R (The Word That Means the World to Me)"
• "The Hukilau Song"
• "Makin' Whoopee"
• "Delilah"
• "When You and I Were Seventeen"
• "Harbour Lights"
• "Stardust"
• "Mickey Mouse March"
• "Leave Me Satisfied"
• "You Stepped Out of a Dream"
• "The Great Pretender"
• "Forever Miss Dixie"
• "Take Me Out to Luna Park"
• "Heartbreak Hotel"
• "Don't Go in the Lion's Cage Tonight"
• "Mother Macree"
• "As You Desire Me"
• "Highway to Hell"
• "The Wind in the Willows"
• "The Other Side"
• "My Lighthouse"
• "(There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover"
• "Down Under"

Selections from the Luna Park Marathon

• "My Name is Mr. Phonograph"
• "Goody Goody"
• "It's a Good Day"
• "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree"
• "I'm Beginning to See the Light"
• "Shine On, Harvest Moon"
• "The Last Mile of the Way"
• "My Melancholy Baby"
• "Pennies from Heaven"
• "Comin' In on a Wing and a Prayer"
• "You'd Be Surprised"
• "April Showers"
• "Don't Fence Me In"
• "Cool, Cool Water
• "Swanee"
• "Hello! Ma Baby"
• "For Me and My Gal"
• "I Want a Girl (Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad)"
• "Honey"
• "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now"
• "After the Ball"
• "Just One More Chance"
• "Just a Gigolo"
• "Tell Me That You Love Me"
• "That Old Gang of Mine"
• "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive"
• "I Found a Million Dollar Baby"
• "Help Me Make It Through the Night"
• "Chattanooga Choo Choo"
• "A Great Day"
• "The Birth of the Blues"
• "You Made Me Love You (I Didn't Want to Do It)"
• "Mammy"
• "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition"
• "Piccadilly"
• "Old-Time Religion"
• "When the Saints Go Marching In"
• "Waltzing Matilda"
• "Tennessee Waltz"
• "Only You (And You Alone)"
• "Bad Moon Rising"
• "Blue Suede Shoes"
• "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire"
• "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands"
• "Put Your Hand in the Hand"
• "Hallelujah"
• "Stayin' Alive"

External links

• Street of Dreams at IMDb
• Street of Dreams at AllMovie
• Street of Dreams at the TCM Movie Database