Cannes Film Festival 2013: Veteran pop flop John Otway showcases biopic Rock And Roll's Greatest Failure

Veteran rock flop John Otway who is taking a movie about his underwhelming music career to the Cannes Film Festival. (PA)

Veteran rock flop John Otway is taking a movie about his underwhelming music career to the Cannes Film Festival - and leading a parade of lookalikes.

The cult musician, who still has a devoted following despite making the top 30 only twice in a 35-year career, will attend a screening of his film and play a gig for fans.

The brief highs and lengthy lows of his career have been chronicled in Rock And Roll's Greatest Failure: Otway The Movie.

Otway is planning to have a team of people wearing masks of his face in identical outfits for the "March of 100 Otways" prior to the screening, as well as holding a banquet for his fans.

The singer scored a 1977 hit with Wild Willy Barrett with Really Free and did not return to the charts until 2002 when his song Bunsen Burner was propelled to number nine thanks to a campaign by fans to mark his 50th birthday.

The film, which was given a screening at the Odeon in London's Leicester Square last year, was financed by his fans.

The film - which featured archive footage and new interviews - looks at "the disastrous decisions that led to 25 years out of the limelight before returning once again to the top".

Otway, 60, was voted the UK's seventh favourite lyricist in a nationwide BBC poll in 1999 for his track Beware Of The Flowers Cause I'm Sure They're Going to Get You Yeah, after mass voting by his fans.

The film will be screened on Sunday.

PA