Back when everything they did was magic, the Police bickered as well as they made music.

At least that's what everyone thinks.

And certainly it's what you expect to see in Stewart Copeland's new documentary about his years as the drummer of the rock group.

Even Copeland, who assembled Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out from Super 8 footage he shot during the band's early years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, admits he couldn't have anticipated what he found.

The Police - Sting, Copeland and Andy Summers - getting along.

Having, of all things, fun.

"The main thing (that surprised me) was how damn cheerful it was. It looks like we're having so much fun. It hasn't got a frame of ugliness. I had started to believe the myth about the Police - that we fought all the time - and I actually think we didn't,'' says Copeland, now with dark-rimmed glasses and greying hair, during a recent interview at the Sundance Film Festival.

"We did some of the time. There's creative tension in any band and when you're in that strange bubble, things are exaggerated ... but as you can see from this film, we were having a great time. It was a wild ride, an excellent adventure.''

Does Copeland hope Everyone Stares, which had its world premiere at Sundance, will counter the image of the band as a squabbling brotherhood?

"I couldn't care less about (that). I just think it's a fun movie. And it's not about the Police so much as it's about what it's like to ride that rocket ship.''

The Police enjoying each other's company? What's next? A reunion tour?

Don't hold every breath you take waiting for that.

The Police, one of the few former chart-toppers not to leap aboard the all-American gravy reunion train, will never regroup, Copeland says.

"There may be a charitable event or wedding or Bar mitzvah where we get drunk enough to get up on stage and play ... but there certainly won't be a new album and tour.''

Which is not to suggest animosity between the bandmates.

Both Sting and Summers have seen and support the film, Copeland reports. After all, it was originally intended as merely an extended home movie for family and friends.

The footage collected dust for decades until Copeland, a self-professed "obsessive computer geek'' tackled it with such moviemaking software as Final Cut Pro.

Copeland, now a film and television composer, then submitted a very rough cut to Sundance.

By the time festival organizers contacted him to let him know he'd been accepted, "I'd forgotten I'd applied. I was in the middle of my day job, totally into what I was doing.''

As soon as the news broke, however, "My e-mail filled up from every lawyer, every producer, every publicist, just overnight.''

Both Summers and Sting were in Park City, although only Summers travelled expressly for Copeland's film.

Sting's wife, Trudie Styler, also produced the festival entry A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints.

"We're kind of giving each other a wide berth,'' Copeland says. "He's also very graciously let me be the belle of this ball.''

Besides which, he adds, it is Summers who steals the show. "Andy has all the cool scenes and gets all the laughs.''

While a Police reunion seems out of the question - and Copeland admits he's now mulling more non-Police-related film projects - that doesn't mean he's stopped playing.

In fact, he travels to Italy every summer to perform "big, open-air shows in beautiful places. I play my drums and enjoy the adoration and go back to my day job (as a composer) reinvigorated and validated and affirmed. I'm playing way better than I did back then.''