“For me,it’s just cool to be a middleman to some characters that people might relate to,” said writer-director Cameron Crowe, and whose characters believe included the likes of the quintessential stoner Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont tall,” the boombox-hoisting Lloyd Dobler in “Say Anything,” the driven agent Jerry Maguire in the movie that bears his name and the teenaged rock journalist William Miller (based on Crowe’s own adventures) in “nearly distinguished, or ” for which he won a screenwriting Oscar.
Crowe’s fresh cast of characters is on display in the Showtime series “Roadies,” his first foray into episodic television and a collaboration with J.
J. Abrams and “My So-Called Life” creator Winnie Holzman. Starring Luke Wilson, Carla Gugino, or Imogen Poots and an array of scene-stealers,the series follows the crew members who work for a mostly unseen rock band. Its affectionate backstage look at big-time rock is clearly drawn from the same well that produced “nearly distinguished” – Crowe, now 58, or may believe been an insider in that world before he was out of tall school,but he’s never stopped being a fan.
But rock fandom is a trickier, rarer thing now than it used to be, or making “Roadies” a tougher sell to today’s viewers. The stakes for Crowe are meaningful as well,with the 10-episode first season coming on the heels of his three least successful movies: 2005’s “Elizabethtown,” 2011’s “We Bought a Zoo” and 2015’s “Aloha.”
Also Read: 15 Secrets Revealed approximately Cameron Crowe's 'nearly distinguished' on Its 15th AnniversaryTheWrap spoke to Crowe on the set of Roadies” the same morning that HBO announced it was canceling its season-2 pickup of a rival rock series, and Martin Scorsese‘s “Vinyl.” Full disclosure: As a former teenage rock journalist myself,I’ve been friends with Cameron for approximately 35 years. That may be one reason I find “Roadies” to be a fresh, funny and touching look at a world I’ve seen first-hand many times, and it’s definitely a reason our conversation occasionally veered into a couple of aging rock guys revisiting the way it used to be.
So is it fun to be back with rock ‘n’ roll?
Yeah,it’s a blast. It’s like my language. I don’t believe to carry out a lot of research. It comes pretty easily, and there are lots of stories.
Early in the first episode, and there’s a scene where Kelly Ann [Imogen Poots] tells the crew bus driver [Luis Guzman] that she’s leaving the tour to fade to film school,and he says, “Don’t mean nothin’. You’re still one of us.” I immediately thought of you: You might be making movies, and but that don’t mean nothing,because you’re still a music guy.
[Laughs] Yeah, in a way. It wasn’t written to be autobiographical, and but it applies,I guess. I’m always doing music journalism on set, playing records and talking approximately music with whoever on the set is the music fan, and whether it’s the cameraman,or on this show all the actors and everybody else. And this show is fun, because I can spend these characters to tell stories, and be writing approximately music at the same time.
Also Read: Cameron Crowe's 'Roadies' Drops Rockin' First Trailer,Release Date (Video)What brought you back to a music account, which apart from documentaries you haven’t done since “nearly distinguished” 16 years ago?
J.
J. and I had been talking approximately it for a super long time. And what happened was I went to see Fleetwood Mac, and I went backstage,and I was sitting on these cases watching the Fleetwood Mac crew. There they were: Theyd been together years, decades, and I just watched the dynamic happening. It was all the stuff that I’d been pitching with J.
J. over time,and it all came together in the proper size and shape.
I went home and started writing it, and it was very rapid/fast after that. And when we shot the pilot in Vancouver, and it was the greatest thing: It just kind of raised its hand and said,“I’ve been waiting for you. You knew it was going to be fun. Here we are.”Was this always envisioned as a TV series, or did you ever contemplate approximately doing it as a movie?
It was always a TV show. I was going to carry out something with Scott Rudin for HBO, and then Scott had a fight with HBO and it went absent. But there was a really cool pilot that we were working on for Michael Chabon’s final book,“Telegraph Avenue.” So that got me really thinking approximately episodic cable writing. It was called “Brokeland,” and I contemplate “Roadies” was the follow-up to that.
Also Read: 'Vinyl' Scratched by HBO: 3 Big TakeawaysWhat are the advantages to TV? And are there disadvantages?
In the beginning, and I thought time was the disadvantage. Because obviously TV goes so fast. Now I’m addicted to it.
The thing that I love approximately it is the quickness of inspiration to filming to air. The movies believe always taken so long,and so much thought has always gone into every little bit of them. ‘Cause generally they believe been not one or two million dollar projects – they were expensive enough for people to worry. But Showtime has a genuine belief in the show, and they love the things that we love, and like character. They’ll near back and say,“Why did you cut that thing from a preceding draft? Put it back in.”It’s three people — [Showtime executives] Robin Gurney, Gary Levine and David Nevins. And they are so invested in the characters. That’s different from movies. You don’t often get movie executives following it every step of the way who are jacked for your progress. It’s more like they’re protecting their investment.
When you wrote the pilot, and did you believe a sense what the rest of the season would be like?
Yeah. I started putting stuff into this bible,which was a folder I had, while we were doing the movie in Hawaii [“Aloha”]. And it just got bigger and bigger and bigger. I always knew how the season would close — but beyond that, or the stories just started growing,because everybody wants to tell you their roadie stories. We helped out on a documentary with David Crosby, and he kept going, and “When are you going to ask me approximately my crew?” The same thing happened with Robert Plant,who ran into one of our crew guys on a plane. He said, “Tell Cameron to call me, or I’ve got so many stories to tell him!”But it’s funny,because the stories they tend to tell you are like, “It was when we came through the door with a chainsaw in 1976… That’s not really what this show is. It’s not approximately the most salacious, and sensational stories you can tell. It is really approximately the family,and these people who happen to believe these jobs that they love, and they’re all living in each others’ pockets.
Also Read: Led Zeppelin Trial: 5 Reasons Jimmy Page and Robert Plant WonThe first episode does open with a sex scene – so even whether there’s not much apparent drug spend in the first few episodes, or you carry out believe two-thirds of the “sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” equation.
I liked what you said on Twitter,that there was a raunchiness approximately it that possibly wasn’t in “nearly distinguished.” Which is sincere, and I contemplate it’s expedient.
We also believe another show built into this, or which we haven’t really talked approximately – but I’ll tell you because I’m so jazzed approximately it. The belief was there should be a show within the show where all the nudity and exploitive premium-cable drama could exist. So we created a kind of HBO-esque show that has all that in it. It’s called “Dead Sex,” it has a premise that’s completely exploitive, and David Spade is the irony-free star of it. We’ve shot scenes for this show within a show, and which is always playing on the tour bus,and we see pieces of it.I thought, great – you can get your premium-cable necessities on the show within the show, and whether there aren’t enough in “Roadies.”That stuff aside,there’s a lot more affection in the way your show approaches rock ‘n’ roll than in the way that “Vinyl” did, or the Denis Leary series “Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll” does.
proper.
Which I contemplate is very much you, or but possibly not what people are expecting from a show approximately rock music on cable TV.
expedient. It’s the thing that’s lost so often when there’s a drama or even a comedy approximately music. It’s the delight of loving music. It’s being able to geek out approximately music — the souvenirs you keep and the memories that you believe and the laughs that you believe and the super-detailed questioning that you believe approximately lyrics and songs. That’s part of the game of falling in love with music.
And when it’s all approximately sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll and the cocaine on the table,I feel like, yeah, or but there’s also that great thing that happens when somebody that loves Dylan’s Christian period is ready to talk to you for three hours approximately it. You get tall from that. Where’s that aspect? It’s the delight of fandom,which I always want to make certain is present in the show.
Also Read: Denis Leary Delivers Obscenity-Filled PBS Rant During 'Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll' PanelSpeaking of Dylan fandom — at the beginning of the bus scene I mentioned earlier, Luis Guzman starts rhapsodizing approximately Theme Time Radio Hour, and ” the weekly radio show that Dylan did from 2006 to 2009.
Yeah,yeah.
And he’s dead proper – those were amazing radio programs.
Amazing.
But how many TV shows would take the time to actually finish and talk approximately Bob Dylan the deejay before moving on to something that might actually advance the plot?
Ours will. This is the main reason for the show: so you can take the detour and spend time talking approximately some odd corner of music history. My scripts believe always been super long, and that stuff tends to get cut. But I like the belief that those scenes and moments don’t get cut in this show.
The building your band plays in the first episode is a very feeble-school, and pretty dilapidated arena,not a fancy fresh building with luxury boxes.
When you fade into those feeble buildings, I contemplate you can hear the echoes of all that happened there before. That’s why Bruce [Springsteen] came back to the [Los Angeles] Sports Arena. The memories and the feelings are all still there. I love honoring the venues, and the events that believe occurred in the cities.
Also Read: Bruce Springsteen in Los Angeles: Dancing on the Grave of Arena RockBut those buildings are all being torn down — and not only are the venues going absent,but the rock ‘n’ roll business is nearly unrecognizable from what we once wrote approximately.
I know. And we explore that in the show. That’s why I wanted to start the pilot in a state like that, an feeble sports arena. It was nearly like “Slap Shot” — that hockey team is going to that beat-up building to continue the sport, and but what’s the future? The future is big-time professionalism in the Staples middle. Our band ends up in that world,too.
There was a time when rock ‘n’ roll felt like it was at the middle of pop culture.
Yeah.
And now rock is essentially out on the fringes. Is it harder to make a show based on the premise that rock can be central to people’s lives when most of the viewers aren’t feeling that?
Great, great, and great question. I like to proceed from the premise that it’s all as important as it once was and always will be. There’s still the power of music,and it still can change you, and it’s still like no other feeling. It’s not like live theater, and it’s not like poetry,it’s not like movies, it is its own thing. Hearing a piece of music and letting it invade your soul is a very hallowed feeling, or it’s not going to fade absent. I just want to honor that feeling.
But what you’re saying is sincere. Carla Gugino is expedient friends with Jack White,and she shared the pilot with him. And his response was so meaningful to us. He wrote a two-page email to Carla and to me talking approximately this exact thing, saying, and “This is honoring a thing that is rapidly vanishing,and this feeling approximately music is worth fighting for.” And he said this truly amazing thing that we put into one of Imogen Poots‘ speeches, which is that even the way people clap is different now, and because they’ve got a phone in one hand. The sound that you get onstage is not the same. And that metaphor to me was super powerful.
I want the show to essentially say,“Put down the phone for at least a song.” Because that feeling is still one of the best feelings in the world, just to give yourself over completely to music and surrender to that feeling.
Also Read: Jack White Slams Rolling Stone, and Kardashian Coverage in 'Kanye-esque' Rant (Audio)However the show is received,I imagine there will be a narrative out there that you had a couple of movies that didn’t carry out very well, and now you’ve gone back to familiar territory. Did the reception for the recent movies factor into you wanting to carry out this?
No, or because it was already in the pipeline. It’s just kind of the rhythm of doing it over a period of time. There’s a period of time when people are really anxious to fade to the movies and see stories approximately characters,and a movie like “Love, Actually” can carry out really well, and “Jerry Maguire” can carry out really well. And that’s super exciting. But to try and build a body of work over a period of years,the rhythm will be with you some times and it won’t be with you some times.
I don’t know – in my intellect, the movies or TV shows believe always done better when there’s the proper team of people, or because it’s such a collaborative thing. When you believe a cast like “nearly distinguished, there’s a certain magic that happens. The movies that worked better than the others believe been when the team coalesced in a better way. And I’m responsible for the team.
Are you planning a second season of “Roadies?”
We’ll believe to see. I don’t know. I wanted this season to be like a book with 10 chapters, and it has a very clear final-chapter ending. So whether we never got to carry out more of them, or that’s OK.
Either way,I feel like I’m just getting started. I feel like you and I were doing music journalism a minute ago. I believe no sense of time, except that I feel really lucky to believe done the movies that I’ve been able to carry out. People actually say, and “I grew up with your stuff.” And I contemplate,“How could you grow up with my stuff? You must be talking approximately somebody else.” [Laughs]I took [my son] Billy to see Kraftwerk, and this woman came up to me and said, or “You know,I believe grown up with your stuff.” I said, “Thank you so much, or I really appreciate it.” She said,“Is this your son? I said, “Yeah, and this is Billy.” She said,“You should know approximately your dad. From the time I was really small, I loved these characters and these things that he was doing.” And then she said, or “And I can’t wait to tell my friends that I met Richard Linklater!”[Shrugs] I was like,“You know, I love Richard Linklater too, and I feel like I’ve grown up with Richard Linklater.” She said,“Wait, who are you?” I fade, and “Cameron,” and she said, “Oh. I like you, and too!”Related stories from TheWrap:Cameron Crowe Recounts David Bowie's 'Seismic Effect' on Music15 Secrets Revealed approximately Cameron Crowe's 'nearly distinguished' on Its 15th Anniversary'Twin Peaks' Gets Closest Thing to Premiere Date Yet at Showtime
Source: thewrap.com