Cameron Crowe on his lost Tom Petty film, plus the week’s best movies in L.A.
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
This week I attended a 30th anniversary screening of “Speed” as part of Beyond Fest at the Egyptian Theatre followed by a Q&A with stars Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves and director Jan de Bont. It was the first time the three of them had ever talked about the movie in front of a live audience.
It really was one of those nights, the audience super-hyped and sent into absolute overdrive by the excitement of knowing that two of Hollywood’s biggest stars — who became stars in no small part due to this particular film — were going to be there afterward.
The Q&A did not disappoint, as Bullock and Reeves charmed the audience while De Bont brought the same unpredictable energy he did to the movie itself.
Bullock said she actually got a Santa Monica bus driver’s license even though she was never actually driving the film’s bus herself.
“I was at the helm of the bus,” recalled Bullock, “but in the back there was someone driving, or on the roof someone was driving, and I was being careened into whatever Jan felt I needed to smash into that day.”
This newsletter being an unabashedly pro-Dennis Hopper enterprise, I was personally quite happy to hear the conversation turn to reflections on the actor, who memorably played the film’s mad-bomber villain.
Regarding Hopper, Reeves said, “He’s brilliant and so charismatic and he’s so committed.”
De Bont interjected, “And he’s also a little nuts.”
“Yeah,” Reeves said with an excited drawl. “And we say that he’s a little nuts, but he’s a total f— pro. A total pro. We had some ridiculous dialogue, and it was just awesome.”
Bullock added, “I was surprised at how — I don’t like this word — but normal he was. I mean, he might have been weird to you guys, but he was very sweet to me.”
Then Bullock noted, “He was a man that just couldn’t get enough. Life was happening too fast and he just wanted more and more and more from it.”
Cameron Crowe revisits his Tom Petty ‘Beach Party’
As part of the rollout for a deluxe edition of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ 1982 album “Long After Dark,” the Petty Legacy archives are also unveiling the lost film “Tom Petty: Heartbreakers Beach Party,” which was only aired once, on MTV in February 1983. The film will play in cinemas on Oct. 17 and 20, with a release to Paramount+ expected sometime next year.
Directed by journalist and future auteur Cameron Crowe in collaboration with Doug Dowdle and Phil Savenick, the “Beach Party” project was the first helming credit for Crowe. Then best-known as a reporter for Rolling Stone, Crowe had just launched his screenwriting career with “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and would go on to make such films as the Oscar-winning “Jerry Maguire” and “Almost Famous.”
The film captures Petty and the band at something of a transitional moment, moving from a marauding young group hungry for the road into professional musicians settling in for the long haul of their careers. One of the interviews with Petty takes place in a limousine cruising the streets of Los Angeles and while it is meant as a knowing wink to rock star clichés, there is also a sense of unease about it, as if asking: “Is this really who I am?”
Other highlights include concert footage from L.A.’s intimate Whisky a Go Go as well as the massive US Festival, Petty at home with just a guitar talking through his writing process, and a recording session with Stevie Nicks for the hit duet “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.”
In a recent interview, Crowe recalled a life-changing moment with Petty on a bus to the video shoot for the song “You Got Lucky.”
“He said, ‘Here, I got something I wanna play — you get a camera,’” Crowe told me. “And I’m like, ‘I’m just a writer. I’m not a director. And he’s like, ‘Pick up the camera, turn it on, let’s go.’ And so he did that song ‘I’m Stupid’ into the camera and it was such a galvanizing thing for me because there’s no middleman, there’s no me going home into a room to write about the experience. It’s like: There he is doing it for you, the profiler, right there.
“And then we cut the shot and he said, ‘Congratulations, you’re a director.’ And I’ve never gotten over that thrill,” said Crowe.
Crowe also noted that while he had initially been excited about some of the more conventional interview moments in the film, it was Petty himself who gave the film the energy that made it unique.
“I was jacked because like there he is with a guitar showing us how he wrote ‘The Waiting’ and ‘American Girl.’ This is front-row fan stuff,” said Crowe. “But Tom saw it and he said, ‘How can we make this more of like a joint passed among friends? Let’s make an experience where you can just feel what it is to be a fan of this band and to be in the band.’ And that was a brilliant note.”
Petty took a camera crew with him on a tour of Europe, capturing some barn-burning performance footage, evocative moments with the band and one mishap that would actually influence one of the most famous scenes in “This Is Spinal Tap.” After a show in Germany, the Heartbreakers were led to the wrong dressing room backstage and had to find their way to where they were supposed to be. Through a network of friends and family, footage of the moment made its way to the creative team behind “Spinal Tap” (which would not be released until 1984), inspiring the famed scene where the band can’t find the stage.
The 20 minutes or so of bonus material that has been added to the end of the hour-long “Beach Party,” includes recent footage of Crowe talking with Adria Petty, Tom Petty’s daughter, who initiated the project to restore the film. But among the restored outtakes is also a moment that has always remained close to Crowe’s heart.
On the bus, Petty began singing Elvis Presley songs, a shared passion between Petty and Crowe. Horsing around, absentmindedly strumming and singing, Petty shifted and began performing the 1961 song “His Latest Flame” with a startlingly vivid emotional clarity that seemed to presage some of Petty’s own revelatory future work.
“That stayed with me for many years because this was an outtake and I didn’t have a copy of it even, I just had this memory,” said Crowe. “He starts playing ‘His Latest Flame’ and it’s not a joke. He loves that song. It’s just him on guitar. He’s singing it to the camera and we’re not doing kitsch stuff suddenly. And it’s him investing kind of a romantic personal spirit to this song.
“This guy is sprouting wings that even he is new to. And I feel it every time I see that sequence,” said Crowe. “My favorite thing of being able to put this out in any form is that we got ‘His Latest Flame’ out there. To me, it was the spirit of all to come.”
The film very much captures Petty and the Heartbreakers as a unit, playing together onstage, hanging out offstage and having that street-gang, band-of-brothers vibe that makes a rock band a special union of personalities.
Crowe paused for a moment as he began to recall an interaction with musician and producer Robbie Robertson, a former member of the group the Band, not long after the making of the “Beach Party” film.
“I think at this point in history, it’s OK to tell tales semi-out-of-school,” said Crowe, “but Robbie Robertson was talking to some people and he’s saying, ‘I did this track with Tom. When’s he gonna leave that band? When’s he gonna just go solo?’ And I remember standing there and thinking like, Oh wow, this is when Rod Stewart leaves the Faces. This is when they come to the crossroads and they go for the solo career.
“And I knew standing there having made the film that Tom was never gonna leave that band. That band is the superpower,” said Crowe. “They are brothers and whatever happens with this guy, it’s gonna come from that brotherhood and stay within the spirit of the brotherhood. And it wouldn’t take a genius to feel that way if you’ve been around them.
“But it did make me think that within the so-called business, the corporate world of how do we maximize our investment in Tom Petty — who’s on the cover of Rolling Stone, not the whole band — it’s like, do we separate this guy from the band? And the answer is absolutely not. And he knew it and he was able to, of course, do both. And that took courage. And these are the questions I know he’s facing at the time of the making of the film.”
Crowe also reflected on what it has been like to revisit this earliest chapter from his own career as a director.
“Everyone who made that film was being free with their best instincts,” he said. “And it just reminded me that being free with your instincts is your voice. And the movie is a little bit about that creative voice in Petty.”
Points of interest
Tarsem’s ‘The Fall’ in 4K
The new 4K restoration of Tarsem’s 2006 film “The Fall” is in theaters starting Oct 15. Ostensibly set in 1915, the story follows a hospitalized Hollywood stuntman (Lee Pace) into an opioid-induced fantasia of heroism. (I’m not sure how to describe it any better than that.)
Tarsem had previously directed noteworthy music videos for the likes of R.E.M., as well as the Jennifer Lopez feature “The Cell.” On making the risky “The Fall,” he said to The Times’ Patrick Goldstein, “This is an obsession I wish I hadn’t had. It was just something I needed to exorcise. You have to make your personal films when you’re still young. I knew if I didn’t do it now, it would never happen.”
The movie was not well received when it was released, but has since picked up a cult fandom overwhelmed by its epic visuals and lush beauty. Among those who did not like the film at the time was me. As I wrote in a review for The Times, “Like De Chirico does MTV in the ‘80s, his ideas of what constitutes ‘artful’ — mostly consisting of slo-mo, tableau framing, strange costumes and a romanticized exoticism — seem at best encased in amber and at worst completely regressive. For a film that wants to present itself as extravagantly dazzling, there is something thuddingly familiar and bland in its vision.”
Now I know that sounds harsh, but I actually am planing to check out this re-release, knowing how many other people have been wowed by the film in the years since.
Rita Moreno and ‘West Side Story’ in 70mm
On Thursday the Academy Museum will be screening Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ 1961 adaptation of “West Side Story” in 70mm with actor Rita Moreno in person for a conversation on her life and career before the movie. A rare EGOT winner, Moreno also appeared in Steven Spielberg’s 2021 version of “West Side Story.
The Times’ original review of Wise and Robbins’ film (by critic Philip K. Scheuer) noted, “As one who had seen the play, I experienced, again, all my original amazement at the intricacy and artfulness of Jerome Robbins’ gravity-defying choreography — but this was still ‘theater.’ …I daresay most spectators will also find the pull of this film irresistible. The hardest problem faced by its adapters must have been one of intangibles — how to make an essentially ballet-opera form believable as realistic cinema — and they have all but licked it.”
‘The Cruise’ restored
Remastered for its 25th anniversary, the documentary “The Cruise” is returning to theaters. Opening this week in New York, the film will play at the Los Feliz 3 on Oct. 19, with director Bennett Miller in attendance. A vital example of the possibilities of early digital filmmaking, “The Cruise” was the debut for Miller, who would go on to be nominated for the Oscar for directing twice, for the movies “Capote” and “Foxcatcher.”
The film is a portrait of Timothy “Speed” Levitch, who transformed the job of tour bus guide into something far more poetic and philosophical with his psychedelic speaking style, inimitable patter and deep knowledge of New York City’s esoteric history.
In a 1998 review, Kevin Thomas wrote, “[Levitch] sees the tour as no less than a metaphor for the journey through life and views his relationship to Manhattan and the universe itself in exuberant, cosmic terms. … With his film ‘The Cruise,’ documentarian Bennett Miller not only takes us along on Levitch’s bus tours and his strolls through the city but also celebrates Levitch’s brave spirit, his determined assertion of individuality and self-worth in the face of poverty, loneliness and his family’s disappointment in him. At the same time, ‘The Cruise’ is a paean to the glories of the city that Levitch views as a living organism, to which his relationship is in constant flux.”
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