Cameron Crowe Talks Petty and "Heartbreakers Beach Party"

 I don't believe the good times are over/I don't believe the thrill is all gone/Real love is a man's salvation/The weak ones fall/The strong carry on...
(from "Straight Into Darkness,' as heard– and seen--in the film)

 This post feels special. Not just because it explores a film that time (and a re-boot) has transformed from a humbly-intended MTV promo into a revelatory and at times emotional romp, but also because we have filmmaker Crowe on board to dig deeper.

 This entire week has felt like a Petty celebration, culminating in tonight's first cinema screenings of the film, followed by more on Sunday. The savoring began with the October 14  screening at Santa Monica’s old-school movie house the Laemmle Royal, at which Tom’s daughter Adria Petty was joined by Crowe and Heartbreakers Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench, and Ron Blair.  (Not in the room but reverberating to the band wavelength was the spirit of former drummer Stan Lynch, trapped in Florida by the hurricane but a freebooting presence who onscreen, as Campbell said, was the “the star of tonight to me was Stan Lynch,”)

 In its cheery course through the early 80s onstage (and frequently on a band bus), the documentary unearths the origin story of Crowe’s directorial career. For the many Crowe fanfolks out there, many of us still hoping for his next “Jerry Maguire” or “Almost Famous,” the next fictional feature is TBD,  but long-scheduled as the next-up project  for Crowe is a feature that will be a biopic of Joni Mitchell.  It's a life story  enhanced beyond the genre's norm by a tight collaboration between Crowe and Mitchell.

We began there. 

Befote we plunge into “Beach Party,”  your heart-warming Joni piece in the L.A.Times earlier this year further primed us all for what may come. Is there an update you’re ready to share as to the approach?

 The final drafts of the Joni film were definitely fueled by the freedom I recognized in “Beach Party.”  It’s all just voice, voice, voice… and really, what thrills you and feels slightly reckless and fun as a writer/director… well, that’s your own voice talking.  It’s the lesson of Alice Crowe [the director’s mom of course, so well played by Frances McDormand in “Almost Famous”] and Billy Wilder too:, “Put what you love on the screen, the thing that thrills you, but don’t be TOO indulgent about it.”  Also, the random moments of humor are often what people remember the most.  That’s true in “Beach Party” too.   

Even though it’s a feature, the Joni film follows the lessons of the doc work we’ve done.  If you’re telling the story of an artist that interests you, get out of the way and let people meet that person and feel the very thing that drew them to that artist… with a little something extra, something surprisingly personal and honest,  as the gift that comes along with it.  Also, like Petty, Joni has a great sense of humor, and that’s a booster rocket for the whole thing.

Early on in both the original “Beach Party”  and your added  Outtakes section, you let the viewers relax into that TP  vibe—it all goes down easily, with his ironic Petty smile often popping up. What a fine strategy the 1limo ride to nowhere' became--almost like  you mutually agreed  to take the piss out of the typical rock star interview.

The vibe comes from Tom and his willingness to participate.  Because I’d written about them, and toured with them in the latter 70’s, they were all comfortable enough to never throw a question back at me… and to let the cameras in.  The willingness to be himself, and to let his humor shine… that came from Tom.  He also knew that I loved that band so much, and wouldn’t stop talking about the music and one moment in particular that felt so iconic and a sign of the greatness to come… the walk-out music on the “You’re Gonna Get It” tour was an instrumental version, just the track, of “Ruby Tuesday”… which for me was such a big-league fan move that it still gives me chills.  And of course, that dude who was so fan-astute is the very guy you hear hosting [the Sirius XM Petty-centric broadcast] “Buried Treasure.” 

Tom at one point calls it “Yammerin’ with Cameron,” and yet we’re getting real answers to mull over. Is the impact it’s having  for Petty fans pretty good consolation for waiting all these decades for an audience?

It just makes me know that the timeless quality of the songs creates the context for everything that is happening now — people want to know more.  The songs live on, but Tom himself was pretty much low-key with his media visibility.  The band is what you heard, and what was always forward… he was, after all, a shy guy… but being able to laugh at himself and shoot stuff like the European “Spinal Tap” [‘We’re in the wrong room..’] sequence… it made him comfortable enough to make it something that he would appreciate himself as a fan.

The insight into Tom’s songwriting development at the stage we’re watching is intriguing. so on point. The more personal stuff, like “Learning To Fly” and “I Won’t Back Down,”  is on its way to him and us Do you feel the popularity of “Long After Dark,” with its ventures into the personal readied the audience and gave Tom the elbow room to go down that personal path?

 He was already heading there, of course.  Even “The Wild One, Forever” was a personal song, and of course you can feel his vulnerability in a big way when he’s teaching the band “Insider.”  That was a big one for him, I think he’s telling us in that interview.  And when Stevie [Nicks, who had asked for a song] let him keep it, he seems grateful… and of course he names “Hard Promises” after a lyric in that song.  Even “What Are You Doing In My Life” is personal, but it’s not as vulnerable as all that came after… even on stage, he was becoming more personal and revealing, as you can see in “Kings Road” in the movie.  He lets it play, and feels the moment… something that didn’t happen in the earlier tours.

Tom’s summarizing thoughts “(“If the records keep playing on the radio…”) are in earnest  and after all these years, touchingly, also a bit naïve. Technology has brought us to a place where we all have our own earbuds in. Do you feel Tom would have stayed devoted to the touring regime where the connection is so robust and palpable, even as his more interior songwriting--“Wildflowers”, both song and album--gained ascendancy in his body of work?

Dare I say, he always had his ear to the ground in terms of, as Glenn Frey once put it, “songs, songs, songs — that’s all that matters.”  He was always doing deep-track shows, great set lists, and feeding the personal side of the fan base.  You can feel it in the way Adria looks after the estate.  There’s a lot of love in the way he presented the band and his attitude toward the music… even the Wilburys is like what he wanted “Beach Party” to be, a little something passed between friends.  Always with that knowing grin that lives in the great Joel Bernstein shot we have at the very end of the movie.  I love that photo, that feels to me like Tom’s hello/goodbye kiss to all of us.

 As you discuss “Straight Into Darkness,” it’s clear Tom loves that people find it inspiring. Do you think he’d place it near the top of his work?

He certainly was proud of the song as we were making the movie.  I think he had stretched the boundaries of his personal songwriting, maybe urged forward a bit by the success of Springsteen in that era… I think he had gained confidence about his writing voice and the courage to wave the flag for positivity and even family.  And of course, his Southern roots.

Proceeding from the life-changing moment when Tom empowered you as the guy behind the camera for his wonderfully haywire ditty, “I’m Stupid” you had a new craft. As you watched the doc’s traveling film crew do their work, did you find yourself thinking of camera placement and how  the live sequences might be best edited to convey the onstage excitement? 

 I had learned a lot on the set of “Fast Times” because [director of Crowe’s script] Amy [Heckerling] and Art Linson had wanted me there for everything—casting, shooting, editing, everything.  I knew that I liked when someone looked into the camera at the perfect moment — not out of narcissism, but when it accented what was happening.  Like when Harold looks into the camera in one key moment of “Harold and Maude.”  I always loved that, and I think when Tom did “I’m Stupid” and the stuff on the RV, it poured gasoline on my desire to jump into the arena and do some of that personal filmmaking myself.  It’s still my favorite mode of directing.

There’s a sweet nostalgia to the technology then extant. In the “You Got Lucky” promo film, the boombox playing the track becomes a kind of “2001”  symbol of communication. (The  device  would later achieve its height as held aloft by John Cusack in a certain Crowe film called “Say Anything.”)  To paraphrase Joni, is “something’s  lost but something’s gained” as technology takes over in music?

The fact that the boombox in the “You Got Lucky” video plays like “2001” is the most hilarious and profound thing that came out of the first big-screen showing of the movie.  And you were there!  It was the one thing I was worried about, the full length version of the video being in the film… would it stop everything cold? And in fact, it was kind of riveting and actually got what felt like warm applause… like something you’d do when your grandfather did a tap dance at Christmas… a playful look at a youthful technological naivete’. I love it.  To paraphrase John Lennon who, can you believe it, died at the dawn of the 80’s... “it’s all one big river moving forward."

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F.S. Articles re Tom Petty (partial list): 

January 1983  Rolling Stone album review/ 4 stars: “Long After Dark”  https://www.thepettyarchives.com/archives/magazines/1980s/1983-01-20-rollingstone

May 1995 Rolling Stone cover: Tom Petty On the Road: This how it feels 

https://www.thepettyarchives.com/archives/magazines/1990s/1995-05-04-rollingstone

July 1999 Rolling Stone cover: Tom Petty--The Rolling Stone Intervew

https://www.thepettyarchives.com/archives/magazines/1990s/1999-07-08-rollingstone

 July 2014 Billboard   This Time It’s Personal (“Hypnotic Eye” album) https://www.thepettyarchives.com/archives/magazines/2010s/2014-07-26-billboard

  October 2017  Billboard  Remembrance: https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/tom-petty-remembrance-7988614/

 [paywalled]:   Febraury 1978 Circus `Tom Petty Can Make 'Em Scream'

https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/tom-petty-can-make-em-scream