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Ray Pride

By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Posted Sunday, December 25th, 2011 - Comments Off on John Roecker’s “They’re All Out Without You,” A Green Day “Punk Opera” (29’35”)
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John Roecker’s “They’re All Out Without You,” A Green Day “Punk Opera” (29’35”)

From the Vimeo link: “Based on the Characters from Green Day’s Grammy Award Winning Album American Idiot. John Roecker who directed the soon to be released documentary “Heart Like a Hand Grenade” (“HLAHG”) about the making of Green Day’s best selling album to date—”American Idiot”—brings you his take on the characters as originally visualized from AI, what many consider to be the first true “punk rock” opera. John’s longtime friendship with Billie Joe Armstrong, (the lead singer and guitarist of Green Day) gave him insight into the band’s creative vision, and put John at ground zero… in the recording studio along with the band. John’s task seemed simply really, to document the creative process as it unfolded – honest, uncensored, and real. What emerged The American Idiot Album, now considered by many to be Green Day’s greatest musical achievement. As John continued to document the layers of creativity behind the music of AI, he started to visualize who the characters were, and what they were truly meant to be.

Two main characters created within the songs of AI are “Whatsername” and “Jesus of Suburbia” … they are the basis for the story of “They’re All Out Without You”—A Tale of Dark and Light, a Twisted Modern Day Romeo & Juliet Story. The footage for TAOWY (originally intended as a part of “HLAHG”) went missing for many years, until it was recently discovered by John hidden away in a vintage 1940’s lunch box. John enlisted HLAHG editor Dean Gonzales to assemble the lost TAOWY footage to reflect the story and image that both John and Billie had originally intended several years before. When this footage was shot, nobody could have known just how wild a ride the success of AI would be for Green Day—About 18 million copies of American Idiot have been sold to date world wide, with far too many Grammy’s, AMA’s, MTV, Billboard, and other awards to mention. Most recently, the AI album became the basis for the creation of a Tony Award Winning Broadway Musical version of American Idiot. This footage is raw, and intense, as it is the very first vision of these troubled characters. Much of the world knows these characters in their various forms, but TAOWY was filmed at the very peak of the creative process for American Idiot – TAOWY is a beautiful yet tortured snapshot of a creative time long before the dozens of awards, before Green Day’s “second wave of success” and well before “Punks” were a hit on Broadway. “They’re All Out Without You” is a true punk rock vision, now rediscovered for the world to see.”

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon