Refugee
10-04-2007, 02:19 PM
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Director Peter Bogdanovich had just finished telling the slightly wary crowd at the luxe Steven J. Ross theater in Burbank on the Warner Bros. studio lot that his Tom Petty doc, Runnin' Down A Dream, had formerly been running long-"But we got it down to 3:58". That' right, just a hair under four hours and even if you're a glutton for things Petty, as this correspondent is, that's pretty tall corn.
Bogdanovich also apologized to the Tuesday evening crowd for almost subtitling it, "An American Odyssey", which might have been "pretentious".
Truth is, over time Petty took the blows--from fetching up on the streets of L.A. to sign a bad deal with producer-impresario Denny Cordell, through struggles with his labels (his insistence on rewriting the original, crappy deal with ABC, followed by the famous scrap when MCA tried to use him to up the price of CD's to $9.98), the artistic struggles to keep his band busy and happy under his not always so benevolent dictatorship, plus a divorce, an arson fire that destroyed most of his earthly goods, the death via drugs of a band mate, the prolonged and painful alienation of another, the hand he shattered by punching on wall while making Southern Accents and now, though this is barely hinted at in the unsurprisingly worshipful film commissioned by Petty, the long, ongoing slog through the wreckage of the music business. A perennially strong touring band, Petty and his Heartbreakers have sold over a hundred million albums over time, but lately have been in need of a hit.
The Runnin' Down A Dream film, and accompanying three-disc DVD, is meant more as a recap than a commercial tide-turner. It will close the New York Film Festival on October 14, be unspooled in perhaps twenty markets countrywide (with the houses well papered by radio promotions) on October 15th, and then be available as a three-disc package (exclusively from Best Buy, at least through the holiday buying season, and listed at $29.99, with early orders five bucks less.
With most of the major audience-pleasers given at least a nod--from "American Girl": through ""Don't Come Around Here No More" (which was the lynch pin of Petty's amazing run as a featured MTV performer) and more recent fare like "Learning To Fly", and "I Won't Back Down", it's a brimming sampler of Petty's considerable accomplishments. By the time George Harrison (the Traveling Wilburys band mate was filmed before his death), Johnny Depp, Jackson Browne, Eddie Vedder and others have finished, the film's tried almost too hard to cement Petty's kingly pop stature. Bogdanovich pointed out to the crowd that he likes finding new worlds, and even his career-making The Last Picture Show was set in a Texas he'd barely known when he set out to make it. (A nice touch at the premiere was the presence of Cybill Shepherd, whom he'd infamously fallen for back then in 1971).
What makes this film festival-worthy is mostly the stuff found in emotional cracks that have barely been prized open previously--Petty's anger (from a difficult upbringing, tastefully documented Ken Burns-style) as an artistic motor, his steely resolve as a band leader (he's an odd mix of remorseless and remorseful), his strong sense of his own worth as it battles his perfectionism. Shot through with laughs that often depend on Petty's sly comic timing as a storyteller, and with charged band performances that make it worth seeking out the film in a theater with a good sound system, Runnin' Down A Dream will test your patience at times, but also offers rich rewards. It's as Petty says at the end of the coffee-table book (a well-made thing from Chronicle Books at $39.95): "For that couple hours on stage time just stops, and there isn't any other world but that one."
Director Peter Bogdanovich had just finished telling the slightly wary crowd at the luxe Steven J. Ross theater in Burbank on the Warner Bros. studio lot that his Tom Petty doc, Runnin' Down A Dream, had formerly been running long-"But we got it down to 3:58". That' right, just a hair under four hours and even if you're a glutton for things Petty, as this correspondent is, that's pretty tall corn.
Bogdanovich also apologized to the Tuesday evening crowd for almost subtitling it, "An American Odyssey", which might have been "pretentious".
Truth is, over time Petty took the blows--from fetching up on the streets of L.A. to sign a bad deal with producer-impresario Denny Cordell, through struggles with his labels (his insistence on rewriting the original, crappy deal with ABC, followed by the famous scrap when MCA tried to use him to up the price of CD's to $9.98), the artistic struggles to keep his band busy and happy under his not always so benevolent dictatorship, plus a divorce, an arson fire that destroyed most of his earthly goods, the death via drugs of a band mate, the prolonged and painful alienation of another, the hand he shattered by punching on wall while making Southern Accents and now, though this is barely hinted at in the unsurprisingly worshipful film commissioned by Petty, the long, ongoing slog through the wreckage of the music business. A perennially strong touring band, Petty and his Heartbreakers have sold over a hundred million albums over time, but lately have been in need of a hit.
The Runnin' Down A Dream film, and accompanying three-disc DVD, is meant more as a recap than a commercial tide-turner. It will close the New York Film Festival on October 14, be unspooled in perhaps twenty markets countrywide (with the houses well papered by radio promotions) on October 15th, and then be available as a three-disc package (exclusively from Best Buy, at least through the holiday buying season, and listed at $29.99, with early orders five bucks less.
With most of the major audience-pleasers given at least a nod--from "American Girl": through ""Don't Come Around Here No More" (which was the lynch pin of Petty's amazing run as a featured MTV performer) and more recent fare like "Learning To Fly", and "I Won't Back Down", it's a brimming sampler of Petty's considerable accomplishments. By the time George Harrison (the Traveling Wilburys band mate was filmed before his death), Johnny Depp, Jackson Browne, Eddie Vedder and others have finished, the film's tried almost too hard to cement Petty's kingly pop stature. Bogdanovich pointed out to the crowd that he likes finding new worlds, and even his career-making The Last Picture Show was set in a Texas he'd barely known when he set out to make it. (A nice touch at the premiere was the presence of Cybill Shepherd, whom he'd infamously fallen for back then in 1971).
What makes this film festival-worthy is mostly the stuff found in emotional cracks that have barely been prized open previously--Petty's anger (from a difficult upbringing, tastefully documented Ken Burns-style) as an artistic motor, his steely resolve as a band leader (he's an odd mix of remorseless and remorseful), his strong sense of his own worth as it battles his perfectionism. Shot through with laughs that often depend on Petty's sly comic timing as a storyteller, and with charged band performances that make it worth seeking out the film in a theater with a good sound system, Runnin' Down A Dream will test your patience at times, but also offers rich rewards. It's as Petty says at the end of the coffee-table book (a well-made thing from Chronicle Books at $39.95): "For that couple hours on stage time just stops, and there isn't any other world but that one."