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Writer/director Cameron Crowe’s love of music has been a key part of his work since his days as a teenager writing for Rolling Stone, but a pivotal text in understanding that passion has been missing until now. Rediscovered after over 40 years, Heartbreakers Beach Party — Crowe’s first effort as a director — has been rediscovered and remastered, giving new life to an intimate portrait of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, as seen through the eyes of a great rock journalist.
In fact, Heartbreakers Beach Party opens by billing itself not as a documentary, but as “A Profile by Cameron Crowe” — the clear intent is to deliver a video version of the kinds of cover stories that Crowe had been writing for Rolling Stone up to that point. Largely focusing on footage shot in 1982 and 1983 (plus some footage of old live shows), the camera is on Tom Petty’s face more often than it’s not, as the frontman talks candidly about record company woes and replacing bass player Ron Blair with Howie Epstein.
MTV only aired the documentary once, in February 1983, at which point (according to the film’s official website) “the film was deemed too experimental and abruptly pulled from the air.” Experimental is an accurate description, though meandering might be another.
Being framed as “a profile” inspires a lot of thought about the differences between a few thousand words of print journalism and an hour of filmed interviews and off-the-cuff footage; the latter offers more immediacy and intimacy, while the former benefits from the author’s hand guiding the action. Despite Crowe literally being on screen with Petty throughout the doc, it does suffer from a lack of narrative drive — even though the core of Heartbreakers Beach Party is only an hour long, within that time frame it does tend to meander a bit, becoming (especially in the middle) more of a collection of interesting clips as opposed to a coherent story about the band at this point in time.
The clips are truly glorious, though. There’s Petty composing a silly lil ditty on the bus by the title of “I’m Stupid” (you can watch a clip of it here, courtesy of the band’s Facebook page). There’s Petty addressing a crowd of UCLA students about album prices. There’s Petty calling bullshit on rock stars who purport to be characters. There’s Petty working with Stevie Nicks on the recording of “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.”
And there’s footage of a 2:00 A.M. hangout between Crowe and Petty, during which Petty declares “Here you go, Cameron here is all the dirty truth” as he pulls out a box of old photos packed with stories, like how James Brown is the only musician Petty’s ever asked for an autograph.
There are a few core interviews intercut throughout the film, the most predominant of which is Petty and Crowe sitting in the backseat of a limo as it rolls around Los Angeles. Even the choice to ride in a limo ends up being revelatory about Petty as a rock star at that time, as he acknowledges that it’s a “pretty obnoxious way to travel around” but that he might as well enjoy it while he can, because who knows what might happen in a year? Plus, he notes, “I don’t have to ride around in an old Ford to convince myself I’m from the street.”
This wouldn’t be the last time Crowe attempted to direct a music documentary — he also made 2011’s Pearl Jam Twenty, which chronicled that band’s 20th anniversary — and he technically directed this one with some help from Doug Dowdle and Phil Savenick (the other two credited directors). While Crowe is very present in the action here, it’s not in a way where he pulls focus from his subject, a tricky balance to find, that only comes with experience. It brings to mind one of the most famous monologues he’s ever written, words he put in the mouth of legendary rock critic Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman) in Almost Famous:
You cannot make friends with the rock stars… If you’re going to be a true journalist, you know, a rock journalist – first, you never get paid much. But, you will get free records from the record company. Fuckin’ nothin’ about you that is controversial. God, it’s gonna get ugly. And they’re gonna buy you drinks, you’re gonna meet girls, they’re gonna try to fly you places for free, offer you drugs. I know, it sounds great. But, these people are not your friends. You know, these are people who want you to write sanctimonious stories about the genius of the rock stars and they will *ruin* rock ‘n’ roll and strangle everything we love about it. Right? And then it just becomes an industry of – cool.
In Heartbreakers Beach Party, Crowe is ten years into his career as a music journalist, and does seem to have internalized these lessons to some degree. What he’s learned is how to seem like the band’s friend, which makes the film’s most honest and revealing moments possible. But there’s still enough fan in him for the film to ultimately feel like a celebration of their work, if only because the music is ever-present, a reminder of how in the early ’80s, a time where (as Crowe says during the outtakes) synth was king, real people playing real guitars stood out as something special. And to date, something singular about the way the Heartbreakers rock out remains.
Tom Petty: Heartbreakers Beach Party premieres in select theaters on October 17th and 20th. Get more information about tickets on the official website.
English (US) · 