SXSW 2013: Green Day Launch 'Broadway Idiot' and 'Cuatro!' Documentaries

Green Day speak on stage before the World Premiere of "Broadway Idiot" at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas on March 15th, 2013.Michael Buckner/Getty Images for SXSW)

"Welcome to our nightmare."

That sardonic introduction by Green Day bassist Mike Dirnt made for the only notable words from the band to the audience during Friday's SXSW premieres of Broadway Idiot and Cuatro!, a pair of new documentaries focusing on the punk trio's creative process behind the Broadway adaptation of American Idiot and their recent album trilogy. 

Broadway Idiot chronicles theater director Michael Mayer’s conceptual rehearsals for the Green Day musical, and follows through the show’s run on Broadway in 2010 and 2011. The movie shows Armstrong becoming close friends with the cast and crew during rehearsals, and bringing them into the recording studio for a cast version of "21 Guns." As the singer became more involved with the show, he even developed some acting chops after Mayer asked him to do a stint playing St. Jimmy, the show’s rock & roll villain. Packed with revealing and sentimental moments – including the trio’s stunned reaction upon visiting a rehearsal to get a look at the show before giving it their blessing – the movie brings even more depth and meaning to the music from one of Green Day’s most successful albums.

The audience also got an early look at the film’s archival footage from 1983 of a pre-teen Armstrong singing show tunes and standards by Frank Sinatra and Al Jolson that his mother taught him. That early appreciation and familiarity with musicals is discussed in the film as a likely reason why Armstrong and Mayer clicked so well while working on the show, despite coming from different backgrounds.

SXSW 2013: Green Day Blast Back With a Supercharged Billie Joe Armstrong

The counterpart film, Cuatro! is a combination making-of album documentary, concert film and band historical project that’s centered around the writing and recording of ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré! As the band, which officially becomes a quartet with the addition of longtime touring guitarist Jason White, reconvenes following a break, it deals with sorting through more than 60 songs, eventually deciding to release three albums in quick succession.

Much more of a visual feast in the way director Tim Wheeler uses quick cuts and a host of other showy filmmaker techniques, the movie offers lots of footage from club shows in Austin, Oakland and New York City, where it worked out much of the new material. In the studio footage, new songs like "Stop When The Red Lights Flash" and "Oh Love" seem to round into shape easily, but the band struggles with how to sequence three album’s worth of material.

"We think of it as Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi," Armstrong says at one point. "Only we’ll make Jedi not suck."

In between live shots and footage from recording sessions, Wheeler incorporates funny glimpses into the band, including drummer Cool joking on camera and shots of Armstrong coming to the studio dressed up as a moss monster to surprise studio employees and passersby.

Addressing the audience during a brief post-film conversation, Broadway Idiot director Doug Hamilton praised the band, and Armstrong in particular, for opening themselves up to the filming and taking an active role in an entirely new creative endeavor. "This was a chance to do something more than just a making-of film," he said. "Billie Joe really engaged every step of the way. I mean, here you have one of the most famous artists willing to take on something new and out of his control."

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Carole King Musical Aims for Broadway

Carole King performs in Hollywood, California. Michael Buckner/Getty Images for The Painted Turtle Camp

A new musical centered around Carole King's life and career is set for a spring 2014 opening on Broadway. Beautiful: The Carole King Musical will be written by screenwriter Douglas McGrath – who was nominated for an Oscar for his script for 1994's Bullets Over Broadway – and will follow the singer-songwriter from her Brooklyn roots through her Brill Building years and marriage and partnership with Gerry Goffin. According to the Hollywood Reporter, it will feature music written by King, Goffin, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Paul Blake and Sony/ATV will produce the show.

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"What's so great about this for me is that musicals were a major influence on my songwriting," said King in a statement. "In fact, when Gerry and I first met, we made a bargain that I would write music for the Broadway show he wanted to write if he wrote lyrics for my rock & roll songs. The songs took off and the show idea never came to fruition. Now that our songs have merged with a Broadway show, we've come full circle."

The production is currently working out a pre-Broadway, out-of-town tryout engagement this fall.

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Carole King Musical Aims for Broadway

Carole King performs in Hollywood, California. Michael Buckner/Getty Images for The Painted Turtle Camp

A new musical centered around Carole King's life and career is set for a spring 2014 opening on Broadway. Beautiful: The Carole King Musical will be written by screenwriter Douglas McGrath – who was nominated for an Oscar for his script for 1994's Bullets Over Broadway – and will follow the singer-songwriter from her Brooklyn roots through her Brill Building years and marriage and partnership with Gerry Goffin. According to the Hollywood Reporter, it will feature music written by King, Goffin, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Paul Blake and Sony/ATV will produce the show.

500 Greatest Albums of All Time: Carole King, 'Tapestry'

"What's so great about this for me is that musicals were a major influence on my songwriting," said King in a statement. "In fact, when Gerry and I first met, we made a bargain that I would write music for the Broadway show he wanted to write if he wrote lyrics for my rock & roll songs. The songs took off and the show idea never came to fruition. Now that our songs have merged with a Broadway show, we've come full circle."

The production is currently working out a pre-Broadway, out-of-town tryout engagement this fall.

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Mike Tyson Taking Broadway Show on the Road

Mike Tyson during opening night of 'Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth' on Broadway in New YorkMichael Loccisano/Getty Images

This morning, Mike Tyson arose at 8 a.m. and had his customary breakfast: oatmeal, Cheerios, almond milk. Last night, he had his usual dinner: spinach, broccoli, rice. "Before I was a vegan, I ate garbage," he says, sitting in a hotel room in downtown Manhattan, shaking his head. "After a fight, I'd eat like a pig: splits, donuts, steak, toxins, poison, anything – grab it." Tyson is in New York for his one-man Broadway show, The Undisputed Truth: a captivating, off-kilter chronicle of a life spent trying – and, more often than not, spectacularly failing – to keep his outsize appetites in check. "I'm a gorger," he says.

Tyson's wearing jeans and a light blue T-shirt, rubbing his biceps softly, looking as beatific as a man with a tribal-warrior tramp-stamp covering half his face can look. But even discussing something as benign as his recent adoption of veganism, Tyson can show glints of the famous volatility that made this former Brownsville, Brooklyn, stick-up kid such a ferocious fighter.

"You hear from some people—what do they call it? Rabbit food? Fag food?" he says. For a moment, his eyes go blank and his gaze falls to the carpet. "I will kick somebody's ass if they keep talking some 'fag food' shit."

Many somebodies get their asses kicked during The Undisputed Truth, which began life last spring as a glitzy Vegas production before Spike Lee signed on to direct a stripped-down New York installment. "He's a great storyteller, and his story's the prototype American story: the rise, the fall, the rise again," Lee says. "When it comes to talking about himself, Mike's the most honest person I've ever met in my life. Highs, lows, he doesn't care."

Over two hours, Tyson works a black, bare stage in a dark suit, reminiscing about his youth, his acrimonious divorce from Robin Givens, his 1992 rape conviction, his cocaine addiction and the countless beatdowns he administered, inside the ring and out, in between. He was inspired by Chazz Palminteri's one-man show, A Bronx Tale, thinking, "I could do that." Tyson characterizes himself as a natural raconteur with eons of crazy tales to share: "People come over, I tell stories about what I know, what I've learned."

On stage, life lessons take a backseat to bawdy yarns and painful, cathartic patches. Tyson tears into Givens, for instance, in graphic and ungallant detail: there's an extended riff about her duplicity and his inability to distinguish "miscarriage blood" from "beat-the-pussy-up blood." Tyson says such stories unfurl as much at his expense as anyone else's.

"I thought I was so cool back then," he tells me. "I thought I was a hell of a motherfucker. But I look back, and I was a shmuck." Elsewhere, he touches on his drug problem, bellowing, "I love me some cocaine!" I ask if he's afraid of backsliding. "Any moment. It's always a struggle," he replies. "I am that guy that could fuck around and do something over a bitch or some drugs or some money. That's who I am. When I fuck up, I really fuck up. Anything could trigger it: the sound of a Marlboro Red lighting up, because I'd smoke cocaine in Marlboros. The audience says, 'He was going through a period.' They don't know if I hear a Marlboro today and get the wrong signal I can fuck it all up."

While in New York, Tyson has been traveling to Brooklyn, where he still houses trained pigeons in Bushwick. "I go a couple times a week," he says tenderly. The whiplash extremes of Tyson's gentleness and viciousness animate the show, which swerves from gross-out comedy to somber tearjerker mode without warning. Nowhere is Tyson more pained on stage then when discussing his children, whom he feels he once neglected. "I wasn't the greatest father," he tells me, noting with simultaneous humor and sorrow that he's been known to text his kids and make surprising, hurtful errors: "They go, 'Dad, that's not how you spell my name!' I'm like, fuck, these are college-educated kids, and I'm a dumb fucking nigger."

Tyson approached Broadway like a prizefight, throwing himself into long rehearsal days for the better part of a month. He attended Porgy and Bess and Memphis. "I wanna be in that league," he says. He likens the stage to the ring: "You can feel the crowd, the energy can change and you go, boom, let's get rid of that, let's play over here. Quick, tenth-of-a-second thinking. A fight has the same dynamics." After New York, the show will travel the world, Tyson says – "Singapore, England, Australia, New Zealand, I think South Africa."

He's already plotting ways to up his showmanship. "It may seem weird or wimpy," he says, "but I want to have some quick dance acts in there. I'd love to sing, but I can't. Maybe I'll get the guts one day." 

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