Jon Stewart Taking 'Daily Show' Hiatus to Direct First Movie

Jon Stewart on the set of 'The Daily Show'

Jon Stewart will take 12 weeks off from The Daily Show this summer to direct his first film, Rosewater, with longtime correspondent John Oliver sitting in as host for eight weeks of new shows, Deadline Hollywood reports.

Stewart also wrote the screenplay for Rosewater, which he adapted from the book Then They Came For Me: A Family’s Story Of Love, Captivity and Survival by Maziar Bahari and Aimee Molloy.

The 50 Funniest People Now: Jon Stewart

A BBC journalist, Bahari left his pregnant fiancé in June 2009 to cover Iran's presidential elections; his scheduled weeklong trip turned into a 118 day ordeal in one of Iran's most notorious prisons, where he was brutally interrogated by a man who smelled like Rosewater.

Outside his directorial and writing duties, Stewart himself played a bit part in Bahari's story: The journalist was held under suspicion that he was a spy, and one of the items used against him was an appearance on The Daily Show.

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Q&A: Dave Grohl on His 'Sound City' Doc and Taking Risks in Music

Dave Grohl attends the Cinema Cafe at Filmmaker Lodge during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah on January 22nd, 2013.

After debuting his film Sound City – Real to Reel and his supergroup, the Sound City Players, at Sundance last week, Dave Grohl is finally ready to celebrate.

"Sundance was always our goal," he tells Rolling Stone. "If we could make the deadline, submit, get accepted, this is where we would premiere the movie. [Last year] we got trashed in a yurt up in the mountains and were like, if we come back, we're having the party here. That was exactly a year ago, and it actually fucking happened."

The Sound City Players are scheduled to play their next show in Los Angeles on January 31st, with other dates "coming soon in cool places," Grohl says. "The musicians have all really jumped on after the [Park City] show. I didn't know if Stevie [Nicks] was gonna be able to do New York, and after we did this she was like, 'I'm doing New York.'" Grohl says he'll keep crossing his fingers for an appearance from Paul McCartney.

Rolling Stone sat down with Grohl in a mountainside condo overlooking Park City and chatted with the drummer and first-time director about the Neve soundboard, sharing a stage with Lee Ving and why the film is the most important thing he's ever done.

Video: Peter Travers Picks 5 Great Films From Sundance 2013

I have a theory that Sound City is actually your memoir.
Oh yeah?

Well, it's framed with three guys from Seattle getting in a van.
The great thing about the Sound City story is that it's not just one story. I'm sure each one of these musicians would tell the story the exact same way. Their love for the studio, how important it was to them as a person, how that place changed their life, what technology has done to the way we make music and what technology has done to Sound City and the importance of the human element in making music. I bet you Neil Young and Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks and Rick Springfield could all make the same movie that I did. Because even in that introduction where I say, "We were just kids, we had these songs, and we had these dreams and we threw them in the back of a van," each one of those people can say the same thing.

I always had a strong connection to that studio because Nirvana wasn't meant to be the biggest band in the world. We just weren't. So when we went there for 16 days, we weren't making that album with the intention that we were going to change the fuckin' world. We just wanted it to sound good . . . The fact that what happened actually, happened, makes me think there's something a more than just wires and knobs in that place. Personally, I have a strong emotional connection to it.

Musically, there's something magical about that place, and when I heard that they were closing I thought, "I have a studio, I make records every day. If I could be reunited with this piece of equipment that I consider to be the best sounding board I've ever worked on and the board that's responsible for the person that I am, it would be a huge full-circle emotional reunion for me." And that's why I made the movie.

You sort of isolated the Neve, the soundboard, as the magic. Are there other elements that you think were also significant?
The room where everyone recorded, it used to be a warehouse. It's where they made Vox amplifiers. It was never acoustically designed, it was just a room. But for whatever reason, if you put a drum set in this one spot, it sounded incredible. I'm not an acoustic engineer, and I could never design a studio mathematically, because it's crazy what people go through to build these acoustically perfect rooms. But Sound City just happened. And the board and that room, those two things together. That's why everybody went there. And it wasn't planned.

How much did the aesthetic of the space affect the sound that came out of there?
Tons. You didn't feel like you were at the Mondrian. You didn't feel like you were in a laboratory – you felt like you were back to the garage where you started as a musician, and in a way it would remind you that the most important thing is how it sounds. And the most important thing is how it feels. It doesn't have anything to do with the glitz or the glamour – it's all about being badass and doing something real. And they never bought a Pro Tools rig because they thought, well, you can bring one in yourself. 

How did you end up there? How did you land on Sound City?
I don't remember. I think that Nirvana had signed with the David Geffen Company and they gave us . . . maybe $100,000 to make, or $60,000 to make a record. And rather than just send us a check to Seattle, they decided they wanted us to come to L.A. so they could keep an eye on us. We couldn't afford one of the fancy places downtown, so we found out about this place that had an old Neve board. None of us had ever been there before.

And how did you decide to invite all the different artists to record with you in the film?
Part of every discussion with the musicians was about the human element of making music. Feel, imperfection, emotion, the conversation as a player, conversation between players, craft. All of those things we talk about in the film, but I thought it would make those things more clear if we demonstrated them. If you're talking about spontaneity and connecting in a moment, the McCartney/Nirvana segment makes perfect sense. I wouldn't even have to say that, you just watch it and think, Wow, they just walked into a room together and made something explosive out of nothing because of the energy in the room. It could take years to explain how or why that happens, but if you see it, those seven minutes make perfect sense. 

And releasing an album was the next step?
I wanted to show that all of these musicians come from the same place. I wanted to mix up these combinations of people that might not normally make albums together. A guy from the Germs jamming with a Beatle. Rick Springfield jamming with the Foo Fighters. Those configurations are meant to show, we're all just people and we're just musicians. I started in the garage and you started in the garage and you might have gone this way and I may have gone that way, but deep down we're all still there where we began, hopefully. So it was fun to make new music and not just go back and do the old stuff.

And the Sound City Players were an outgrowth of that?
It's an extension of the same idea. You talk about music, and then show people what that means. Take it out of the movie and put it on a stage. I am not organized in the rest of my life, I can hardly fuckin' do my laundry, but for whatever reason, I can imagine these things happening, and if I can imagine them happening then I really try to make them happen. An hour beforehand, I didn't know if we were gonna be able to do it. It's hard for me to believe, but if you have these opportunities in life, why not do them? There are times where I get so nervous before performing that I almost ruin the moment, or the experience, and I've finally realized that in those moments you have to let go of that bullshit and say, "I can't ruin this moment by being scared or by being nervous, or by being insecure or thinking that I'm not going to be able to do it. It'll be much more rewarding if I actually just do it." I would be terrified to ask Tom Petty to be in my movie, but God, I'd be an idiot not to, and when I finally did he said, "Well, you can't have a movie about Sound City without me in it, now can you?" And it's like, that's the perfect answer.

What was the most surreal moment for you at the Park City show?
Having my heroes compliment me. I'm really used to praising these people that I love, but when they sort of send praise back, it's weird, man. When Fogerty's talking about, well, this couldn't have happened without Dave's childlike enthusiasm about music, I'm like, "Stop talking about me, stop talking about me!" To be onstage with Lee Ving from Fear – I swear to God, The Decline of Western Civilization, the Penelope Spheeris movie, I got the record when I was like 12, and that really inspired me to become a musician and start a band and play punk rock music. So to stand next to Lee Ving and play "Beef Bologna," it doesn't sound like it would be this profound, life-altering moment, but it really was. It was 30 years ago that I discovered this guy, and now I'm onstage playing the songs that inspired me to become a musician. That's fuckin' nuts.

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Q&A: Dave Grohl on His 'Sound City' Doc and Taking Risks in Music

Dave Grohl attends the Cinema Cafe at Filmmaker Lodge during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah on January 22nd, 2013.

After debuting his film Sound City – Real to Reel and his supergroup, the Sound City Players, at Sundance last week, Dave Grohl is finally ready to celebrate.

"Sundance was always our goal," he tells Rolling Stone. "If we could make the deadline, submit, get accepted, this is where we would premiere the movie. [Last year] we got trashed in a yurt up in the mountains and were like, if we come back, we're having the party here. That was exactly a year ago, and it actually fucking happened."

The Sound City Players are scheduled to play their next show in Los Angeles on January 31st, with other dates "coming soon in cool places," Grohl says. "The musicians have all really jumped on after the [Park City] show. I didn't know if Stevie [Nicks] was gonna be able to do New York, and after we did this she was like, 'I'm doing New York.'" Grohl says he'll keep crossing his fingers for an appearance from Paul McCartney.

Rolling Stone sat down with Grohl in a mountainside condo overlooking Park City and chatted with the drummer and first-time director about the Neve soundboard, sharing a stage with Lee Ving and why the film is the most important thing he's ever done.

Video: Peter Travers Picks 5 Great Films From Sundance 2013

I have a theory that Sound City is actually your memoir.
Oh yeah?

Well, it's framed with three guys from Seattle getting in a van.
The great thing about the Sound City story is that it's not just one story. I'm sure each one of these musicians would tell the story the exact same way. Their love for the studio, how important it was to them as a person, how that place changed their life, what technology has done to the way we make music and what technology has done to Sound City and the importance of the human element in making music. I bet you Neil Young and Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks and Rick Springfield could all make the same movie that I did. Because even in that introduction where I say, "We were just kids, we had these songs, and we had these dreams and we threw them in the back of a van," each one of those people can say the same thing.

I always had a strong connection to that studio because Nirvana wasn't meant to be the biggest band in the world. We just weren't. So when we went there for 16 days, we weren't making that album with the intention that we were going to change the fuckin' world. We just wanted it to sound good . . . The fact that what happened actually, happened, makes me think there's something a more than just wires and knobs in that place. Personally, I have a strong emotional connection to it.

Musically, there's something magical about that place, and when I heard that they were closing I thought, "I have a studio, I make records every day. If I could be reunited with this piece of equipment that I consider to be the best sounding board I've ever worked on and the board that's responsible for the person that I am, it would be a huge full-circle emotional reunion for me." And that's why I made the movie.

You sort of isolated the Neve, the soundboard, as the magic. Are there other elements that you think were also significant?
The room where everyone recorded, it used to be a warehouse. It's where they made Vox amplifiers. It was never acoustically designed, it was just a room. But for whatever reason, if you put a drum set in this one spot, it sounded incredible. I'm not an acoustic engineer, and I could never design a studio mathematically, because it's crazy what people go through to build these acoustically perfect rooms. But Sound City just happened. And the board and that room, those two things together. That's why everybody went there. And it wasn't planned.

How much did the aesthetic of the space affect the sound that came out of there?
Tons. You didn't feel like you were at the Mondrian. You didn't feel like you were in a laboratory – you felt like you were back to the garage where you started as a musician, and in a way it would remind you that the most important thing is how it sounds. And the most important thing is how it feels. It doesn't have anything to do with the glitz or the glamour – it's all about being badass and doing something real. And they never bought a Pro Tools rig because they thought, well, you can bring one in yourself. 

How did you end up there? How did you land on Sound City?
I don't remember. I think that Nirvana had signed with the David Geffen Company and they gave us . . . maybe $100,000 to make, or $60,000 to make a record. And rather than just send us a check to Seattle, they decided they wanted us to come to L.A. so they could keep an eye on us. We couldn't afford one of the fancy places downtown, so we found out about this place that had an old Neve board. None of us had ever been there before.

And how did you decide to invite all the different artists to record with you in the film?
Part of every discussion with the musicians was about the human element of making music. Feel, imperfection, emotion, the conversation as a player, conversation between players, craft. All of those things we talk about in the film, but I thought it would make those things more clear if we demonstrated them. If you're talking about spontaneity and connecting in a moment, the McCartney/Nirvana segment makes perfect sense. I wouldn't even have to say that, you just watch it and think, Wow, they just walked into a room together and made something explosive out of nothing because of the energy in the room. It could take years to explain how or why that happens, but if you see it, those seven minutes make perfect sense. 

And releasing an album was the next step?
I wanted to show that all of these musicians come from the same place. I wanted to mix up these combinations of people that might not normally make albums together. A guy from the Germs jamming with a Beatle. Rick Springfield jamming with the Foo Fighters. Those configurations are meant to show, we're all just people and we're just musicians. I started in the garage and you started in the garage and you might have gone this way and I may have gone that way, but deep down we're all still there where we began, hopefully. So it was fun to make new music and not just go back and do the old stuff.

And the Sound City Players were an outgrowth of that?
It's an extension of the same idea. You talk about music, and then show people what that means. Take it out of the movie and put it on a stage. I am not organized in the rest of my life, I can hardly fuckin' do my laundry, but for whatever reason, I can imagine these things happening, and if I can imagine them happening then I really try to make them happen. An hour beforehand, I didn't know if we were gonna be able to do it. It's hard for me to believe, but if you have these opportunities in life, why not do them? There are times where I get so nervous before performing that I almost ruin the moment, or the experience, and I've finally realized that in those moments you have to let go of that bullshit and say, "I can't ruin this moment by being scared or by being nervous, or by being insecure or thinking that I'm not going to be able to do it. It'll be much more rewarding if I actually just do it." I would be terrified to ask Tom Petty to be in my movie, but God, I'd be an idiot not to, and when I finally did he said, "Well, you can't have a movie about Sound City without me in it, now can you?" And it's like, that's the perfect answer.

What was the most surreal moment for you at the Park City show?
Having my heroes compliment me. I'm really used to praising these people that I love, but when they sort of send praise back, it's weird, man. When Fogerty's talking about, well, this couldn't have happened without Dave's childlike enthusiasm about music, I'm like, "Stop talking about me, stop talking about me!" To be onstage with Lee Ving from Fear – I swear to God, The Decline of Western Civilization, the Penelope Spheeris movie, I got the record when I was like 12, and that really inspired me to become a musician and start a band and play punk rock music. So to stand next to Lee Ving and play "Beef Bologna," it doesn't sound like it would be this profound, life-altering moment, but it really was. It was 30 years ago that I discovered this guy, and now I'm onstage playing the songs that inspired me to become a musician. That's fuckin' nuts.

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Q&A: Michael Moore on Why Obama Needs Women, Taking Long Walks

In the midst of an election season, you'd expect Michael Moore – whose last film, Capitalism: A Love Story, was released three years ago – to be playing his traditional role as liberal provocateur. Instead, he's been most visible as . . . a guy taking long walks. Since March, in what began as a jokey tweet urging his followers to join him on a stroll, Moore's regular #miketakesawalk Twitter outings have drawn thousands.

So how did this begin?
It was a Sunday night. I'd read earlier in the day in The New York Times that more Americans are on antidepressants than go to the movies.

That's depressing in all sorts of ways.
Exactly. I thought I'd tweet that out. This began a little bit of a firestorm. One group started tweeting that Hollywood movies are so bad, they'd make you more depressed. Then a fight broke out between people for and against antidepressants. Finally, some guy tweets to everyone, "I've found that all I need is a brisk walk." I laughed and retweeted him and wrote, "I think he's got the right idea. I'm putting my shoes on right now. Anyone who wants to join me can go." And I went on a 30-minute walk.

And it grew from there?
Yes. The next day, I thought, "I'm gonna try this again." Mind you, I'm not doing this for any reason! I wasn't planning any kind of walking routine. But I got even more responses, and I felt an obligation to keep going. People started tweeting pictures of their walks, or things like, "If you're going at 7 p.m. on the East Coast, do I have to go at 4 p.m. on the West Coast?" Europeans are weighing in: "Seven is too late! That's midnight here!" By the end of the month, I was having too much fun to stop. And I was feeling good, personally.

I think people have been surprised by the lack of a political element.
People say, "What's the cause?" The cause is putting one foot in front of the other. There's honestly no rhyme or reason behind this. I deplore exercise. Diets are a scam. I don't believe any of this stuff. I just started doing it because it was a weird thing to do, and then it became a collective thing to do with thousands of people around the world.

So what else can we look forward to?
I can't really say. There are three different projects I'm working on. They're not all films. People will become aware of them in the next year. I made the mistake of talking too much about Sicko before I finished the film, and the health-insurance lobby really came after me, so that's all I can say.

What are your thoughts on the presidential race?
I'm sure right about now Republicans are thinking, "Why the hell did we ever give women the vote?!" One of my Twitter followers wrote on my feed today, "In November, the Republicans are going to find out what a real pussy riot is." When they write the history of this election, it might come down to Todd Akin and these last few days. The gap between McCain and Obama on the women's vote was something like 14 percent. I wouldn't be surprised if it doubled this year. And that's good because Obama needs women to replace young voters.

You don't think young people will come out?
Enthusiasm is down because the person they voted for didn't come out of the gate swinging. He played "Kumbaya." I don't understand what part of "10 million vote mandate" he didn't understand. That's why I think this job is not going to be decided by independents. It's going to be about who does the best job of physically getting people out. If you could do an American Idol poll, where nobody had to get off the couch, Obama would probably still win. But that's not how we vote.

After a summer of the Romney campaign making a series of mistakes, is there a danger of overconfidence on the part of Obama supporters?
Yes. Republicans are relentless and they're smart, too – they're not all dumb – and on Election Day, they'll be up at five in the morning. The only way our side will see five in the morning is if we've stayed up all night partying. So I say don't get too cocky about Obama winning. You only have to look at what happened in Wisconsin a few months go [when Republican Gov. Scott Walker staved off a recall]. Everyone thought that was going to go the good way, and the bad guys won. The bad guys are very good at winning.

This is from the September 13th, 2012 issue of Rolling Stone.

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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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Taylor Swift Taking Ailing Teen to ACM Awards

Taylor Swift with her fans at the 46th Annual Academy Of Country Music Awards.Christopher Polk/ACMA2011/Getty Images for ACM

Taylor Swift will be taking a fan with leukemia as her date to the Academy of Country Music Awards on April 1st in Las Vegas.

Kevin McGuire, an 18-year-old from Somerdale, New Jersey, had started a Facebook campaign with his sister to get the country pop star to be his prom date. After this caught Swift's attention, she wrote to tell him that she couldn't make his prom, but she invited him to accompany her to the awards show, where she is up for three honors.

Swift is following the lead of Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, who accepted similar requests for dates last year from military cadets. In a post on her blog in November, Timberlake said that attending the Marine Corps Ball on his date with Corporal Kelsey De Santis changed his life.

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Taylor Swift Taking Ailing Teen to ACM Awards

Taylor Swift with her fans at the 46th Annual Academy Of Country Music Awards.Christopher Polk/ACMA2011/Getty Images for ACM

Taylor Swift will be taking a fan with leukemia as her date to the Academy of Country Music Awards on April 1st in Las Vegas.

Kevin McGuire, an 18-year-old from Somerdale, New Jersey, had started a Facebook campaign with his sister to get the country pop star to be his prom date. After this caught Swift's attention, she wrote to tell him that she couldn't make his prom, but she invited him to accompany her to the awards show, where she is up for three honors.

Swift is following the lead of Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, who accepted similar requests for dates last year from military cadets. In a post on her blog in November, Timberlake said that attending the Marine Corps Ball on his date with Corporal Kelsey De Santis changed his life.

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