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Craig A. Williams - "If These Walls Could Rock" · Caught on the Mike...

• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Caught on the Mike.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: There are hotels, and then there's the Sunset Marquee.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: For more than six decades, this little hideaway just off the Sunset Strip became home to rock stars, a creative sanctuary, and the backdrop for some unbelievable stories, many that were not able to be told in this documentary.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Today I am joined by filmmaker, writer, and former Sunset Strip Rocker himself, Craig A.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Williams, co-director of If These Walls Could Rock, to pull back the curtain on one of Rock and Roll's greatest secrets.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Craig, how the heck are you?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm fantastic, Mike.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me here.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really thrilled to be here.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Dude, I am so stoked.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I just told you before we pressed record, I watched the dock and I absolutely love it.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a guy that loves nostalgia.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And whether it was intentional or not, some of the set pieces, the photos, the interviews, they hit me in all the old man nostalgia feels, and I absolutely loved it, man.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm happy to hear that, especially the old man nostalgia feels.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's our target demographic for sure.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you actually lived through the Sunset Strip Rock and Roll Dream before you ever made this documentary.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: When you were a teenager playing places like the Whiskey, the Roxy, and the Troubadour, what did the Sunset Marquee represent to you from the outside looking in?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, man.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny that you use the word dream because there are other um descriptors for the life on the sunset strip in the late 80s, early 90s.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: But uh yeah, we'll go with Dream.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Dream sounds good.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: It was all great.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, I mean, you know, I was a teenage butt rocker on the Sunset Strip, and um we knew about the Sunset Marquee, okay?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was kind of this like mythological place um where we we knew that like Slash was hanging out, or Chris Robinson from the Black Crows or Steven Tyler.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: We would never think to go there, you know, and I'm sure they wouldn't let us in, so why would we even try?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, we were doing our after parties at like the the travel lodge on the corner of Hollywood and Highland or something like that.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you know, it just it had this mythological place of um, you know, it was just up on a pedestal.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was just a place that you knew all the coolest guys were hanging out, and and you just wouldn't think to go there.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't until much later that I was finally invited in.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you first got involved with the marquee story more than a decade ago when you were hired to write the book about it.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: At what point did you realize holy shit, this isn't just a book about a hotel, this is a piece of rock history.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm pretty quickly, you know, um and I and I got this gig because of my background on the Sunset Strip.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I had written a book about my days as a as a hair metal teenage rock star called Mom, Have You Seen My Leather Pants?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: And in that book, I do I talk a lot about, you know, LA history, West Hollywood history, sunset strip history, and that's what kind of attracted the ownership of the hotel.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: They were looking to do a 50th anniversary book, kind of a coffee table style thing.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and when I walked in, um, you know, I think the first people I saw were like Matt Sorum from Guns N' Roses and and the The Cult.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, the stories and the way that they immediately talked about it, of just like, here's what you need to know, um, made me realize that this wasn't just like, oh, we're gonna tell stories about like partying and getting laid.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um there was this sense of community.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was a sense of like, oh no, if you're here, um you're like part of a club kind of thing, where like you're you're almost kind of cool enough to be invited in and stay here and uh gather with these people and kind of exchange ideas.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's what it really really quickly became about was the fact that this is where people don't just gather to party.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: They they do they do do that, thank God.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: But they're also like writing songs together and and making relationships, you know, whether that's friendships or um marriages started here, marriages ended here, um often on the same night.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it it just it was there's just a vibe, there's an energy to sound like a new agey tokey kind of guy.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um when you walk in, it that just feels different as soon as you're in there.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's and it's more than like sticky sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny because I felt while watching the dock that there was like this through line and this interconnective thread throughout the whole thing.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was watching the behind the scenes of a secret society, like a skull and bones type thing through a lot of these stories.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: And there really was a lot of respect for confidentiality and whatever happens at the sunset marquee stays at the sunset marquee, wasn't there?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think that's why these people have stayed there for years and why they continue to stay there is that there is this sense of confidentiality, um, safety.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think safety is like the word that people use really often with it, is that they just feel safe to be themselves, and that's what I mean.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't mean that they feel safe from like a knife attack or something like that.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Although, to my knowledge, there's never been a knife attack there.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's really just more about like, oh, I don't have to be that persona that I am outside these walls.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: I can be who I really am, and um, I think that is like really freeing for for people who are on stage all the time and just need like a break from that.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, the thing that really jumps out is that the marquee wasn't necessarily famous because it was flashy.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I and you've kind of already talked about it, but why did musicians gravitate towards this relatively hidden, almost anonymous little hotel instead of the more famous places around the strip?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you a story that I think kind of explains it.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, and it's not in the movie, but it's in like some of our bonus material, is Morrissey tells a story about when he was first touring with the Smiths and they checked into the Sunset Marquee, and he's a vegetarian.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Very rock and roll, I know.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, when you're on the road, and um how do you find a vegetarian meal?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, everything's just like ship food and you know, that sort of thing.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: There was a butler who worked at the hotel at the time who would go home every day and bake vegetarian pies and then bring them back to the hotel for Morrissey.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: And he was just taken care of, you know, in a way that you wouldn't be at uh a chain hotel or something like that.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's like this kind of personal um relationship that formed.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very avuncular, you know, it's almost like uh you it's a family member coming in and taking care of you and giving you nourishment, you know, literal nourishment that you need.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you can multiply that by just about everybody that we talk to has some story like that where they just felt taken care of either by a staff member or somebody that they met there, or you know, just being anonymous for a few minutes.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: It just um there's that kind of nourishing quality to the place.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's a fascinating distinction between the mythology of rock and roll and the reality of what actually happened.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um after interviewing all of these people and digging through the archives, how did you decide which stories were rock and roll legend and which ones you could actually substantiate for the doc?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for the most part, what we did um we kind of had a rule that we would only tell first-person stories.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't want to do a tabloid kind of thing of like, oh, you know, the maid told us that they found this in the room, or the butler told us this.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, Morrissey told that story about the butler himself.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and for the I I think 99% of what's in the film, it is people telling things firsthand.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was really the rule of thumb, is just that we didn't want to tell things um that weren't told to us directly by the person who experienced the story.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because then it's harder to verify.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, there's there's obviously there's certain things that um we couldn't include.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, Kelly Kelly Osborne told us a story about her father, and um we then interviewed Sharon and we told her what Kelly had told us, and she said, No, I don't fucking want to talk about that.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it was actually the way that she responded to it was like a really tongue-in-cheek answer.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: It actually would have worked great.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but then she called us the next day and said, Can you please not include that story?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: And we respected that.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we don't want to, we're not looking to embarrass anyone.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she had good reason for it to not be in there.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a story that's maybe been told elsewhere, I'm not totally sure.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: But uh and again, we wanted to treat these people with the same respect that the hotel would have treated them.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so if somebody said we don't want that story in there, we were you know gonna oblige that.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't want to take this too far off course here, but that kind of inspires a question that I think about often.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go all let's go all over the place.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't mind.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: I you know, it's it's something I think about often because I interview obviously a lot of artists, and one of the things I say as I did with you before I pressed record, is there anything off limits?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Anything you don't want to talk about?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: I fear that we're in a state in society, especially with clickbait, algorithms, social media, where the integrity of protecting a person's you know, persona is lost.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so I for one, I want to compliment you guys on letting the artists tell the stories from their perspective and not going the sensationalized route because it would be a lot easier to go uber sensationalize and draw extra media attention to this whole project.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Is that that's that was obviously something you guys really considered while making this movie?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, absolutely.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: And if you see, had you seen a really early cut of the film, there's a lot of sensational shit in there that I'm glad isn't in there.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's a lot of it's kind of gross, you know, or like it's stuff that people did when they were in their teens or their twenties, and now they're grown up and they have families and they don't necessarily want it known.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it doesn't mean that they didn't do these things, and it doesn't mean that what they did should cancel them or anything like that.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: It just means that um they they don't want it out there now, and um I can respect the reasons why.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: And at the same time, we had enough salacious things in there that we didn't we didn't need to cross those lines.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: But um, you know, I will do you want to know one of the stories that's not included in the in the film.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: I won't say who the who the artist was.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: But there was a famous band from the 80s uh who were all sort of lined up in the garden um getting pleasured by uh various fans of the band.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: And this is like eight, nine in the morning, and um coming out of his room is Michael J.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Fox pushing a baby stroller past this band being pleasured, and they see him and they say, Oi! Back to the future, have a go.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: And he kind of just waved and said, No, thank you, and kept pushing his baby stroller.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, you see in the film, uh, there's sort of a section where people are saying, Oh, I can't tell that story, it's too, it's too much.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: And almost by doing that, you know, I think you can use your imagination of the terrible things that went on here.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's amazing too, because I think one other thing that's kind of lost in society, especially right now, is the strength of nuance.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it is kind of life exists in gray areas, it doesn't exactly list in fully black and white.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: So Yeah.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and you know, when we've all been young, we've all, you know, maybe drank too much and done some stupid shit.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think the difference now is that everything's recorded posted to social media, and so you can't really do that stuff anymore.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe you shouldn't.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's get in depth about the people.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: You have Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Star, Slash, Dave Grosl, Cindy Lopper, Cheryl Crow, Morrisy, Billy Gibbons, Gene Simmons, and so many others in the film.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Was there a particular interview where you walked away thinking, I cannot believe we just got that story?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, a story.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, first of all, I just gotta say I met a Beatle.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's that's incredible.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's like, you know, and I talked to him about like how to feed his grandchild broccoli and you know what I do with my son.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: So it was like a very human conversation.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that not too many people get to do that.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna I'll take that one to my grave.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, as a story that I couldn't believe that we got, again, I'll probably go back to Morrissey just because um you hear so much shit about him.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's so much like so much mythology around him and how difficult he is, and blah, blah, blah.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: And he was just like the warmest, nicest person to us and told us incredible stories, um, a lot of which we have in like our bonus material that's on our Blu-ray and our DVD, which those things still exist, believe it or not.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, he he just like really went into a lot of his childhood and how he became a singer.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, obviously Dave Grohl is just like the charming um rock star that you'd never want to leave his side.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's a reason that he can sell out arenas around the world.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: He just has that magnetism, and he told us some great stories.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he met his uh his wife there, and it was this great great story about you know um being called over to the to the bar, and he's he was recording with Tenacious D at the time, and so he's just in like camouflage shorts and a stained, sweaty t-shirt, and you know, he gets called over to the bar to hang out for a little bit, and of course, that's the night that he meets his the love of his life.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, yeah, people just got really personal with us and really open.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was it was really a wonderful experience that way.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: I tell you, by the time the whole thing was over, I was already a huge fan of his.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: But by the time the whole thing was over, I wanted to just sit and listen to Billy Bob tell stories for hours.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, dude, I could sit there in that garden, chug a beer with Billy Bob and just listen to some of his stories.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I did that.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: And we there just happened to be cameras there.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: And if you talk about, yeah, a story that you're like, oh, I can't believe he just told me that.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, having sex on the stairs in the, you know, middle of the middle of the garden and people just walking past him.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was a little surprised that he told us that.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Or those just the you know, he's so authentic, you know, he's not he's not putting on anything.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I shouldn't be too surprised.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, that moment where we told him that Matthew McConaughey is staying in the in the presidential villa, and he turns around and says, What a dick.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, the moments like that, I think, are just so so genuine and so Billy Bob.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was really great to to get those in there for sure.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and that's exactly where I was going with that, because it was just like watching one of my buddies just shoot the shit, and I'm like, yeah, I would probably hang out with this guy.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you know, we have a guy in there that most most of your listeners might not know, but his name's Doc McGee.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: And he's the manager for like Motley Crew and Skid Rowe and Ozzy and like everybody that you might have loved in the 80s.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um and he um, I mean, probably the funniest interview we had, you know, we were just all we had to cut sometimes just because the stories that he had about Motley Crue um were so fucking funny.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, just like pooping off balconies.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: And um and every story ends with Mick Mars being arrested for no good reason.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: McMars was like the good one, so it would be like Nikki and Tommy, you know, taking a shit off the balcony somewhere, and somebody calls the police, and the police show up and they arrest McMars because they can't tell the difference between them.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, Mick Mars just like took so much shit for the for what all these other guys did.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Was there anybody you interviewed who completely changed the way you understood the sunset marquee?
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, aside from your research for the book, but just through the film.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think the big one is probably you know, Bruce Springsteen.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, the story is that Bruce was on the road in the late 70s, it was kind of before, I guess he had hit it pretty big.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: He was reading Born on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovac.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he pulls into the Sunset Marquee and he's like laying by the pool reading this book, and who you know kind of approaches him, poolside, but Ron Kovac, the author of this book.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and he says, you know, I I wrote that book, and they kind of start talking because Bruce was just like enchanted by this book, and Ron invites him to go to like a VA hospital and some other veterans' events, and that's what inspires Bruce to write Born in the USA.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just impossible.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just it's impossible that he was reading that book and uh he runs into the author, and the author inspires him to write an anthem, you know, not like a B-side, but like maybe the song that turned him into the megastar that that he is.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: And what it made us realize is that the place isn't just about partying, it's not just about sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's really about community and connection and and people feeling comfortable to um create things in a safe environment.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, some of the wildest stories are almost funny because they're so ridiculous without making this a who trashed the hotel the hardest conversation.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: What is the one story from the film or your research that still makes you laugh every time you think about it?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the one that I just told you about Michael J.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: Fox for sure.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: I just think being called Oi, back to the future, um, for the rest of your life.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, obviously Green Day, right, is the one that we reference the most that uh kind of trashed the hotel in in various ways.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um and there's something about the fact that they like were kicked out of the hotel for a year, and then 366 days later they check back in.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, that stuff just absolutely cracks me up.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um and again, uh go back to Doc McGee.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: He was just like told the funniest stories, but uh that made me chuckle too.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: The thing about Green Day doing it to the day of or the day after.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you can't even schedule rock stars for an interview and expect them to hold time, let alone they check into the hotel on day 366 after the year they've been banned.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Insane.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it's great.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they are obviously like the little mischievous demons, you know.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm sure they had that planned out.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we reference the story about the Beastie Boys in the hot tub, but that one always makes me kind of crack up because they're just living the rock star life.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they were so young on that first tour, and I think they were playing at the palladium or something, and I'm sure they were just out all night partying.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: They come back to the Hotel and they're doing what rock stars do in a hot tub.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're they're having like a little group session.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: What they don't realize is that they're in plain view of everyone eating Sunday brunch at the restaurant, and they're just putting on, you know, a show for everybody.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: So they're they're one of the few people that I think got permanently banned from that.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in the Beastie Boys in particular, you know, without going too left field with them as well, uh, watching their documentary, they became really hyper conscious about their image in the their later years.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm sure that maybe you can say one way or the other, but probably made some creative uh clearance issues in regard to releasing that story.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: We'll create some controversy right here on Caught on the Mic by saying that the whole reason that the Beastie Boys became conscious uh you know human beings that we knew and loved in the 90s is because of what happened in the hot tub at the Sunset Marquee.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because they got caught there, they cleaned up, they cleaned up their act and became good citizens.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: And good artists, really good artists.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, underneath all the sex, drugs, and rock and roll, there's a surprisingly great emotional father and son story.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we snuck that in on you, didn't we, Mike?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you did.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you did.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: George Rosenthal essentially created the marquee as a place where people could be themselves, and then his son Mark eventually came in and saved it.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: How much did the story change for you once you realized that it was really a story about family legacy and reconciliation?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, again, I'll I'll reiterate the fact that like you can only tell so many stories about idiot rock stars acting like idiots, you know, before you're like, okay, we get it.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: They had a lot of sex and they did a lot of drugs.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: It is, you know, that's not going to be a very interesting movie.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: I can't say that we knew initially.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Having written the book, I obviously I knew George and I knew Mark and I knew about their relationship.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know the the depth of it.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think in the time between that when I wrote the book and when we did the film, they must have gone through some like serious therapy.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um because when we interviewed Mark, um we were really just blown away by how not just articulate he was, but like vulnerable and tuned into kind of the emotional arc that he had been through with his father, you know, just like starting from um his childhood when his dad was a playboy and wasn't around and was, you know, sleeping with playmates and racing boats and cars and flying airplanes, and he was just never around.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: He wasn't a good father.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: And um yeah, I think we got to the end of that interview.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: And when somebody is that kind of uh open with you, you really feel protective of it.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, oh man, they really just gave us something real, and um we have to honor that, you know?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so it it kind of emerged as we were editing it.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, we we paired back the sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and this kind of became the spine of the film, you know, and it and the trajectory of their relationship really followed the trajectory of uh the life of a rock star.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: It followed the trajectory of the hotel itself, the culture, and so yeah, it really emerged as this like kind of backbone of the film.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and there's another weird element to it where it kind of leans into the ideas of historical preservation and turning around a business in real time.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: So somebody that might be a little bit nerdy about that stuff was like, oh wow, this is awesome.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: You not only kind of preserved the history, but you turned something around and if not improved it as a result.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's exactly right.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's it's probably not how we promote a film or sell a film, is by talking about this like relationship between uh two middle-aged men.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: But um yeah, it's it really is there really is that element, and we get a lot of questions about like, so what exactly happened when they almost lost their entire business?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, the details of it and and the way that Mark was able to, you know, go fight find his own path for a while, and how finding that own path ultimately came back and was able to save the family business.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: What was the hardest thing to leave on the cutting room floor?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: The story or interview that you desperately wanted people to see, but simply couldn't fit into the documentary.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's so many good stories.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Our our cutting room floor is just like covered in unbelievable stories.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Some of it which we were able to include in this in this bonus material, um, which I'll you know give you more information about later.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you know, there's uh one that comes to mind was uh Slash just talking about when he was a teenager, he's like 14 years old, and he came to the Sunset Marquee with a friend, and they were just fans.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: They were just like sitting outside because they were huge Aerosmith fans, and they had heard that Aerosmith was hanging out, uh or not hanging out, but staying at the hotel while they were you know in town for their tour.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, they would just sit by the entrance hoping to get a glimpse of Joe Perry and Steven Tyler, and his buddy ended up sneaking into the hotel and breaking into Joe Perry's room and stealing um an empty bag of chips, a guitar pick, and a used cigarette butt.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: He came back out and he's like, I got Joe Perry's cigarette butt.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: And Flash was kind of like, okay, I think we've gone a little too far.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he's like, he's a fan, but he's not a maniac like that.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, those there's so many stories like that.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then you know, maybe some um some gross stories um that just like crossed a line that we were like, eh, maybe we don't want and keep in mind we told a story about Billy Bob having sex on the stairs.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: So like we crossed some pretty dark lines.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, we were we were asked maybe by the person to to not tell that story.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: Or stories of like being being drunk and getting into a fight with somebody they had just met, you know.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think like the when the black crows first met Green Day, you can imagine what that was like, you know, just like young young kids fighting, and it's kind of like, all right, we don't we don't need to go back into that because they're friends now, and you know, who cares really?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: So how did we decide?
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how we did we just, you know, we we obviously are telling a very specific story, and so if things didn't fit into um that story, we we just didn't include it and we we've put it on some of the bonus material.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you started this journey as a kid who wanted to be a rock star on the sunset strip, and decades later you're the guy who helped tell the story of one of rock and roll's most legendary places.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: When you walk into the Sunset Marquee today, knowing everything you know about those walls, every salacious story, everything.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: What does that place mean to you personally now?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's yeah, it's crazy because um I've been spending time there now, thankfully, you know, allowed to be there since probably about 2011.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so for me, it's like that's when I got married, and then I had my first kid in 13, my second kid in 15, and um that is kind of corny, and a lot of people, if you talk to like a lot of rock stars, they'd say the same thing, but it's like family.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you when I when I walk in to the to the lobby, I know um Logan the Bellman and Brigitte behind the counter and Klaus uh you know the the sales guy, and they all have seen my family like grow up over the years, and they know my wife, and um, so that's really the feel, and I know theirs as well.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, um believe it or not, I occasionally ask questions too.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so yeah, it's just if there's really that sense of like uh of family and um togetherness and belonging, which is like again what most people would tell you they they feel about the place.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here's another kind of off-the-wall question.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, now that the doc is out into the world, everybody's consuming it and loving it, all the reviews are great.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm recommending it to all of my friends.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're all a bunch of former musicians ourselves and such.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: How does a project like this fuel what you do next?
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, for one thing, um you're not a former musician, Mike.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you're still a musician.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm sorry, a former active musician.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say that.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: So let's just correct the record there really quickly.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: How does it fuel what I do next?
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, for one thing, it's it's almost it feels like it's never gonna get better than this.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this was the coolest project.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to imagine ever working on a cooler project.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like every day, go, you know, we filmed most of it at the hotel.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: We would like get people as they're coming through town.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and every day, like going over to the hotel and being like, oh yeah, we gotta go interview Slash today.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: Gotta head out to this is such a hard project to work on.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: And you're just at this magical place, and like, you know, your lunches are at the hotel restaurant, and um you know, it's it's hard to imagine topping it ever.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but uh it's it I I the fuel is to try to tell, you know, stories that are sort of like, I don't know, we want to we want to bring joy into the world, and I think this film really does that.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it's not it's not political at all.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the thing that I'm like most proud of, is like there's unless like obviously there's people who hate Bruce Springsteen for what he's been doing lately, but um, you know, we didn't put that in there.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't, you know, put any politics in here.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it just feels like at the end of the day, this is a movie that is kind of an escape from everything, and it's just fun and it's a good time.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: It is kind of nostalgic.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's of a time, you know, that maybe doesn't exist anymore.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: But it also, I think, speaks to a world of like the importance, like Dave Grohl says towards the end of the film, you know, it's it's a place that where people can get together and talk and exchange ideas, and we live in a world that is more disconnected than ever, even though we have you know the internet and and all the wonderful things that we have.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: But people are just like alone at home, not interacting at all.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this place still exists, and I hope there's other places that still exist where people do get together and realize, you know, we're all kind of into the same things.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, maybe we have minor differences here and there, but it's not as bad as the comment section on YouTube would make you think.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I'm gonna interject a personal commentary here.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: When I started this podcast six years ago, this show six years ago, I'm I'm referring it to it less and less as a podcast anymore because now it's full video and it's you know, that's an evolving word.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: But um there were several things that you just stated in your description of the movie that I found kinship with because I walked away from the music business in 2011.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, it's it's time to move on.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm focusing on my day job, focusing on raising my family.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I joke around with everybody.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, I'm a I'm a never was been, you know.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: But through the process of doing this show, I have interviewed so many of my personal heroes, and I've had all of those moments of personal fulfillment that maybe I didn't get grinding in the business.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: And my tagline and my mission statement of the show was to show that we have more in common than we do different in a world that's constantly trying to divide us.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: I want my show to be an escape.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: So when I heard you describe all of that, I'm like, shit, this is a guy that gets me, and I get him.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I absolutely love that man.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I hope that that's what the film um, you know, kind of at least suggests is that uh you just you don't have much fun in a room by yourself.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can, obviously, but um it's more fun to get together with people and and you know be knuckleheads and get into some trouble.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, yeah.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like Dave Grohl says, just talk.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: Just talk.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, sir, my closing question that I ask every guest that does my show because I love their individual perspectives, and I'm really excited for yours.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: And through everything that you've experienced, this project's projects before, and anything you have coming up, what's your advice for making the world a better place tomorrow than what it is today, through your eyes?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, just don't be a dick.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, it's so easy to just be a dick.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's but and you don't have to be.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think that, like I said, uh interacting with other human beings, I think, in a world of um cell phones and computers, I think is is really important.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and you know, I it's it's our it's easy probably to get lost in the fact that like the world is so big and there's so many problems in it.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: I live in Los Angeles, you know, it's like there's 11 million people.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: But our focus is always just like on our little nugget of it, you know, our little piece of the community and what we can do to make it better, whether that's like keeping our yard clean or uh raising good humans for our children.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I I think that that's the key is just to kind of focus on on what's there in front of you and um let that spread throughout the world.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think if everybody did that, the world might be a better place.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: I love that, man.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, if these walls could rock is available now on all digital and streaming platforms, it's only five dollars to rent the damn thing off of Apple TV.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: Do it, you will not regret it.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: It is so fantastic.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Craig, anything else you want to plug before we part ways, my friend?
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I will say again that we have a ton of bonus material that you can actually buy for$1.99.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: We have extended interviews at ifthesewallscouldrock.com, and you can see the extended interviews with Morrissey, Billy Bob, Slash, uh Kelly and Sharon Osbourne, Billy Gibbons, um, and they tell some great stories that, as you pointed out, we weren't able to include in the film.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: You can also order like cool merch.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: The book is available on the website, um, as is the Blu-ray and the DVD.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, check it out as soon as possible.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: Craig, thank you so much for doing the show, my friend.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: The world's a much better place with you in it.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Mike.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: That was a great time.