“Let me ask you something,” composer Lalo Schifrin told me a few years ago during a long conversation that, sadly, would be our last. “When you write your articles, do you require a piano? I imagine you don’t, because you already have all the words that you need in your mind, which you then elaborate with your knowledge of grammar and syntax, right? It’s exactly the same for me. I don’t need a musical instrument in order to compose a piece. The notes are in my head.”
I had the privilege of interviewing Schifrin, who died Thursday at 93, multiple times during the past three decades. The most memorable meeting with the Emmy-nominated (Mission: Impossible theme) and Oscar-nominated composer (Sting II,The Amityville Horror) was a leisurely lunch at one of his favorite Beverly Hills restaurants when I was still in my early 20s and just getting started in journalism.
We had much in common. We were both Argentine immigrants living in Los Angeles. Like my dad, who was born three years before him, Schifrin was the son of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother. We also shared an eclectic passion for all kinds of music: classical, tango, jazz. Even then, I knew that Schifrin had been the piano player in the iconic ensembles of two 20th-century pioneers: Astor Piazzolla and Dizzy Gillespie.
Most importantly, I was a devoted fan of his soundtrack music from the age of 7. My older brother had purchased a copy of the Mission: Impossible soundtrack, which I borrowed regularly and played on my one-speaker turntable.
It was around that time when I discovered the silky, eternally melancholy sound that would haunt my pre-teen years and eventually inspire me to become a music writer: the jazz-infused, bossa nova-friendly universe of Schifrin and Burt Bacharach, John Barry and Henry Mancini that evoked in me a profound sense of nostalgia for landscapes that I didn’t even know existed but could picture vividly in my imagination. I hummed Mancini’s “Hatari” theme as I tried to fall asleep at night, and listened to the Carpenters’ luminous “Bacharach Medley” in the cassette deck of my father’s car as he drove us to the movies across the cobblestone streets of the Buenos Aires suburbs.
Schifrin smiled warmly when I described to him my fascination with the Mission: Impossible record, and my favorite track in it: “Cinnamon,” a two-minute miniature that glides effortlessly as it alternates its dreamy melody with a jazz solo. And “Danger,” the exotic theme that conjures up jaded spies sitting in European cafés. Later in life, I told Schifrin, I gravitated to bands that were clearly inspired by his work: Saint Etienne, Swing Out Sister, Portishead and Pizzicato Five.
But no matter how many times I pressed him, Schifrin never revealed his recipe for making music that was so incredibly cosmopolitan and harmonically sophisticated.
“That’s for people like you to figure out,” he would say. “I don’t plan anything about my work – I wouldn’t know how to do it. Music is a universal language. It doesn’t require subtitles.”
Or stylistic boundaries, either. I had seen Schifrin conducting Beethoven’s 6th in Buenos Aires and followed his extensive work in the classical field as musical director of the now-defunct Glendale Symphony Orchestra. I also received copies of the albums that he released on his own label, Aleph Records — from a luminous Latin Jazz Suite to his epic series of Jazz Meets the Symphony. Still, it is his soundtrack work, which continues to be reissued well into the 21st century, that best sums up his genius for avant-garde orchestrations. Schifrin’s finest moments as a film composer — The Cincinnati Kid, Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt and The Fox, to name a few — are as transcendent as the works of Nino Rota, Ennio Morricone or Michel Legrand.
“We were all friends,” he recalled when I asked about like-minded musicians like Bacharach and Antonio Carlos Jobim. “We would meet for lunch often. Piazzolla and [Brazilian guitarist] Luiz Bonfá were also there. We all worked on our respective projects, but there was also time to enjoy life.”
Lately, I have developed a slight obsession with the second half of “The First Snow Fall” from the Bullitt soundtrack — the moment when the initial, easy-listening tune suddenly changes gears and gains gravitas with a psychedelic electric piano solo anchored on a rock-solid drum beat.
“My priority is to keep working,” he told me over the phone when he was 86 and had just won an honorary Academy Award in 2019. “I’m interested in making music, not in winning any Oscars. Those awards and competitions occupy a secondary place in my life. I don’t plan to retire, and my creativity is still in full bloom. The more I learn, the more I become aware of the many things that I’m still ignorant about.”
It’s rare for a band’s second bite of the apple to taste better than the first, but ‘90s alt-rock outfit Failure continues to be one of the few exceptions.
The Los Angeles-based space rockers’ decade-in-the-making documentary, Every Time You Lose Your Mind: A Documentary About Failure, chronicles their early ’90s origin story, beginning with the fated duo of frontman Ken Andrews and multi-instrumentalist Greg Edwards meeting each other through The Recycler’s music classifieds.
Andrews, who took over directorial responsibilities for the doc in the middle of the pandemic, then focuses on the band’s many ups and downs throughout the production of their first three studio LPs, primarily their third record, Fantastic Planet (1996), which would go on to be widely regarded as a masterwork. Butch Vig, who produced Nirvana’s Nevermind, counts it among his top albums of all time.
During Fantastic Planet’s 1995 recording sessions, heroin invaded the band like it did to so many other groups of that era. Andrews and newly solidified drummer Kellii Scott had formed what could be described as more sociable habits, but the opioid really sunk its teeth into Edwards and refused to release its bite. A watershed moment for the documentary occurred when Andrews discovered chilling footage from 1991 of 20-year-old Edwards expressing interest in trying the drug, while also foretelling just how easy it would be for him to form a heroin addiction.
“When Ken found that first clip that starts the film, I was shocked at just how much insight I had at that age about exactly what ended up happening. It’s uncanny to me,” Edwards tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Every Time You Lose Your Mind’s Hulu release.
Amid their collective haze in 1995, the band knew that they were crafting the finest work of their young career, but one of several impending death knells happened toward the end of their Fantastic Planet sessions. Their record label, Slash Records, shelved the album’s release indefinitely amid an effort to sell itself. This unwelcome news sent the band spiraling further into the throes of depression and addiction, and they spent 18 months questioning whether their magnum opus would ever see the light of day.
In August 1996, Slash’s then-distribution partner, Warner Bros. Records, finally put the album out themselves, and despite being received with critical acclaim, Fantastic Planet wasn’t pushed to the degree that it should have been, resulting in unimpressive chart and sales figures. Meanwhile, Edwards was now a shell of his former self, raising major concerns about whether he’d be able to sustain himself as the band toured in support of their much-delayed record. (Andrews has stated many times since then that Edwards still managed to deliver strong live performances.)
In hindsight, Andrews, Edwards and Scott are relieved that Fantastic Planet didn’t receive a more robust commercial response.
“I’ve always thought that if we had gotten more radio airplay or more success [in ‘96 and ‘97], it might not have been a good thing,” Andrews says, with Edwards adding, “Yeah, I probably wouldn’t be here.”
In late 1997, Andrews disbanded Failure. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when Edwards missed a second consecutive writing session due to falling asleep at the wheel and crashing his car into a series of parked cars at an L.A. Nissan dealership. Each member had their own crosses to bear in the following years, but they all went on to have productive music careers. Scott joined some notable bands before becoming a successful session drummer. Edwards gradually got clean and co-founded the alt-rock band Autolux in 2001. And Andrews launched several musical projects until making a name for himself as one of the industry’s most in-demand mixers, engineers and producers.
During their absence, the band’s legacy quickly began to evolve, especially as the internet and file sharing took off. They soon achieved cult status, underscoring their existing reputation as “your favorite band’s favorite band.” Failure was previously one of the only bands that L.A. alt-metal band Tool championed and took under their wing. Tool and A Perfect Circle frontman Maynard James Keenan reinforced his support when he helped cover Failure’s “The Nurse Who Loved Me” on A Perfect Circle’s platinum-selling second album, Thirteenth Step, in 2003. The Hayley Williams-led Paramore would also follow suit with a cover of Failure’s “Stuck on You” in 2006. (Williams and Andrews recently performed Failure’s “Daylight” at a benefit for L.A. wildfire relief.)
The tide ultimately turned in 2010 when Andrews and Edwards both became fathers at roughly the same time. Various social engagements involving their families eventually led them to pick up instruments, and by 2013, they knew full well that they could still write music that’s worthy of the Failure name. That’s when they called Scott with the good news, and the trio first set out to book an L.A. reunion show in 2014. The event sold out in minutes, something their ‘90s iteration could never boast.
In 2015, after 19 years between LP releases, the band released their comeback album, The Heart Is a Monster, to even more critical praise. Currently, they’re putting the finishing touches on their seventh studio record and fourth, post-revival, topping their ’90s output. Andrews admits that even he’s a bit amazed that Failure has been able to pick up where they left off, musically, but above all, he’s most grateful for their live audiences consisting of younger generations and varied demographics.
“To walk out on stage and see those young faces is a gift that I was not expecting,” Andrews says.
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, each member of Failure offers their unique perspective on the demise and rebirth of the band, before adding context to some key moments from Every Time You Lose Your Mind.
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Every time I talk to David Dastmalchian, I ask him for updates on Failure, and in March of 2024, he told me that he introduced you guys to Hulu’s head of scripted content, Jordan Helman. Is David’s matchmaking a big reason why we’re now talking about a Hulu/Disney+ release of your long-awaited documentary?
KEN ANDREWS (Vocals, Multi-instrumentalist, Co-Lyricist) Absolutely. It was a very fortuitous thing. I had David over to help me with the edit, and he was like, “To be honest, Ken, I don’t really have that much time in my schedule right now to help you because I’m shooting all these movies simultaneously. But I want to introduce you to a guy who knows a lot about your band, and he knows a lot about story.” So Jordan and I just hit it off, and he was instrumental in crafting the story of the movie. He helped me get a three-plus-hour cut down to two hours that really flowed.
Failure frontman and Every Time You Lose Your Mind: A Documentary About Failure director Ken Andrews
Grandstand Media & Management
Ken, you took over the director’s chair during the pandemic, and whenever an artist is in charge of their own doc or biopic, there’s usually a concern that they will sanitize their story. But that’s really not an issue here because you guys have always been brutally honest about the gory details of Failure. Did you have a similar rationale when you took the reins?
ANDREWS Yeah, and I had seen YouTube videos about our band being tumultuous, so it wasn’t that big of a secret that we’ve had our issues. When I saw the interviews that were already shot [by the previous directors] — including Margaret Cho’s interview where she went into detail about her opinions on the connection between addiction and creativity — that’s when a lightbulb went off in my head. We’ve had a lot of problems with addiction, but we’ve also been creative through those problems. So it’s just an interesting, complicated topic, and I basically just wanted to present the situation for people to take it in on their own.
Some interviews go all the way back to 2016?
ANDREWS Yeah, the first directors picked away at it over the course of five years. They’d grab interviews when they could, but once the pandemic hit, it just became impossible for them to finish the movie. So that’s when we first got to see the footage that they had already captured. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have started a documentary on my own, but once I saw some of that footage, I knew that there were a bunch of other interesting people that might have something to say about the band and the topics that course through the band. So that’s when I realized, “Yeah, we probably have a movie here.” But it basically took ten years to shoot all the interviews. We had an album interruption and a concert film, but then we finally started editing the film two years ago.
Greg, the opening reel of your 20-year-old self sent a chill down my spine. When you first saw that footage, did you try to reach through the screen to deter your young self from ever considering heroin?
GREG EDWARDS (Multi-instrumentalist, Vocals, Co-Lyricist) Yeah, part of me would like to do that, but the larger part of me just accepts that it is my story. It is what happened. When Ken found that first clip that starts the film, I was shocked at just how much insight I had at that age about exactly what ended up happening. It’s unreal. It’s uncanny to me.
ANDREWS I had gone through that footage twice before, but I had not picked up on that conversation. I skimmed it and was maybe writing some emails at the same time or something. But then I went through it again, and I heard [former Failure drummer] Robert [Gauss] go, “So what are you thinking about heroin these days?” And I was like … (Andrews mimics how he sat straight up with eyes widened.) That’s when I finally decoded everything that was being said, and it became a turning point in the documentary.
Greg Edwards of Faliure
Grandstand Media & Management
Was this footage part of a more recent discovery?
ANDREWS Yeah, I had a Sony Handycam that I had basically taken from my parents, and I was just randomly shooting stuff during that period [in the early ‘90s]. I wasn’t even thinking about what we were going to use it for, but we thought that it would be fun to just shoot stuff and look at it later. But I never really looked at it later. And then, when we were editing the documentary, I went through some closets and found some old videotapes. Of course, they were in formats that don’t really exist anymore, so I had to go on eBay and buy some old tape machines that could play them back. But that’s when I started finding all this interesting stuff. Robert actually filmed that shot.
EDWARDS He filmed me while he asked me that question?
ANDREWS Yeah, he was interviewing you. You can hear my voice as I’m talking to a friend in another part of the room, but I didn’t know that your conversation had gone down at all until 30 years later.
Greg, when you hear all these stories about yourself in the doc, does it sometimes feel like they’re describing a stranger? Or do you still feel connected to that version of yourself?
EDWARDS In certain ways, I still feel very connected. It’s also really difficult for me to get in touch with how dangerously and carelessly I was living every day for a stretch of time. It just stresses me out to even think about it now. So that part of it I don’t understand, but as Ken was saying, when Margaret speaks so eloquently about the connection between being creative and being an addict, I don’t reject that at all. There’s an obsessiveness to the creative process that is exactly the same energy that goes into an addiction and the lifestyle of keeping up an addiction. Sometimes, they converge in a way that can create beautiful things, and sometimes, they can disentangle where one takes over.
Kellii, the upbeat energy you brought to the band on and off your drum kit seems to be incredibly valuable. When things got heavy between Ken and Greg back in the day, did you view yourself as the person who needed to break the tension or mediate?
KELLII SCOTT (Drummer) No, not with that type of clarity. That’s just my personality, and I act that way in every landscape. It just so happens that that is where I fit in with this group of people. But I don’t think I was consciously walking around, going, “Oh, I’ve got to do this again.” That’s just how my personality fit within the band, and it was definitely very necessary. You don’t really even know that you necessarily need both of those things until they’re there.
Drummer Kellii Scott of Failure
Grandstand Media & Management
All three of you are older and more equipped to handle conflict now. Do you encounter present-day situations where you know they would’ve been much a bigger ordeal in the ‘90s?
SCOTT We still have arguments. We’re people. But as you touched on, we certainly had a lot less tools as individuals back in the day. Some of the things we argued about were probably a bit sillier or really didn’t matter all that much. But we’ve talked about our relationship going forward, and the only thing that’s changed is we’ve all had major experiences in our lives. So, for the most part, we understand how precious it is that we’re able to make music again after all these years.
Your partner, Priscilla Chavez Scott, is another unsung hero behind this documentary. She captured a lot of the materials throughout the piece?
SCOTT Yeah, she did a lot of shooting. There’s also a bunch of fan stuff that she captured when we were on the road doing the concert film [in 2022]. As soon as we would finish the shows, she would run outside and interact with the fans. But, yeah, she really stepped up. Before this, she was doing still photography. So she and Ken worked great together, and she learned a lot of new stuff doing this.
There’s a moment where you deliver a very pointed message to some people, and then you flip off the camera. It was in regard to Ken having to be the band’s first line of defense. Are you able to shed a little more light on what you were referencing there?
SCOTT Not specifically, but there are definitely moments riddled through our career where he needed to push back on something dumb being said by someone, usually business people or people trying to get a better deal than the band. He was usually just sticking up for the band and making sure we got the best shake possible.
Your former guitar player, Troy Van Leeuwen, tells a story involving Stone Temple Pilots that knocked me sideways, to say the least. I won’t specify so the readers can have the same experience upon watching, but did that account make some executives pretty nervous?
ANDREWS There was a little bit of concern. We had to go through a whole process of vetting the film for legal stuff, and that definitely came up. But we spoke to some people in that world who were like, “No, you’re fine. You’re good.” I’m friends with the existing members of Stone Temple Pilots. It didn’t really happen for us together in the ‘90s; they soared ahead of us in terms of crowd size and popularity and whatnot. But there was always this connection between the two bands, and just the other day, [STP guitarist] Dean [DeLeo] sent me a video of him and Scott [Weiland] doing a TV interview before an [STP] show in ‘93. And they were asked about what bands to listen to, and Scott just went off about Failure for five minutes. So I think [the story] just points to a little bit of the craziness that was going on during those years for both bands.
Failure’s 1996-1997 lineup of Kellii Scott, Greg Edwards, Ken Andrews and Troy Van Leeuwen
Grandstand Media & Management
When record producer/engineer Steve Albini passed away last year, did you review his footage again just to make sure you left no stone unturned? (Note: In 1992, Albini produced Failure’s debut record, Comfort, shortly before he did the same for Nirvana’s third LP, InUtero.)
ANDREWS Yeah, I did. We’re doing another version of the film that is more extended, and there’s a lot more extended stuff of Steve. Most of his headier stuff about the music business is actually in the [current] film. He was so entertaining to listen to when he’d start waxing on about that stuff, but there’s tons of other stuff. His memory was way better than mine about the recording techniques that he offered up during the making of Comfort. But that was a crazy moment because he passed right after we interviewed him.
Greg, one of the most tragicomic stories I’ve ever heard is your “bread mix” story from 2004’s Golden documentary, which I now consider to be a proof of concept for this doc. In 1997, your mailing system failed you at a particular tour stop, and so you sent a crew member out to find opioids of some kind, only he came back with bread mix that you still ingested.
EDWARDS Yeah, I don’t know what it was exactly, but I’m hoping it was bread mix at this point. (Laughs.)
Was that story ever going to be retold for this doc? Or would that have been overkill given all the other related stories?
EDWARDS Yeah, it didn’t come up, maybe because it had already been told. I haven’t thought of that story in a while. I knew a hundred percent that it was not a drug that was going to get me high, and yet it was like Russian roulette.
Carson Daly introduced me to you guys via KROQ, and oddly enough, I also heard about the break-up from him when he was brand new to MTV in 1997. Did anyone reach out to him for the sake of the doc?
ANDREWS He hung around back then. He was at a lot of our shows, and he introduced us a few times when we played live. But then his career took a different path and we lost touch with him.
SCOTT I’ve tried to reach out to him a couple times and had no luck. I’m still really good friends with Zeke Piestrup from KROQ. We used to hang out with Carson a lot at the old Opium Den, and that’s kind of where we first met him.
Speaking of KROQ, I also remember hearing your appearance on Loveline. (Note: Spanning nearly four decades, Loveline was a popular call-in radio program that offered relationship and medical advice.)
EDWARDS The Loveline thing is funny. I was home alone at my house in whatever [mental] state I was in, and I was listening to KROQ. All of a sudden, Loveline came on, and it was with Failure.
ANDREWS & EDWARDS & SCOTT (Laugh.)
EDWARDS It was you guys [and guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen]. You hadn’t even told me about it.
SCOTT We were in the midst of breaking up.
ANDREWS Yeah, it was the peak.
EDWARDS Yeah, I had no sense of anything. I was just shocked. I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t been told about it. I guess you just didn’t want to deal with me.
ANDREWS Well, it was actually the manager [Warren Entner].
SCOTT We had also just done the “Enjoy the Silence” cover, and that was a big clusterfuck. So we were meeting our last few obligations.
ANDREWS There was discussion of not doing it.
SCOTT Yes, there was, and I think we were told, “You have to do it. It’s Loveline.”
ANDREWS Yeah, Warren was pretty concerned.
EDWARDS I was just so unaware of the state of things, and I was just shocked that you guys would do it.
SCOTT It’s surprising that we did it, because, in the background, things were already coming off the tracks.
EDWARDS But I was completely unaware of that too.
You reunited in 2013 after 16 years away, and overall, you guys have now been able to rewrite your legacy in a way that so many of your contemporaries were unable to do because of tragedy. Is it a relief to no longer ask yourselves, “What could have been?”
ANDREWS Yeah, that’s part of the reason why we put so much effort into this documentary. It was to clarify our story and maybe get some closure on some of the regrets and mistakes.
EDWARDS I’ve never really asked myself that.
SCOTT After the band broke up, I had a pretty thorough descent into hell. And part of what I needed to do to get out of that and become at peace with everything was by reconciling the past. So when Ken called me [in 2013] and was like, “Greg and I have been hanging out and writing music,” I didn’t really have to struggle with that kind of stuff. It almost seemed like it should have happened that way. I had literally just dropped the proverbial rock on having such strong feelings about what could have been or what if and all of that garbage. Those questions do nothing but hold you back. You can’t move forward if you’re living in those questions. So it was something that I had to deal with long before the band even got back together, and it definitely made getting back together a lot more free and enjoyable, without having to be constantly dragged around in this new relationship by the baggage of the past.
ANDREWS I’ve always thought that if we had gotten more radio airplay or more success [in ‘96 and ‘97], it might not have been a good thing.
SCOTT Be careful what you wish for.
EDWARDS Yeah, I probably wouldn’t be here. In terms of the work that we created [in the ‘90s] and the work we’ve continued to create and the way it’s been received by the fans, there’s just no regret there. It’s done everything I could ever hope for. There could be more people that are aware of it, but the actual art that we’ve created has even outperformed what I could ever hope for.
Failure’s Greg Edwards (left), Kellii Scott (center), Ken Andrews (right)
Grandstand Media & Management
Yeah, you’re one of the few revivals that isn’t resting on laurels and operating as a legacy act. Your new music is a logical next step from where you left off in ‘96, and I probably listen to the new stuff more than the old stuff now, granted I had 20 years with the ‘90s material. Are you surprised at all that you’ve been able to make music that’s just as vital?
ANDREWS I’m surprised. What I’m the most surprised by and the most inspired by is the whole different generation of kids who discovered FantasticPlanet and the newer albums simultaneously. They didn’t really know anything about the band breaking up; they just thought it was a band. So to be older now and see younger versions of ourselves discovering our music is so gratifying. And to walk out on stage and see those young faces is a gift that I was not expecting.
I’ve been reading the tea leaves for the last six or seven months, and it appears you’re on the verge of finishing your seventh record. The second era of the band will officially have more output than Failure 1.0. What can you say at this juncture?
ANDREWS We’re finishing it. That’s definitely true. We’ve got a good solid album worth of songs, and we’re mixing. When I’m at this point in the process, I don’t have a ton of objectivity on where the album fits in the timeline of the band. I just know it feels good, and I know I like the songs. But it’s hard to know how it’s going to land for people.
Are the segues between songs back?
ANDREWS There’s some extended intros, but they’re not defined as “segues.”
SCOTT We don’t actually use that word on the record.
EDWARDS When we made our first three records, there was zero concern to the running time because vinyl was gone. Nobody bought vinyl, nobody pressed vinyl, and a CD could handle 74 minutes. But now, vinyl is a real thing again. It’s a real thing that we think about when we’re making a record. All the classic Beatles records are right around 38 or 40 minutes, and that’s what vinyl can handle before you start losing frequency response. So segues can really eat up that time on vinyl. Do you want to have a few nice segues? Or do you want the songs to sound full and big?
ANDREWS I like the challenge of making a concise record that fits on one vinyl disc. I guess it’s because so many of my favorite albums did that, and while it is an arbitrary technological number, it influenced the creativity and how people thought about records: “What are you going to start side B with?” That was a big consideration. And because we’ve had so much success with vinyl in the rebooted version of the band, it’s just something that’s on our minds.
Are you done reinterpreting the Golden b-sides à la “Petting the Carpet” and “Pennies”?
ANDREWS I don’t know if we’re done, but I feel like we’ve maybe picked some of the best ones. So we’re not revisiting the past on this record, although we are actually rehearsing some of those older songs right now and reinterpreting them for an acoustic set [at 6/26’s documentary premiere].
Failure’s Greg Edwards, Kellii Scott and Ken Andrews perform an acoustic at the premiere of Every Time You Lose Your Mind: A Documentary About Failure
Lynora Valdez
Lastly, Greg’s sister, Julie Edwards, commented in the doc about the one-two punch of “Heliotropic” and “Daylight” to conclude Fantastic Planet (1996). What’s your favorite run from the newer material?
EDWARDS “Long Division” into “Bad Translation” into “Half Moon,” those three [from Wild Type Droid] transition really nicely.
ANDREWS We really spend time on sequence. In fact, we’re still haggling over sequence on the new record. It’s like songwriting for us. We really listen to the transitions and feel the pacing. It’s very important to us.
SCOTTIn the Future’s “Force Fed Rainbow” and “The Pineal Electorate” would be mine. “Force Fed Rainbow” is one of my favorite songs of all the new stuff, and I believed that even more when we played it live for the first time on our last tour. It just crushed me every night. I actually think the last four songs on In the Future … are equal to the last four songs on FantasticPlanet.
Besides those two, I also appreciate The Heart Is a Monster’s transition of “A.M. Amnesia” into “Snow Angel.”
ANDREWS Yeah, I love the intro to “A.M. Amnesia” and the beginning of that album. Dean from STP was just telling me that every time he gets into his car, it [alphabetically] programs “A.M. Amnesia” to play first [because it’s paired to his phone’s library]. And [the loud intro] kills him because he always has his stereo volume set loud from the previous drive.
ANDREWS & EDWARDS & SCOTT (Laugh.)
EDWARDS The first thing that plays every time I get in the car is the soundtrack from Amélie.
*** Every Time You Lose Your Mind: A Documentary About Failure is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.
Buckaroo Banzai’s journey to the big screen was almost as convoluted as the movie
20th Century Studios
Getting “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai” to the screen was a long and complicated process, not helped by its writer’s mercurial approach to putting a screenplay together. Initially paid $1,500 by W.D. Richter and his wife to pen a script, Earl Mac Rauch enthusiastically launched himself into one story about the hero (initially called “Buckaroo Bandy”) before abandoning it and starting all over again with a different concept. By his own admission, Rauch dumped around 12 screenplays featuring wacky ideas, including a giant robot and a box of Hitler’s cigars.
In the meantime, Richter was building up his reputation in Hollywood, most notably writing the excellent 1978 version of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (one sci-fi remake that is better than the original) and receiving an Oscar nod for his “Brubaker” screenplay. In 1979, Richter teamed up with Neil Canton (who would later produce the “Back to the Future” trilogy) to form their own production company. Richter decided that “Buckaroo Banzai” would be the perfect project for him to make his debut as a director, but the pair realized they would need a completed screenplay if they had any chance of a studio stumping up the cash to relative unknowns. That meant getting Rauch back behind the typewriter and actually finishing something.
That something was a new Buckaroo Banzai adventure called “The Lepers from Saturn,” and it took Rauch until 1982 to complete a script. That was just in time for the Writers’ Guild of America to call a strike and shut down Hollywood. Eventually, the project was funded by 20th Century Fox, who handed Richter a handsome initial budget of $12 million. It would still take Rauch three more drafts before cameras eventually rolled with a workable screenplay, not to mention a 300-page tome called “The Essential Buckaroo” as a kind of reference book containing all the lore that Rauch had come up with previously. “Buckaroo Banzai” was finally a go picture, but the production was hampered by the presence of producer David Begelman, who didn’t get it at all and continually interfered (Richter referred to him as “our enemy for the entire movie”). To Begelman’s credit, however, he was responsible for the joyous end credits sequence with Buckaroo and his friends walking along the L.A. River.
What makes Buckaroo Banzai so special?
20th Century Studios
A synopsis for “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai” doesn’t do full justice to the experience of actually watching it. On the surface, it’s an offbeat sci-fi comedy with the familiar grain of a mid-budget, mid-’80s genre movie, but it has an attitude and a style that sets it totally apart. Key to the film’s left field vibe is Peter Weller’s performance as Buckaroo Banzai. Weller’s approach to finding his character was suitably unconventional, drawing from the diverse likes of Elia Kazan, Albert Einstein, Jacques Cousteau, Leonardo da Vinci, and Adam Ant as inspirations.
Weller’s unflappable Zen mystique as Banzai (“No matter where you go, there you are”) is wonderfully contrasted by John Lithgow’s utterly bonkers performance as Dr. Emilio Lizardo, who goes big with his outrageous Italian accent and bizarre mannerisms. They are supported by a colorful supporting cast including Clancy Brown and Lewis Smith as members of the Hong Kong Cavaliers; Ellen Barkin as Buckaroo’s quirky love interest; and Christopher Lloyd as an alien going by the name of John Bigbooté (pronounced “Big Booty”), because all the Red Lectroids are called John. Last but not least, Jeff Goldblum is another neurosurgeon who likes to be called “New Jersey” and wears a cowboy outfit. His quirky acting technique fits perfectly here, and “Buckaroo Banzai” definitely goes down as one of the best Jeff Goldblum movies.
“The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai” revels in its own weirdness and the peculiar tone makes it totally understandable why some viewers simply wouldn’t get it. The film takes itself at least semi-seriously (there aren’t many outright jokes or winks to the camera), but a lot of the goofier elements play like a live-action cartoon — indeed, I was surprised to find out that it wasn’t based on a comic book when I first saw it. If the film has a fault, it’s that it gets a little repetitive in the last act when it morphs into a slightly more conventional sci-fi action movie. But the first hour is an absolute hoot as we get immersed in the wild self-contained world of Banzai and his pals and it’s a super-stylish flick, too, championed by Los Angeles Magazine as “the moment geeks became cool.” If that sounds like your jam, you can catch up with it now on Pluto TV.
Those who worked at Pixar while its latest film release, Elio, was in production were delighted by footage they saw roughly two years ago. Among the moments cited as favorites by those at the animation studio at the time included a sequence in which the titular boy collected trash on the beach and turned it into homemade apparel that included a pink tank top; the movie’s team would refer to Elio showing this off to a hermit crab as his “trash-ion show.”
But if you bought a ticket to Elio and don’t remember seeing this, it’s not just that you chose the wrong time to refill your soda. According to multiple insiders who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter, Elio was initially portrayed as a queer-coded character, reflecting original director Adrian Molina’s identity as an openly gay filmmaker. Other sources say that Molina did not intend the film to be a coming out story, as the character is 11. But either way, this characterization gradually faded away throughout the production process as Elio became more masculine following feedback from leadership. Gone were not only such direct examples of his passion for environmentalism and fashion, but also a scene in Elio’s bedroom with pictures suggesting a male crush. Hints at the trash fashion remain in the released film, with the boy wearing a cape decorated with discarded cutlery and soda can tabs, although without any explanation for the unusual attire.
Elio’s turbulent ride began well before its calamitous nosedive at the box office durin the June 20-22 corridor. Indeed, the summer of 2023 became a fateful one for the animated film about a lonely boy beamed into outer space by an intergalactic organization after being misidentified as the leader of Earth. The writing was first on the wall for the troubled production when the film from Molina, known as the co-director of Pixar’s Oscar-winning 2017 hit Coco, conducted an early test screening in Arizona. Although viewers expressed how much they enjoyed the movie, they were also asked how many of them would see it in a theater, and not a single hand was raised, according to a source with knowledge of the event. This sounded alarm bells for studio brass.
It was around this same time that Molina screened his latest cut of the film to Pixar leadership. There are differing accounts of the exact feedback that the director received from Pixar boss Pete Docter when the lights went up, with rumors circulating in some of the studio’s circles that Molina was hurt by the conversation. The part that is clear is that Molina exited the project soon after, and much of Elio was reworked under new co-directors Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi.
Elio producer Mary Alice Drumm (left), lead voice actor Yonas Kibreab, America Ferrera and director Adrian Molina attend D23 Expo 2022.
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
After a yearlong delay, the film arrived in theaters June 22 and bombed with just $20.8 million domestically, the lowest opening frame at the box office in Pixar’s history.
“I was deeply saddened and aggrieved by the changes that were made,” says former Pixar assistant editor Sarah Ligatich, who provided feedback during Elio production as a member of the company’s internal LGBTQ group PixPRIDE. Although she praises Sharafian and Shi as filmmakers, Ligatich notes that a number of creatives working on the film stepped down after the directors shared their first cut of the movie. “The exodus of talent after that cut was really indicative of how unhappy a lot of people were that they had changed and destroyed this beautiful work.” Another Pixar source disputes that people stepped down in response to Molina’s departure.
The changes to Elio were clear to one former Pixar artist who worked on the film and asked to remain anonymous: “It was pretty clear through the production of the first version of the film that [studio leaders] were constantly sanding down these moments in the film that alluded to Elio’s sexuality of being queer.”
Not long after that final 2023 screening of Molina’s cut for Pixar brass, the company announced internally that Molina would take a break from the project, leading to a period of inactivity for those working on the film. Sources tell THR that Molina was informed shortly thereafter that Sharafian, who wrote and directed Pixar’s 2020 short Burrow and was a storyboard artist on the 2022 feature Turning Red and Elio, would be elevated to director. Molina was given the opportunity to direct Elio with Sharafian, but after the numerous notes and changes to his original vision, he decided to leave the project. A short time later, Pixar announced internally that Shi, the director and co-writer of Turning Red, would join Sharafian to direct Elio. During the summer of 2024, Docter told The Wrap that Molina left Elio to move to an unnamed “priority project”; a fuller picture came in March of 2025 when Disney CEO Bob Iger announced the studio’s development on Coco 2, which sees Molina returning as co-director. (Disney acquired Pixar in 2006.)
Pixar’s Elio
Disney/Pixar
“Suddenly, you remove this big, key piece, which is all about identity, and Elio just becomes about totally nothing,” says the former Pixar artist. “The Elio that is in theaters right now is far worse than Adrian’s best version of the original.” Adds another former Pixar staffer who worked on the film: “[The character] Elio was just so cute and so much fun and had so much personality, and now he feels much more generic to me.”
Still, the film that was released in theaters earned solid reviews, sporting an 81 percent critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, along with an A CinemaScore (A+ for viewers under 25). In her review for THR, critic Angie Han calls the film a “perfectly nice kiddie sci-fi adventure.”
Some of Elio’s changes were more noticeable than others. When the film was first announced at Disney’s D23 fan event in 2022, America Ferrera took the stage to describe her role as Olga, Elio’s mom. At the following D23 in 2024, the Emmy winner was announced as having left the film amid scheduling conflicts, with Zoe Saldaña joining the cast as Olga, now Elio’s aunt. Sources tell THR that Ferrara had already recorded dialogue for the film but that her decision to exit was attributed to Molina’s departure, not to mention that frequently being called back to rerecord lines due to script changes likely took its toll. Says the former Pixar artist, “America was upset that there was no longer Latinx representation in the leadership.” (Ferrera did not to respond to a request for comment, nor did Molina.)
Pixar finished 2024 on quite the high note, with Inside Out 2 topping $1.6 billion at the global box office to become the year’s biggest film. Additionally, the studio had announced that Andrew Stanton, the Oscar-winning director of such hits as Finding Nemo and WALL-E, would helm Toy Story 5, the latest installment for Pixar’s highest-grossing franchise as the studio continues to prioritize sequels of its flagship characters. But the looming cloud over the coming months was the fate of Elio, given limited public awareness of the original movie and the fact that its release had been delayed significantly.
Bob Iger (left) and Pete Docter attend the Elio world premiere in Los Angeles on June 10.
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
Media reports have cited its production budget as $150 million, but former Pixar employees tell THR that the film cost far more than that. The artist who worked on the movie was not privy to the specific figure but estimates it was well north of $200 million, given that Molina’s version was nearly complete, which she says makes the “catastrophic box office” feel worse. In citing a similar theme to other former Pixar staffers, the artist emphasizes that Sharafian and Shi did all they could to give the leadership the best film possible, amid the circumstances.
The Elio production resulted in fraught feelings for those with ties to Pixar who have come to question whether the company intends to prioritize diversity. Docter sparked debate when he noted in a 2024 interview that the studio should make the “most relatable films” possible, which was perceived as advocating for a shift away from underrepresented characters and voices. These remarks came in the wake of the 2022 criticism of then-Disney CEO Bob Chapek’s response to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Additionally, Toy Story spinoff Lightyear whiffed at the box office in 2023 after right-wing pundits ignited a furor over its same-gender kiss. And the Pixar series Win or Lose launched on Disney+ earlier this year after creating controversy over its transgender storyline getting scrapped.
But did the decisions to downplay Elio’s queer themes actually come from the parent company? Insiders aren’t so sure. “A lot of people like to blame Disney, but the call is coming from inside the house,” says the artist. “A lot of it is obeying-in-advance behavior, coming from the higher execs at Pixar.” The person cites such examples as next year’s animated feature Hoppers having to tone down themes of environmentalism and also reveals that a movie in early development got a startling note: “That director was told, ‘You can’t have divorce in this movie,’ which is so wild.” A different source with knowledge of the project downplays the notion of this representing major meddling and sees such suggestions as typical of any early development process, noting there was no mandate prohibiting divorce.
Elio
Disney/Pixar
Although the studio will hope for Elio to exhibit the same theatrical legs as Elemental, the 2023 title that overcame a slow start at the box office to turn a profit, most eyes now turn to next year, when Hoppers’ theatrical release in March will give an assessment of the original film pipeline, while astronomical expectations build for the summer launch of Toy Story 5. One former Pixar staffer who worked on Elio appreciates that the studio has planned “48-hour hackathons” where employees have been given free rein to pursue any creative ideas. But whether the sessions lead to projects or concepts that will ever see the light of day is another matter.
In the meantime, the pain of the Elio process still stings for the creatives who saw the movie’s trajectory become something of a cautionary tale. “I’d love to ask Pete and the other Disney executives whether or not they thought the rewrite was worth it,” says the artist. “Would they have lost this much money if they simply let Adrian tell his story?”
one of Eastwood’s best films as both an actor and a director, and there really isn’t another film like it that fully digs into its themes. But there is another Western that is just as fantastic, and it stars another Western movie legend.
If there’s another actor as tied to the Western genre as Eastwood, it’s Kurt Russell, who has starred in a whole bunch of fantastic Westerns over the years. And one of the best of the best is “Tombstone,” which stars Russell as real-life lawman Wyatt Earp. It’s a terrific drama with absolutely stunning cinematography, featuring views of gorgeous Arizona vistas, and it does deal with some of the same difficult life-or-death brutality as “Unforgiven,” even if it’s a bit more of an adventure than Eastwood’s grim classic. After all, “Tombstone” is based on a true story (even if it’s not entirely historically accurate), so it has to reckon with some of the more unpleasant elements of the time period.
Hulu’s your huckleberry if you want to watch Tombstone
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
“Tombstone,” which stars Val Kilmer, Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton, Michael Biehn, and more in addition to Russell, is a rip-roaring time at the movies that features some of the most quotable lines in the whole genre. Like “Unforgiven,” it deals with how people handle a harsh, almost lawless world, where violence seems to regularly be the only form of communication. As Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and his friend Doc Holliday (Kilmer) try to deal with the vicious outlaws that call themselves The Cowboys, it becomes a brutal and bloody battle to the death for many of them. Not every protagonist who starts “Tombstone” survives to the end, and their deaths make “Tombstone” more poignant and resonant.
Fans of “Unforgiven” who want to check out “Tombstone” for the first time or the thousandth time can do so on Hulu, Disney+, and Peacock. Sure, “Tombstone” might not tackle Western revisionism the same as “Unforgiven” and occasionally leans into its John Ford, classic Hollywood influences, but it’s still one of the best Westerns of all time and is a perfect pairing with Eastwood’s incredible film. (“Unforgiven” currently isn’t available to stream anywhere unless you want to pay to rent it, though it’s probably worth it for this wild west double feature.) Russell’s second-best Western, “The Hateful Eight,” is available on Netflix, if you want to really have a perfect movie marathon of post-classic Westerns. Just be careful when checking out “Bone Tomahawk,” also on Netflix, unless you’re prepared to see something in the genre take a truly brutal new turn. Now that’s a subversive Western.
“Star Trek: Lower Decks” was a 30-minute animated sitcom version of “Star Trek,” set shortly after the events of “Star Trek: Voyager.” That show lasted a successful five seasons before coming to a close in 2024. While “Lower Decks” was in production, Paramount also launched “Star Trek: Prodigy,” a CGI-animated series produced by Nickelodeon. That show was meant to be more kid-friendly than other “Star Trek” shows, and featured a cast of teenage characters. That show lasted two seasons, spread over 2021 and 2024.
As for the other two animated “Star Trek” shows, there may be some debate as to their taxonomy. The stop-gap anthology series “Short Treks” ran for two seasons from 2018 to 2020, and, as the title implies, was constructed of short, independent stories within the Trek universe. Two of the shorts in the show’s second season were animated, so that may count as an animated series unto itself. “Short Treks” then, in turn, gave birth to the all-animated series “Very Short Treks,” a new anthology series of brief, crass, non-canonical comedic cartoons. That series ran for five episodes in 2023.
How do these animated shows rank? Let us slip into our judge’s robes and make some tough calls.
5. Very Short Treks
Paramount+
The “Very Short Treks” series was created by Casper Kelly, the mastermind behind “Stroker and Hoop,” “Too Many Cooks,” and the Cheddar Goblin sequence from “Mandy.” Kelly clearly has a twisted sense of humor, and handing him “Star Trek” is like handing a handkerchief to a hay fever sufferer and then asking them not to get any mucous on it. Of course, Kelly created one of the silliest — and dumbest — “Star Trek” projects to date, mocking the franchise relentlessly, and doing so with the participation of many of the show’s various cast members.
The idea behind “Short Treks” was to pay homage to “Star Trek: The Animated Series,” which turned 50 in 2023. Kelly animated all his shorts in the style of “Animated Series,” which was produced by Lou Scheimer’s famous Filmation studio back in the day. Kelly, however, was clearly not interested in traditional “Star Trek” stories about exploration and diplomacy, nor was he interested in making small character studies of well-known Starfleet characters. Instead, he created aliens with underwear heads. He made a species that considers it polite to wipe boogers on visiting Federation officers. He created a character named Ass Face.
“Star Trek” can certainly stand some irreverence, as its main characters tend to be stuffy, ultra-formal, uniform-wearing diplomats. And goodness knows I love a good booger joke or Ass Face gag. But I don’t know what the heck this is. It knows enough about “Star Trek” to make inside jokes, but it also seems to hate the series. One might say that “Very Short Treks” is all in good fun, but that would only be true if it were fun.
4. Short Treks
Paramount+
When “Short Treks” debuted in October 2018, it seemed to have a mercenary function. At the time, the first season of “Star Trek: Discovery” had just come to an end, and its planned second season wouldn’t debut until the following January. CBS All Access (not yet named Paramount+) clearly wanted to keep subscribers on the hook until then, so the network seemingly rushed “Short Treks” into production, releasing one short every few weeks, just far apart enough to keep the monthly subscription fees renewing. The shorts were clearly very low-concept, and most of them were filmed on mostly empty “Discovery” sets, usually with only a few actors on hand.
Few of the shorts are standouts, and they didn’t get truly creative until later in the show’s run. In the second season, “Short Treks” ran its first animated episode, called “Ephraim and Dot,” directed by noted composer Michael Giacchino. The short followed the adventures of Ephraim, an outsize spatial tardigrade, as it infiltrated the tiny tunnels in the hull of the U.S.S. Enterprise. It was pursued by a repair drone, Dot, that aimed to eject it. Thanks to a few glimpses through portals, Ephraim was inside the Enterprise during the events of “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” and “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.”
The second animated episode of “Short Treks” was called “The Girl Who Made the Stars,” and was directed by Trek regular Olatunde Osunsanmi. This one was about a young Michael Burnham (the main character from “Discovery”) listening to an old African folk tale told by her father. It has very little to do with “Star Trek” and is only okay.
Indeed, most of “Short Treks” is only okay. Despite its fitful moments of ambition, it always felt a little mercenary, done for financial reasons instead of creative ones. It never had the thrill of something like “Liquid Television,” and never added importantly to Trek canon. You can skip it.
3. Star Trek: Prodigy
Paramount+
The beleaguered “Star Trek: Prodigy” was infamously canceled while its second season was in production, and unceremoniously dropped from Paramount+ altogether. The show was eventually picked up by Netflix, which aired its second season, but many Trekkies wondered why “Prodigy” warranted such harsh treatment. Was it the CGI animation? Was it because it was aired by the kid-friendly Nickelodeon? Was it the elongated story arcs? It’s hard to say.
It could have been because “Prodigy” started out in a very non-“Star Trek” place. At the start of the series, the main characters — a group of runaway teenage slaves — had never heard of Starfleet before, and had never encountered a Starfleet vessel. In the first few episodes, though, they find an abandoned ship called the U.S.S. Protostar, board it, and are instructed on how to use it by a hologram of Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) of the U.S.S. Voyager. Despite the “Star Trek” iconography, the villains and action made “Prodigy” feel more like “Star Wars.”
Over the course of the series, however, the teen runaways — operating at the behest of the hologram Janeway — began to think of themselves as a crew that had to work together and employ their personal expertise in creative ways. By the end of the first season, they are all in Starfleet back on Earth, happy to have outgrown their dark past. “Star Trek,” the show argues, is better than “Star Wars.”
The second season was an even more elaborate story about time travel, retrieving the Protostar from villains, and reuniting many old, familiar faces. The show seems shaky at first, but quickly becomes pretty great. It didn’t deserve its fate.
2. Star Trek: The Animated Series
Paramount
If one were particularly daring, one could rank “Star Trek: The Animated Series” even higher than the original “Star Trek” series. Gene Roddenberry oversaw its creation, and many of the original show’s writers returned, this time unbound by the limits of live-action special effects. The show’s animated medium suddenly allowed “Star Trek” to become truly alien, featuring impossibly crafted starships, aliens with multiple limbs, underwater episodes, and a visit to the planet where Satan lives (yes, really). Also, because the series was only 30 minutes (as opposed to the original show’s one-hour time slot), the writers had to be more efficient in their storytelling, allowing plots to unfold more naturally and engagingly. Some may find the following statement heretical, but there was less extraneous character stuff.
The biggest problems with “Animated Series” are that it cut corners as often as possible, leaving a lot of the animation static and dull to look at. There are many extreme close-ups of characters’ faces where only their mouths are moving. Backgrounds are reused to a noticeable degree, and the exact same three music cues can be heard again and again and again. “Animated Series” could get creative with its aliens and visuals, but they didn’t really move around a lot.
Still, the writing was sharp, and many of the episodes dealt with heady themes and weird sci-fi ideas just like the original “Star Trek.” Its two seasons can likely count as the final two years in the U.S.S. Enterprise’s five-year mission — which only took eight years to complete.
1. Star Trek: Lower Decks
Paramount
Prior to its release in 2020, “Star Trek: Lower Decks” started out on the wrong foot. It sold itself as a comedy version of “Star Trek,” which wasn’t what Trekkies wanted at that time. You can’t undercut your own franchise’s seriousness from within, Paramount. That was the job of satirists. And indeed, the first episode of “Lower Decks” wasn’t very good, stressing a flippant, “Family Guy”-style sense of humor inside the “Star Trek” universe. Things didn’t bode well.
But then “Lower Decks” got to its feet and took off at a sprint. Its premise was novel, in that it was a series about the undervalued, lower-ranked officers on a starship, the ones who have all the crap jobs. Additionally, it took place on an unimportant Starfleet vessel, the U.S.S. Cerritos, that never took care of terribly important missions. “Star Trek” is a vast universe undergirded by a complex bureaucracy and a fleet of grunt workers, all of them required to make sure that a utopia can be achieved. For ensigns, though, it doesn’t always feel like a utopia. Sometimes it feels like you just have a s***ty job.
The brilliance of “Lower Decks” came, though, as its main characters began to grow. Ensign Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) liked people to think of her as a rule-breaking firebrand, but she is eventually interrogated about her behavior, and she reveals some serious insecurities at work. The series develops naturally, all while remembering that these people have terrible jobs and screw up more often than “Next Generation” characters. It’s one of the best Treks of them all.
