I cant help but be jokingly hostile with people like Joe Perry and Stewart Copeland. Theyre just so damn rich and so damn famous that my anger comes out in my sarcastic questions. I got to speak to The Polices drummer Stewart Copeland about his new movie Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out which has Copeland narrating over fantastic footage he shot over most of The Polices career.
Buy Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out
Daniel Robert Epstein: How are you?
Stewart Copeland: Im good but just let me get into the comfy seat
[pause] Ok.
DRE: Wheres the comfy seat?
SC: It is a deeply over upholstered comfy seat, it is the producers couch. It is where the producer normally falls asleep.
DRE: Wait, arent you the producer of your stuff?
SC: Im snoozing even now.
DRE: Hows it going with the movie?
SC: Great, Ive been flogging for several months now and the whole cycle fires up again next month in Europe when it comes out there. Im completely blown away by the escape of my little toy from the playpen out into the world and becoming a monster.
DRE: I thought the flick was great. How long have you been working on it?
SC: It took me about a year and a half because I was learning the software, as well as earning a living. I was doing it just as a hobby; well actually my hobbies tend to be obsessive. But it was just a home movie that I was making pretty much for Sting and Andy and the rest of the road crew and everyone who was there. It was Les Claypool who suggested I take it to Sundance. We were talking on the phone as we do these days while Googling stuff and he says lets go to Sundance, so we both Google up the application form and I paid my 35 bucks. I had to think up a name for the movie which at that time was Behind Andys Camel but of course that didnt get past the marketing. But I sent my 35 bucks and forgot all about it. Then when Sundance came back and said Youre in, everything changed.
DRE: First of all, you still have to earn a living?
SC: Yes, mainly for peace of mind, for mental well-being. Its really difficult to feel good about yourself unless youre earning a living. Theres a friend of mine who won a big court case. His lawyer was so good that not only did they pay his damages but he got huge punitive damages of tens of millions of dollars. So this guy could just retire and he was a musician but he always wanted to paint, so he started painting. He didnt have to work anymore but since there was nobody buying his paintings, he lost interest. It was a strange thing. Unless theres somebody paying you for it, unless theres some kind of connection with the real world, its just pissing in the sand. So I still like music and everything like that but it just feels better to be writing for a purpose.
DRE: Did you always want the film to just be from 78 to 84?
SC: Yeah because around then I stopped shooting. It was a conscious decision one day when we were in a Lear Jet doing barrel roll and I was attempting to film the experience as I did everything else. Then I realized you cant shoot something inside of a plane and get any idea of whats going on here and it was too dark anyway. We were just about to land and I missed that exciting moment. I realized I missed a lot of exciting moments because I was fussing with the camera instead of living life. So I resolved in that moment to burn it in my brain cells rather than onto film and I regret that decision today. But we were already playing stadiums and we were already at the top so the story is complete even though when the film finishes, we actually go on and do another whole album even bigger than the previous album and another tour bigger than the previous tour.
DRE: Did it feel like you were showing off like hey were multimillionaires in a jet!?
SC: No, that thought never crossed my mind. However, it is certainly true that the film shrinks the band down, to no great loss for anybody. But the film doesnt puff the group up like The band conquered the world and sold X millions of records In fact in a couple places I cut out of the band bubble so you can see what the band looked like from the outside for just a minute. Since because its so intimate, youre hardly even aware of the hubbub outside the cocoon and it diminishes the mystique in a way. This is not a puff piece. Its a whole different thing. There are the MTV videos and other shows about the actual contribution of The Police to the music of the 80s and the creative dynamic within the band, how many Grammies did we win and all these important facts and figures. My movie doesnt have any of that. Its just a personal experience.
DRE: Most people wont narrate their own film.
SC: I didnt have narration at first. The film that I sent to Sundance had very, very little, and at the time I was stuck on how to tell the story for the people who werent there. At first I made it as a film for people who were there. It didnt need any explanation. But as soon as it got into Sundance I realized I was going to be up against movies that people were taking really seriously and here I am with my little half formed home movie, so I got serious. I started writing narration which grew and grew. For some things I just didnt want to hear a voice come on the screen at certain times so I used a card.
DRE: Was it easy to get Sting and Andy to sign off on everything?
SC: Yeah, they both were completely cooperative, Andy particularly because hes the star of the movie. That little fucker got a standing ovation at Sundance. Hes not going to be in my next movie.
DRE: Do you ever feel like The Police sold out?
SC: Hey look, we sold out the minute anybody would pay us a dime. Lets get that absolutely clear upfront and on the table. Our music actually took us over. It came welling up. It turned out that in spite of our Machiavellian scheming, there actually was real music there. Who would have thought?
DRE: When I told someone I was talking to you, he said ask him if he broke Stings ribs?
SC: Yes.
DRE: Yes you did or yes I can ask?
SC: Yes you can ask and yes I did. We were both laughing hysterically at the time.
DRE: Drunk or something else?
SC: In a way, drunk with the high of conquering America. That happened on the stage of Shea Stadium and all the hordes of British press were there because it was a very big event in England. After we did the sound check we were horsing around. I had a New York Times and Sting grabs it and I grab it back and he grabs it back and were playing tug of war with this thing. To get my newspaper from his clutching grasp, I had to apply a knee to the ribcage. I got my newspaper back just at the point when theres a cracking sound and Sting goes Ow. Im like aw man, whats up, whats up. We played the show that night but a few days later it was still hurting, so we took an X-ray and sure enough, his ribs were cracked. Whats funny is we didnt fight all the time and one time we do and I broke his rib. We goofed off all the time but there were the occasional shouting matches.
DRE: Were those good shouting matches?
SC: Well the shouting matches never came to blows. We did indulge in recreational emotional violence, mostly gratuitous. The big shouting matches were specifically over music. Sting was then and is now, a complete composer. When he writes a song, he writes it from the top to the bottom. In the early days, he was incomplete. He would have a couple chords in the lyric and hed bring it to us immediately and wed smash it up. From our third album on, we were all showing up at the studios with platinum demos, fully recorded, fully realized, and fully arranged demos. It became more and more difficult for Sting to compromise on those because the idea of the composer collaborating with the players is kind of a new fangled idea. Mozart didnt have to negotiate with the brass section. By this time we were all fully accomplished producers. We learned with each other. So when he conceived of a song, he heard the whole thing in his head and when he brought it to the band, he would have to compromise on the beauty of his vision and he did compromise at first, but less and less. It became more and more of struggle for Andy and I to get a word in edgewise when it came to the arrangements of the song. Thats what the battles were about. With the wisdom of hindsight, we could fully understand Stings point of view and I think he could understand ours. It was a valid disagreement, so we parted company. Im very grateful to Sting for sticking it out. We got eight years out of his life and five albums out of it and did rather well. So if he doesnt want to make those compromises anymore, hes free to go.
DRE: How was watching all fifty hours of footage, there must have been tons of stuff you didnt remember?
SC: Yeah but as soon as I saw it, I kind of remembered it. There are a few shots Im not sure which city were in but I kind of remember the moment. It wasnt a walk down memory lane because the whole Police memory was hashed and rehashed so many times decades ago. Theres not much angst left in those memories. I remember it fondly and everything but its not like I get all worked up. There was a lot of emotion which was the emotion of excitement as a filmmaker. It could have been someone elses band. Just looking at those images, I was excited as a filmmaker to be making a film which such images. The film was shot by a 25 year old rock star and edited by a 50-something father of many.
DRE: I think seven kids.
SC: Yeah, at last count.
DRE: Was there stuff too risqu or personal to show?
SC: Not really, no. There was one shot of Andy and [The Police manager] Kim Turner regaling the camera with a night of lust from the night before, which is hysterical. Half the people will find it funny, another quarter will be insulted and outraged; therere so many funny Andy shots. I cut off Andys dick too.
DRE: What?
SC: Thats a conversation stopper. Theres a shot in the movie where Andy pulls out his rod and I cut away to a shot of Andys face right at the crucial moment. It would have scared people. I thought the best part of the shot anyway, was the look on Andys face afterwards when the camera pans back up his stomach up to his face where hes already got this shit eating grin saying Oh fuck, youve got me Copeland. Hes already regretting it.
DRE: The footage of Sting and Andy figuring out De Doo Doo Doo was fantastic.
SC: Yeah but my battery was running low. There are places where the sound goes funky and thats because the battery was running down while I was shooting. These cameras were domestic grade where the frame was the size of your little pinky nail. The magnetic strip on that celluloid is a tiny little pencil mark of magnetic tape, so the sound is really delicate and not a high grade. But I was able to goose as much as possible here in the studio. But about that shot, Sting had already written the song, hes just showing it to Andy. About an hour after that shot, we have had the song recorded. We learned the songs in the morning, figured them out, fought over them and had the backing track done by lunchtime.
DRE: Why did you want to shoot all this footage?
SC: Two impulses. One because I thought I was Cecil B. DeMille, but the main impulse was that I was a tourist. All this incredible stuff was happening in front of me so I wanted to scrape it off and stuff it in my suitcase so I can play with it later, which is what I did. When you go visit the Taj Mahal or the pyramids or something, you look at it, you burn it into your brain and think this is a wonderful thing, but there is an impulse to think not good enough, I want to scrape a piece off and take it with me. So you snap off a picture, which is basically what I was doing.
DRE: Had you directed anything before this?
SC: I did make a film called So What years ago but I didnt know what I was doing. I was on tour at the time and it was an abomination so I withdraw it from my oeuvre.
DRE: How did you like the process of putting this together?
SC: Making it was a blast. Professionalizing it was a real pain in the neck, by which I mean legalizing it. Once it became product and went out into the world, I had to go back and get releases from everybody in it, all the music, all the faces, everything, even the logos. Sting wears a Mickey Mouse t-shirt so I had to contact Disney. All of that took three or four months. Then when that was all done, I had the DVD authoring business, which is quite difficult. At least its creative but its still pretty dry.
DRE: Whats DVD authoring?
SC: I had to have different kinds of mixes and different formats. Theyve got to have the HD version, the mono version, the no narration version, the no subtitles version, all this stuff; plus all this paperwork and that was a big pain in the neck. I finally finished all that and the thing is out there. One of the liberating concepts that enabled me to cut those 50 hours down to 75 minutes was the concept of extra DVD material. So having made the movie and had all my fun and everything, now Ive got to do the DVD and actually cut more stuff and work more on the extra DVD material. I had to coax Andy over here to do the commentary which was a lot of fun. Now Im in the final phase which is selling the damn thing, which is actually much better because Im enthusiastic about the mission.
DRE: Why didnt Sting do commentary?
SC: He wasnt around. I actually have commentary that I wish I could have cut in but it wasnt on point. They got the three of us around the mic about four or five years ago to do audio liner notes, for some kind of re-release thing. Andy and Sting were at this palazzo in Italy and I was in California. Its evening, their time and theyre getting drunker and drunker and its mid-morning my time and Im getting more and more caffeinated, kind of a classic Police dynamic actually. We reminisced about every single song that we ever recorded. Oh man, we got on a roll. Its hysterical. Andys really funny and he gets Sting and I going. I wished I could have used that but it wasnt about the shots on the screen, it was something else all together. But I would have loved to get Sting because we met up at Sundance and we had a great reunion there and we still just light each other up. The name Police gives Sting the heebie jeebies but when the three of us are together, we always have a laugh.
DRE: I would love to talk about some of the TV and film projects youve scored, how was working with Bryan Fuller on Dead Like Me?
SC: Dead Like Me was fantastic and Bryan is way out there. He imposed very strict limitations on the music. He didnt want to hear any guitar, electric or otherwise, or any rock and roll instruments. He was allergic to them, which actually pushed me in interesting directions because I would have fallen on those easy peasy type instrumentations had he not forbade it. That show had that dark morbid humor that really worked for me. I did that for two years and really enjoyed the hell out of it. That was one of the most fun gigs Ive ever had actually. It wasnt the greatest show in the world but it was really fun to do. You establish the sound and your music is part of the whole look and feel of the show. After the first four or five shows, they stop giving you any kind of hassle at all and youre just following your instincts.
DRE: Another SuicideGirls favorite is Paul Feig, how was working with him on I Am David?
SC: Yeah, well that film was so far out of his mtier but it was really cool. I scored a pilot of him one time that never flew unfortunately.
DRE: Have you seen this video online where someone cut together all of Rosie ODonnells stuff from that movie you scored [Riding the Bus with My Sister]?
SC: No I havent. Youve got to send it to me.
DRE: I will. Its pretty funny.
SC: I actually like that film. It came out and it was pretty universally despised but I got into it. Actually I wrote a blog about working with [director] Angelica [Huston].
DRE: No ones going to fault anyone for wanting to work with Anjelica Huston. Shes amazing.
SC: Well you should read my blog. In the forum, theres a section called Yo and thats all my reports of my ventures with the Foo Fighters, my ventures with Incubus, a day in the life of a film composer, scoring with Anjelica. Ive got some of my Eurythmics anecdotes. Basically Stewarts dinner tales.
DRE: Have you been working on any scores lately?
SC: Well I havent done any for the last year because this fucking Police movie has eaten my life.
DRE: Are you going to be directing anything else?
SC: Ive got a couple things actually in the hatch. Most of them are sort of real so I cant talk about them. One that is less real that I can talk about is the Super-8 footage I have of all the other bands. Ive got all these bands from Suzie and the Banshees, Adam Ant, The Damned, Talking Heads, B-52, as well AC/DC and Robert Palmer. All the footage is right on the cusp between old wave and new wave. I had access no one else can have. I can go into their dressing rooms, I could go all over the stage while their playing, nobody would stop me. They had a rapport with my camera that MTV would never be able to get. So thats my next movie. The hassle is, thats going to be a licensing nightmare.
DRE: Much more than this one too.
SC: But this time Ill have my licensing before I make the movie. That was my mistake this time. Its very different to go to somebody and say, Im thinking of making a movie, Im thinking of putting your shot into my movie, if you would like to be in my movie, sign here. Its a different conversation from Ive made a movie, its coming out soon, please sign here.
DRE: Who should play you in the eventual Police biopic?
SC: Jeremy Piven.
DRE: Really? Thats kind of sad.
SC: Thats because hes my favorite actor and hes an old buddy of mine from Very Bad Things. I think hes the new Peter Sellers. He is so fucking incredible. With the magic of films they could make him into a tall blonde Californian.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Buy Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out
Daniel Robert Epstein: How are you?
Stewart Copeland: Im good but just let me get into the comfy seat
[pause] Ok.
DRE: Wheres the comfy seat?
SC: It is a deeply over upholstered comfy seat, it is the producers couch. It is where the producer normally falls asleep.
DRE: Wait, arent you the producer of your stuff?
SC: Im snoozing even now.
DRE: Hows it going with the movie?
SC: Great, Ive been flogging for several months now and the whole cycle fires up again next month in Europe when it comes out there. Im completely blown away by the escape of my little toy from the playpen out into the world and becoming a monster.
DRE: I thought the flick was great. How long have you been working on it?
SC: It took me about a year and a half because I was learning the software, as well as earning a living. I was doing it just as a hobby; well actually my hobbies tend to be obsessive. But it was just a home movie that I was making pretty much for Sting and Andy and the rest of the road crew and everyone who was there. It was Les Claypool who suggested I take it to Sundance. We were talking on the phone as we do these days while Googling stuff and he says lets go to Sundance, so we both Google up the application form and I paid my 35 bucks. I had to think up a name for the movie which at that time was Behind Andys Camel but of course that didnt get past the marketing. But I sent my 35 bucks and forgot all about it. Then when Sundance came back and said Youre in, everything changed.
DRE: First of all, you still have to earn a living?
SC: Yes, mainly for peace of mind, for mental well-being. Its really difficult to feel good about yourself unless youre earning a living. Theres a friend of mine who won a big court case. His lawyer was so good that not only did they pay his damages but he got huge punitive damages of tens of millions of dollars. So this guy could just retire and he was a musician but he always wanted to paint, so he started painting. He didnt have to work anymore but since there was nobody buying his paintings, he lost interest. It was a strange thing. Unless theres somebody paying you for it, unless theres some kind of connection with the real world, its just pissing in the sand. So I still like music and everything like that but it just feels better to be writing for a purpose.
DRE: Did you always want the film to just be from 78 to 84?
SC: Yeah because around then I stopped shooting. It was a conscious decision one day when we were in a Lear Jet doing barrel roll and I was attempting to film the experience as I did everything else. Then I realized you cant shoot something inside of a plane and get any idea of whats going on here and it was too dark anyway. We were just about to land and I missed that exciting moment. I realized I missed a lot of exciting moments because I was fussing with the camera instead of living life. So I resolved in that moment to burn it in my brain cells rather than onto film and I regret that decision today. But we were already playing stadiums and we were already at the top so the story is complete even though when the film finishes, we actually go on and do another whole album even bigger than the previous album and another tour bigger than the previous tour.
DRE: Did it feel like you were showing off like hey were multimillionaires in a jet!?
SC: No, that thought never crossed my mind. However, it is certainly true that the film shrinks the band down, to no great loss for anybody. But the film doesnt puff the group up like The band conquered the world and sold X millions of records In fact in a couple places I cut out of the band bubble so you can see what the band looked like from the outside for just a minute. Since because its so intimate, youre hardly even aware of the hubbub outside the cocoon and it diminishes the mystique in a way. This is not a puff piece. Its a whole different thing. There are the MTV videos and other shows about the actual contribution of The Police to the music of the 80s and the creative dynamic within the band, how many Grammies did we win and all these important facts and figures. My movie doesnt have any of that. Its just a personal experience.
DRE: Most people wont narrate their own film.
SC: I didnt have narration at first. The film that I sent to Sundance had very, very little, and at the time I was stuck on how to tell the story for the people who werent there. At first I made it as a film for people who were there. It didnt need any explanation. But as soon as it got into Sundance I realized I was going to be up against movies that people were taking really seriously and here I am with my little half formed home movie, so I got serious. I started writing narration which grew and grew. For some things I just didnt want to hear a voice come on the screen at certain times so I used a card.
DRE: Was it easy to get Sting and Andy to sign off on everything?
SC: Yeah, they both were completely cooperative, Andy particularly because hes the star of the movie. That little fucker got a standing ovation at Sundance. Hes not going to be in my next movie.
DRE: Do you ever feel like The Police sold out?
SC: Hey look, we sold out the minute anybody would pay us a dime. Lets get that absolutely clear upfront and on the table. Our music actually took us over. It came welling up. It turned out that in spite of our Machiavellian scheming, there actually was real music there. Who would have thought?
DRE: When I told someone I was talking to you, he said ask him if he broke Stings ribs?
SC: Yes.
DRE: Yes you did or yes I can ask?
SC: Yes you can ask and yes I did. We were both laughing hysterically at the time.
DRE: Drunk or something else?
SC: In a way, drunk with the high of conquering America. That happened on the stage of Shea Stadium and all the hordes of British press were there because it was a very big event in England. After we did the sound check we were horsing around. I had a New York Times and Sting grabs it and I grab it back and he grabs it back and were playing tug of war with this thing. To get my newspaper from his clutching grasp, I had to apply a knee to the ribcage. I got my newspaper back just at the point when theres a cracking sound and Sting goes Ow. Im like aw man, whats up, whats up. We played the show that night but a few days later it was still hurting, so we took an X-ray and sure enough, his ribs were cracked. Whats funny is we didnt fight all the time and one time we do and I broke his rib. We goofed off all the time but there were the occasional shouting matches.
DRE: Were those good shouting matches?
SC: Well the shouting matches never came to blows. We did indulge in recreational emotional violence, mostly gratuitous. The big shouting matches were specifically over music. Sting was then and is now, a complete composer. When he writes a song, he writes it from the top to the bottom. In the early days, he was incomplete. He would have a couple chords in the lyric and hed bring it to us immediately and wed smash it up. From our third album on, we were all showing up at the studios with platinum demos, fully recorded, fully realized, and fully arranged demos. It became more and more difficult for Sting to compromise on those because the idea of the composer collaborating with the players is kind of a new fangled idea. Mozart didnt have to negotiate with the brass section. By this time we were all fully accomplished producers. We learned with each other. So when he conceived of a song, he heard the whole thing in his head and when he brought it to the band, he would have to compromise on the beauty of his vision and he did compromise at first, but less and less. It became more and more of struggle for Andy and I to get a word in edgewise when it came to the arrangements of the song. Thats what the battles were about. With the wisdom of hindsight, we could fully understand Stings point of view and I think he could understand ours. It was a valid disagreement, so we parted company. Im very grateful to Sting for sticking it out. We got eight years out of his life and five albums out of it and did rather well. So if he doesnt want to make those compromises anymore, hes free to go.
DRE: How was watching all fifty hours of footage, there must have been tons of stuff you didnt remember?
SC: Yeah but as soon as I saw it, I kind of remembered it. There are a few shots Im not sure which city were in but I kind of remember the moment. It wasnt a walk down memory lane because the whole Police memory was hashed and rehashed so many times decades ago. Theres not much angst left in those memories. I remember it fondly and everything but its not like I get all worked up. There was a lot of emotion which was the emotion of excitement as a filmmaker. It could have been someone elses band. Just looking at those images, I was excited as a filmmaker to be making a film which such images. The film was shot by a 25 year old rock star and edited by a 50-something father of many.
DRE: I think seven kids.
SC: Yeah, at last count.
DRE: Was there stuff too risqu or personal to show?
SC: Not really, no. There was one shot of Andy and [The Police manager] Kim Turner regaling the camera with a night of lust from the night before, which is hysterical. Half the people will find it funny, another quarter will be insulted and outraged; therere so many funny Andy shots. I cut off Andys dick too.
DRE: What?
SC: Thats a conversation stopper. Theres a shot in the movie where Andy pulls out his rod and I cut away to a shot of Andys face right at the crucial moment. It would have scared people. I thought the best part of the shot anyway, was the look on Andys face afterwards when the camera pans back up his stomach up to his face where hes already got this shit eating grin saying Oh fuck, youve got me Copeland. Hes already regretting it.
DRE: The footage of Sting and Andy figuring out De Doo Doo Doo was fantastic.
SC: Yeah but my battery was running low. There are places where the sound goes funky and thats because the battery was running down while I was shooting. These cameras were domestic grade where the frame was the size of your little pinky nail. The magnetic strip on that celluloid is a tiny little pencil mark of magnetic tape, so the sound is really delicate and not a high grade. But I was able to goose as much as possible here in the studio. But about that shot, Sting had already written the song, hes just showing it to Andy. About an hour after that shot, we have had the song recorded. We learned the songs in the morning, figured them out, fought over them and had the backing track done by lunchtime.
DRE: Why did you want to shoot all this footage?
SC: Two impulses. One because I thought I was Cecil B. DeMille, but the main impulse was that I was a tourist. All this incredible stuff was happening in front of me so I wanted to scrape it off and stuff it in my suitcase so I can play with it later, which is what I did. When you go visit the Taj Mahal or the pyramids or something, you look at it, you burn it into your brain and think this is a wonderful thing, but there is an impulse to think not good enough, I want to scrape a piece off and take it with me. So you snap off a picture, which is basically what I was doing.
DRE: Had you directed anything before this?
SC: I did make a film called So What years ago but I didnt know what I was doing. I was on tour at the time and it was an abomination so I withdraw it from my oeuvre.
DRE: How did you like the process of putting this together?
SC: Making it was a blast. Professionalizing it was a real pain in the neck, by which I mean legalizing it. Once it became product and went out into the world, I had to go back and get releases from everybody in it, all the music, all the faces, everything, even the logos. Sting wears a Mickey Mouse t-shirt so I had to contact Disney. All of that took three or four months. Then when that was all done, I had the DVD authoring business, which is quite difficult. At least its creative but its still pretty dry.
DRE: Whats DVD authoring?
SC: I had to have different kinds of mixes and different formats. Theyve got to have the HD version, the mono version, the no narration version, the no subtitles version, all this stuff; plus all this paperwork and that was a big pain in the neck. I finally finished all that and the thing is out there. One of the liberating concepts that enabled me to cut those 50 hours down to 75 minutes was the concept of extra DVD material. So having made the movie and had all my fun and everything, now Ive got to do the DVD and actually cut more stuff and work more on the extra DVD material. I had to coax Andy over here to do the commentary which was a lot of fun. Now Im in the final phase which is selling the damn thing, which is actually much better because Im enthusiastic about the mission.
DRE: Why didnt Sting do commentary?
SC: He wasnt around. I actually have commentary that I wish I could have cut in but it wasnt on point. They got the three of us around the mic about four or five years ago to do audio liner notes, for some kind of re-release thing. Andy and Sting were at this palazzo in Italy and I was in California. Its evening, their time and theyre getting drunker and drunker and its mid-morning my time and Im getting more and more caffeinated, kind of a classic Police dynamic actually. We reminisced about every single song that we ever recorded. Oh man, we got on a roll. Its hysterical. Andys really funny and he gets Sting and I going. I wished I could have used that but it wasnt about the shots on the screen, it was something else all together. But I would have loved to get Sting because we met up at Sundance and we had a great reunion there and we still just light each other up. The name Police gives Sting the heebie jeebies but when the three of us are together, we always have a laugh.
DRE: I would love to talk about some of the TV and film projects youve scored, how was working with Bryan Fuller on Dead Like Me?
SC: Dead Like Me was fantastic and Bryan is way out there. He imposed very strict limitations on the music. He didnt want to hear any guitar, electric or otherwise, or any rock and roll instruments. He was allergic to them, which actually pushed me in interesting directions because I would have fallen on those easy peasy type instrumentations had he not forbade it. That show had that dark morbid humor that really worked for me. I did that for two years and really enjoyed the hell out of it. That was one of the most fun gigs Ive ever had actually. It wasnt the greatest show in the world but it was really fun to do. You establish the sound and your music is part of the whole look and feel of the show. After the first four or five shows, they stop giving you any kind of hassle at all and youre just following your instincts.
DRE: Another SuicideGirls favorite is Paul Feig, how was working with him on I Am David?
SC: Yeah, well that film was so far out of his mtier but it was really cool. I scored a pilot of him one time that never flew unfortunately.
DRE: Have you seen this video online where someone cut together all of Rosie ODonnells stuff from that movie you scored [Riding the Bus with My Sister]?
SC: No I havent. Youve got to send it to me.
DRE: I will. Its pretty funny.
SC: I actually like that film. It came out and it was pretty universally despised but I got into it. Actually I wrote a blog about working with [director] Angelica [Huston].
DRE: No ones going to fault anyone for wanting to work with Anjelica Huston. Shes amazing.
SC: Well you should read my blog. In the forum, theres a section called Yo and thats all my reports of my ventures with the Foo Fighters, my ventures with Incubus, a day in the life of a film composer, scoring with Anjelica. Ive got some of my Eurythmics anecdotes. Basically Stewarts dinner tales.
DRE: Have you been working on any scores lately?
SC: Well I havent done any for the last year because this fucking Police movie has eaten my life.
DRE: Are you going to be directing anything else?
SC: Ive got a couple things actually in the hatch. Most of them are sort of real so I cant talk about them. One that is less real that I can talk about is the Super-8 footage I have of all the other bands. Ive got all these bands from Suzie and the Banshees, Adam Ant, The Damned, Talking Heads, B-52, as well AC/DC and Robert Palmer. All the footage is right on the cusp between old wave and new wave. I had access no one else can have. I can go into their dressing rooms, I could go all over the stage while their playing, nobody would stop me. They had a rapport with my camera that MTV would never be able to get. So thats my next movie. The hassle is, thats going to be a licensing nightmare.
DRE: Much more than this one too.
SC: But this time Ill have my licensing before I make the movie. That was my mistake this time. Its very different to go to somebody and say, Im thinking of making a movie, Im thinking of putting your shot into my movie, if you would like to be in my movie, sign here. Its a different conversation from Ive made a movie, its coming out soon, please sign here.
DRE: Who should play you in the eventual Police biopic?
SC: Jeremy Piven.
DRE: Really? Thats kind of sad.
SC: Thats because hes my favorite actor and hes an old buddy of mine from Very Bad Things. I think hes the new Peter Sellers. He is so fucking incredible. With the magic of films they could make him into a tall blonde Californian.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
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And, as a drummer, Copeland owns souls. Reggatta De Blanc, anyone?
Fonzie Be Praised.