The Still Life may be about the art world, but it's truly a rock 'n' roll experience. The film, about a troubled artist who stumbles upon a destructive new movement, is almost as packed with musicians as its star-studded soundtrack.
"There was no intention that I'm going to hire a bunch of rock stars," explains writer, director, producer and former roadie, Joel Miller. "What happened was things just evolved as they evolved.
"Initially, I sent the screenplay out to a few people. One of them was Phyllis Diller, and the other one was [Korn's] Jonathan Davis. Jonathan read the script, he loved it, said that he'd play any part. And so I thought it was kind of neat, cause Jonathan as the liquor store clerk — that's pretty cool."
From there, Miller decided to fill some other smaller roles with friends and musicians. Dizzy Reed from Guns N' Roses and Louise Post of Veruca Salt were soon attached to the project. After some convincing over tea, Buckcherry's Josh Todd signed on as well. Miller gathered the rockers on the film's soundtrack in a similarly organic fashion.
"Once I had probably four musicians involved, I started getting calls like, 'Hey dude, how come I'm not invited to be in your movie?' And I was like 'No problem.' I didn't have any more roles to create. I was creating left and right, trying to facilitate having people in the movie from the bands I had befriended. So then we used a lot of them on the soundtrack."
With musicians as diverse as Reed, No Doubt's Adrian Young and Darius "Hootie" Rucker, the soundtrack includes some pretty interesting collaborations.
The film and music are so inextricably intertwined that Miller insisted that the two be sold together when it came time to find a distributor. The Still Life DVD and CD will be released on Tuesday.
—Sarah Kurchak |
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