How shitty is the music industry these days? Real shitty. Despite having a movie that boasts tracks by Jay-Z, the Notorious B.I.G., Nas, million-plus seller Lil Wayne, Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys (a new track recorded for the film, titled “Bass Line Is Nice”), director and B-Boy Adam Yauch says there will be no soundtrack CD to his upcoming basketball documentary “Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot.” “The music industry is having so much trouble right now that nobody really wanted to pay for the clearances,” Yauch lamented to New York magazine.
It’s kind of sad considering that everyone who has actually seen the film makes note of how music-centric it is. NYMag says the film is filled with new Beastie tracks (plural, their must be another) and a mix of seventies R&B and funk (strangely they make no mention of the aforementioned hip-hop).
In an Apple store Q&A during the Tribeca Film Festival, the interviewer hosting the talk said the film was filled with good music. Asked about his approach for the music Yauch said, “Music and film is both about pacing and shaping thing together. We were just looking for music that has the right feel in the scenes. There wasn’t a specific agenda other than we were trying to pick a lot of New York music because the film is a NY based film. Sometimes [we’d look for] themes in the lyrics, but it was mostly just playing around [with songs] and seeing what felt right.”
The graying Beastie Boy also said he was “documentaried-out,” and said he had hoped to work on a narrative feature film project some time in the future. “That’s def something I’m interested in. There’s a few ideas [kickin’ around],” Yauch said, noting he had already wrote a script with a friend about graffiti writers.
The musician turned director said he’s influenced by bad films that don’t work. “I enjoy seeing where things go wrong, you go – ‘it sucks’ – and then you try and figure out why things don’t go right.”
Yauch noted that his favorite Beastie’s video is “So Whatcha Want,” and one of his directorial inspirations was “Rosemary’s Baby,” with “all those wide lens shots.”
As for the Beastie Boys? They’re working on another record right. He joked that collaborators on the next album would hopefully include Gordon Lightfoot, Abba and that Justin Timberlake had turned them down. “We put the R in retarded,” he laughed.