Roadies – N.Y. Times

For Mr. Crowe, who typically takes years between his movies, the faster pace of TV has been his biggest revelation. “What’s in your gut, shoot it,” he said. “And the result is ‘Roadies’ is what’s in my gut.”

The series is also a neat piece of counterprogramming, and not just for Showtime. Many critical and audience darlings on the streaming and more prestigious cable networks are replete with alienated antiheroes, morally blinkered protagonists and straight-up evildoers. Even most of the acclaimed comedies, like HBO’s scabrous “Veep,” are dark.

Mr. Crowe doesn’t do brooding or biting, even if there can be a strain of melancholy in his work. But his brand of entertainment — veined with optimism and concerned more with characters than plot — has not fared particularly well at the multiplex lately. “Aloha,” his most recent film, was not just skewered by critics and ignored by moviegoers; it was accused of cultural misappropriation and was badmouthed by its studio.

Television might just prove a more hospitable environment.

“The time is right for a pay-cable show that makes you feel good,” said David Nevins, the president and chief executive of Showtime Networks, “that is life-affirming and is emotional and makes you feel better for the hour you spent in front of it.”

For Mr. Crowe, who was just a teenager when he started writing for Rolling Stone and other music publications in the 1970s, rock music has meant more than a soundtrack to life; it has inspired his movies’ plots and themes and most iconic moments (like Mr. Cusack’s boom box serenade of Ione Skye in “Say Anything”). But the idea that sparked “Roadies” actually came from someone else.

Waiting for a concert to begin, the writer and director J. J. Abrams, an executive producer on “Roadies,” spotted a woman perched on the rigging who vanished as soon as the band appeared. His curiosity piqued, he called Mr. Crowe: Wouldn’t her story, and that of the rest of the behind-the-scenes crew, be fascinating to tell?

Mr. Crowe was intrigued. A subsequent backstage visit at a Fleetwood Mac concert, where he glimpsed a family atmosphere among the crew, cemented the show’s tone in his imagination.

“I always knew that the roadies were more pure music geeks than crews on movies are movie geeks,” he added. “And I wanted to honor that.”

Though Mr. Crowe invented a 16-page history of the headlining Staton-House Band, viewers never hear the group’s songs. Live music will come from the “real” acts performing before them, which will be a constantly changing group, Mr. Crowe said.

“Like the drummer joke in ‘Spinal Tap,’ our band can’t hold on to an opening act,” Mr. Crowe said.

That comedic conceit allows “Roadies” to bring in an eclectic list of singers and bands including the Head and the Heart, Lindsey Buckingham, Halsey and Lucius.

Mr. Crowe’s movies often feature main characters grappling with classic coming-of-age concerns of identity and purpose, whether they’re adolescents or well into adulthood. Searchers like those inhabit “Roadies,” most notably Kelly Ann, an electrician technician played by Imogen Poots, who in the pilot is wrestling with leaving the tour for film school.

But the two main characters Mr. Crowe created — Bill (Mr. Wilson), the tour manager, and Shelli (Ms. Gugino), the production manager — allow him to push into new terrain.

“Cameron has said he’s always wanted to write about marriage, and ironically, this may be the opportunity, with two people who actually aren’t married,” Ms. Gugino said.

The workplace marriage can feel, in some ways, more authentic than many official ones, and early on he told Winnie Holzman (“My So-Called Life”), his main writing partner and an executive producer, that he wanted to explore that kind of platonic relationship. (Shelli is married; since his girlfriend left him seven years earlier, Bill, a recovering alcoholic, has hooked up with a series of age-inappropriate women.)

Mr. Crowe has nothing but raves so far for his television experience. But that doesn’t mean it has been devoid of typical new-series bumps. The “Roadies” pilot was originally shot with Christina Hendricks (“Mad Men”) in the role of Shelli. But test audiences reacted poorly to the character, finding her too harsh, and the character was recast and softened.

Compared to some of Mr. Crowe’s recent films, television may prove to be an oasis. “Aloha” took in a mere $21 million at the domestic box office, despite having Bradley Cooper as its star. Mr. Crowe ended up apologizing for casting Emma Stone as an Asian-American character named Allison Ng, who was one-quarter Chinese and one-quarter Hawaiian. And emails made public by the Sony hack detailed the studio’s angst over Mr. Crowe’s script and test screenings.

Coming off the mixed success of “We Bought a Zoo” (starring Matt Damon, in 2011) and the disappointment of “Elizabethtown” (2005), Mr. Crowe finds it tougher to get a traditional romantic comedy off the ground.

“For right now, I think studios are very scared about spending money on a character-rich story that doesn’t have a lot of tentpole, sensational kind of appeal,” he said.

“Put it like this,” he added. “You’d never get ‘Almost Famous’ made right now.”

The doggedly upbeat Mr. Crowe hasn’t given up on making movies for the big studios. And he believes, wholeheartedly, that the Hollywood pendulum will swing back to the sorts of movies he loves, and loves to make — like those of Billy Wilder, James L. Brooks and Wes Anderson.

“They are classic, timeless stories about characters that you fall in love with and transport you,” he said. “That’s what I love to do, and I think there will always be an audience for that when done correctly.”

In the meantime, “Roadies” will be his canvas for what Ms. Poots calls “the hope within his work” (though some may see syrupy sentimentality). The backstage setting is an apt pairing for someone who speaks about the “transformative power of music.”

“I love writing about what it is to be an optimist in an often-cruel world,” Mr. Crowe said. “It’s a tough but satisfying road.”

Courtesy of the NY Times – Lorne Manly –  June 17, 2016