A Highway Journey Comedy Impressed by the Band’s Early Years

New Years Rev is a film about Inexperienced Day followers, for Inexperienced Day followers, and by Inexperienced Day followers–to not point out Inexperienced Day themselves. The movie tells the story of a younger band, Analog Canine, pranked into believing they’ve a slot opening for Inexperienced Day at a New 12 months’s gig–if they will get there in time for the present.

Hijinks ensue because the band travels America in a picturesque classic taxicab, falling into conditions which will or could not have really been confronted by Inexperienced Day themselves throughout their early touring years. Mason Thames ( Prepare Your Dragon), Kylr Coffman, and Ryan Foust star, supported by a solid that features Jenna Fischer, Mckenna Grace, and Bobby Lee.

Additionally within the film, after all, are Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool, also referred to as Inexperienced Day. I used to be on the Palladium in Los Angeles to witness the band carry out their in-movie New 12 months’s live performance as writer-director Lee Kirk captured the managed chaos, and might affirm it felt simply as actual as the opposite live shows I’ve attended.

New Years Rev director Lee Kirk and Inexperienced Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong spoke with me for ScreenRant in celebration of the film’s premiere on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition. They revealed how Inexperienced Day’s early years turned gasoline for a highway journey comedy culminating in a efficiency by the band and mentioned the impetus of the movie, its spectacular solid, and its household ties.

From The Thoughts Of Billie Joe Armstrong

New Years Rev began as a easy concept. “I had a film concept [where] I wished to have a younger band journey throughout [the country] to finish up at a New 12 months’s Eve present with Inexperienced Day enjoying,” Billie Joe Armstrong stated on the cellphone from Argentina, the place the band had performed the night time earlier than.

To get the ball rolling, he known as up Lee Kirk, with whom he had collaborated on the 2016 movie Extraordinary World and struck up a friendship. “We simply began speaking about motion pictures,” Kirk stated, name-checking Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Nationwide Lampoon’s Trip, Dangerous Enterprise, The Breakfast Membership, and even Superbad as influences.

As issues progressed, the director stated, “I’ve acquired to provide you with all these antics that occurred to those youngsters alongside the best way, and who higher to ask than Billie Joe, Mike, and Tré … So, I pulled loads of their tales and used them as a seed for the story within the film.”

However don’t anticipate a pure translation. “It was essential, too, that this wasn’t a biopic,” Kirk clarified. “[I was] simply pulling components from their story, and it was a enjoyable strategy to inform a narrative and have all these little Easter eggs in there from the band’s lives.”

Meet Analog Canine

Analog Canine consists of lead singer Tommy (Mason Thames), bassist Fred (Kylr Coffman), and drummer Chad (Ryan Foust), whose chemistry is essential to creating the film work. Their title is a nod to Tommy’s love of analog gear, which additionally helps New Years Rev lean into nostalgic highway journey film conventions.

“The issue with cell telephones and storytelling is that so many issues may very well be cleared up so simply with a cellphone,” Kirk defined. “I used to be like, ‘Let’s do away with the cell telephones as shortly as we will. Let’s simply get these youngsters on the highway and allow them to simply be on the market on this journey.’”

“It was a danger to attempt to put all this older expertise into the story,” the director added (Tommy desires of creating his band’s demos with a TASCAM 4-track analog recorder in a world the place digital recording is available) “nevertheless it simply felt proper to me.”

When casting the band, Kirk discovered rising star Mason Thames first. “I used to be very excited to get him,” he stated. “He was so thrilled about Inexperienced Day, so I used to be excited to have him on board.” Fortunately, Thames had a rocker’s voice. Kylr Coffman, his co-star, knew his method round a fretboard.

“I wished all people to truly play their devices and know play and never pantomime,” Armstrong shared. “That was actually essential.”

Each Armstrong and Kirk additionally known as out a considerably miraculous feat pulled off by Ryan Foust. “He discovered play drums in two weeks,” Armstrong stated, “and he did an awesome job. It’s like, ‘Oh my God, this child actually pushed himself to have the ability to be a drummer.’ He was nice.”

“I simply wished to search out the precise chemistry,” Kirk mirrored. “I wished to search out three youngsters that really feel like they are a band, [and] that you simply imagine are the identical as Mike and Billie Joe and Tré … and people youngsters are implausible. They did such a great job and, each day, simply introduced a lot to the story.”

New Years Rev Is A Household Affair

Household is a key theme of New Years Rev. However whereas a menacing older brother (performed by Eager Ruffalo) and misplaced member of the family are key to the story of the movie, there are robust household ties behind the digicam as properly.

“Billie Joe and his spouse and my spouse and myself–we’re buddies,” Kirk shared. “They’ve two nice youngsters, who’re adults, who each labored on this film, [and] I’ve two youthful youngsters.”

Armstrong labored together with his son Jakob on music for the movie. “It was one in all my favourite elements,” he stated. “He wrote the vast majority of the songs for Analog Canine, after which we collaborated on one in all them. It was actually particular, and he did such an awesome job. He’s such an awesome musician and songwriter on his personal.”

“It was a kind of father and son moments that we acquired to share that’s actually distinctive, that I feel not loads of dads and sons can really say they get to do,” Armstrong continued. “It’s not simply going fishing collectively.”

Jakob Amstrong’s band Extremely Q launched their most up-to-date album, Empty Eddy, final yr.

For Lee Kirk and his household, the film had a fair deeper which means. His spouse, Jenna Fischer, seems within the film as Tommy’s mom Jodie, described by Kirk as a “rock ‘n roll mother” who’s “so totally different from Pam” and a personality that Fischer would not usually be requested to play. However her function meant rather more.

“She went by way of breast most cancers the yr earlier than,” Kirk stated. “She completed her remedy simply as I used to be doing pre-production on the film. So, this was one thing that we needed to look ahead to; a enjoyable factor to place all that toughness behind. She’s completely wholesome now, it’s nice, and so I wished to make use of it for our household.”

Kirk and Fischer’s kids each act within the movie alongside Mckenna Grace, with their son performing as her drummer. “The movie turned, for the Kirk household,” the director stated, “a particular little factor that we have been all doing collectively … this journey, for us, has been particular.”

The Pop Punk Optimism Behind New Years Rev

New Years Rev is a wild trip that celebrates Inexperienced Day’s legacy in a number of methods. The soundtrack, after all, is theirs (“You’ve acquired 30 years of music to make use of, so I felt like, ‘Let’s use all of it,’” Kirk stated), and their previous exploits have been gleefully reinterpreted to suit the story.

It’s additionally an embrace of the doggedness that has Inexperienced Day enjoying in entrance of arenas full of individuals regularly to this present day. Armstrong spoke about that, reflecting on his band’s early years. “We by no means had something to fall again on,” he shared.

“It was like, ‘I’m going to do or die, and if it doesn’t work out, then I’m nonetheless going to play music.’ That is my behavior.” He continued, saying “I’m going to do no matter I can to help that behavior, whether or not it’s washing dishes or boxing data behind the file retailer.”

It’s a sentiment Armstrong says is shared by his band members. “We’ve all the time had drive to maintain going, for positive,” he stated. “We undoubtedly had occasions the place we’ve had burnout, however I by no means thought an choice was to stop.”

“A variety of bands, they are saying that they break up, however I have a look at loads of bands that break up; they really hand over.”

“For us, it was like, ‘Tendencies come and go. So long as we’re writing good songs … we’ll have the ability to preserve going’” Armstrong mirrored. “It’s labored out nice for us, as a result of we’ve been capable of faucet into new generations of followers each time that we come out with a brand new file.”

However there have been scary occasions for Inexperienced Day. “One of many huge choices for us was going from Lookout data to Warner Brothers,” Armstrong stated of the transfer that preceded 1994’s Dookie album. “We guess on our future, and it was a scary second for us. I don’t know what failure would have seemed like.”

That tenacity interprets in New Years Rev, particularly given the truth that Analog Canine do make it to the Palladium in time to deal with viewers to an precise Inexperienced Day efficiency. “Billie Joe and I have been like, ‘It’s acquired to be an actual live performance,’” Kirk stated of the show-within-a-movie, “It’s acquired to be actual. There was no query.”

The room was crammed with extras that have been “simply actual Inexperienced Day followers,” Kirk stated, “so the truth that they’re all singing on the prime of their lungs … you are feeling that within the film.” “That was all the time a part of the plan,” he stated: “Let’s simply shoot a live performance.”

What’s Subsequent For Billie Joe?

Along with discovering out what Armstrong believes are Inexperienced Day’s most underrated albums (Revolution Radio and the Uno! Dos! Tre! trilogy), I requested what could also be subsequent on the planet of the singer’s many aspect tasks. That is, in spite of everything, the person who did an Everly Brothers tribute album with Norah Jones and starred in his personal Broadway musical.

“I don’t have something deliberate proper now,” he stated, earlier than including, “I might like to do some reveals with Pinhead Gunpowder, who put out a file this yr additionally. That’s been one thing we’ve been ready to do for over 15 years now. So, I feel that’s the one factor I’d actually love to do proper now.”

However, he continued, “I like being busy and I like having enjoyable enjoying music, like being in a canopy band and doing The Coverups with my buddies. So, hopefully I’ll do extra of that. I feel it retains me from being fully locked in on doing Inexperienced Day on a regular basis. It form of reduces the strain.”

The dialog additionally turned to a Inexperienced Day opus that continues to be related in 2025 as Armstrong mirrored on remodeling the unique lyrics of “American Fool”–heard within the recently-released twentieth anniversary version of that album–to what turned the ultimate model.

“I simply edited the lyrics and perhaps tried to make it extra direct and simplify it a bit of bit extra,” he stated. “Then, I simply did the demo and tucked it away and [wrote] the ultimate model of the music, after which I used to be like, ‘Oh, s–-t. That is it.’”

“I bear in mind wanting on the band and [going], ‘Are all of us on the identical web page with this? That is turning into extra topical and political,’” he shared, including, “they have been like, ‘Hell yeah.’”

“‘American Fool’ retains turning into an increasing number of actual as time goes on,” Armstrong continued, “particularly proper now with the present local weather that we’re in socially and politically.” Nearly as good as that’s for Inexperienced Day, the singer and songwriter would not thoughts if “American Fool” felt much less of the trendy period. In his phrases, “I need to write some completely satisfied music.”

Nonetheless lengthy the wait can be for that music contemplating Inexperienced Day remains to be wrapping up their Saviors album cycle, New Years Rev will seemingly function the enjoyable shot within the arm that many Inexperienced Day followers are absolutely in search of.

New Years Rev premieres September 12 on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition. It was produced by Reside Nation Studios, Tim Perell, and Inexperienced Day.