Just when you thought Green Day had faded into obilivion, they enter back into the spotlight – and usually in a major way. It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly a decade since their American Idiot album, which led to mash-ups, Broadway shows and even an upcoming Tom Hanks-produced feature film. They’re now ready to release not one, not two, but three albons (¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tre!), beginning this September and now they’ve got two documentaries in the pipeline.
Speaking with Billboard, frontman Billie Joe Armstrong revealed that Tim Lynch (who collaborated with the band on their concert DVD Green Day: Bullet in a Bible) and Tim Wheeler (editor of the fantastic tour documentary The White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights) are working together on the two films, one of which will give a behind-the-scenes looking at the making of their trio of albums. The other will go way back, culling together “vintage footage” from the early days of the band, before Dookie hit in 1994.
But don’t expect this to be a simple, VH1-esque Behind the Music look, as the lead singer said, “it’s not going to be the sitting down, head shot of me going ‘we started out blah blah blah.’ We wanted to get into lifestyles of rock’n’roll and playing rock n roll and letting the story kind of tell itself rather than create revisionist (history).” Production is already deep underway as well, with footage behind shot over the last 18 months, during creating the album and performing small concerts.
The first making-of film is aiming to make a Sundance premiere, which would happen right after the final album hits on January 15th. That festival is no stranger to music-related docs, with LCD Soundsystem, Paul Simon, A Tribe Called Quest and more all being subjects in recent years. But get ready for the year of Green Day, as their first album arrives on September 25th, while the first single comes next month.
Are you looking forward to seeing Green Day back in the spotlight? What do you think of their doc plans?