~The film One Nine Nine Four, about punk rock in the 90s, including an interview with Billie Joe, will be shown Sept. 29 in Calgary, but perhaps never again. To help, read more.

~Janewt posted a couple of photo stills from Heart Like a Hand Grenade, and GDA has a review of the movie that she and Andres wrote.

~The LA Weekly has a review of Heart Like a Hand Grenade. They say, contrary to previous reports: “We hear the movie will finally be coming out on DVD soon (a date hasn’t been set yet).”
(I guess we’ll have to wait and see if it happens…)

~There’s a great review of Heart Like a Hand Grenade on the LA Times blog. A quote: “From its Gothic title cards to its middle-finger coda, the focus is on the music and on Armstrong’s tunnel-vision drive to fulfill his concept.” Definitely worth a read.

~1039 Sweet Children posted a photo gallery of the Heart Like a Hand Grenade premiere, including scans of a cool handmade booklet that Roecker was handing out at the event. (No band pics, don’t get too excited…)

~The premiere of the Green Day documentary Heart Like a Hand Grenade, which is tonight in L.A., was written up in FMBQ, a music and radio industry mag that’s been around for 40 years. [Thanks to Joanna]

John Roecker is a cool guy. He’s made a sick puppet movie about Charles Manson, he hangs out with assorted punk rockers, and he’s got a biting sense of humor, but what always gets me, and what I noticed the most in his interview with DJRossstar, is the underlying sweetness. Maybe it’s just the Green Day brand of sweetness rubbing off, or the punk rock sweetness that tends to get lost in translation when people interpret punk from farther away and see only the tartness. When he started following Green Day for the documentary, Roecker noticed right away that there was no drama, and that everyone was getting along, having fun. He said it made him feel “optimistic and creative for the first time in a long time.” There’s no irony, no posturing, it’s plain old uplifting.

It must truly have been amazing to see the songs come to life as American Idiot came together, and, after the album was recorded and the band was doing rehearsals, to hear the guys play all sorts of stuff, from Queen to Led Zeppelin. Ah, to have been the large fly on the wall that Roecker said he himself was… But hey, he was a fly with a video camera, so I won’t complain. (I think, and hope, we’ll all get to see the movie soon enough.)

Yes, okay, I noticed the tidbit about Mike and Tre being naked in the pool, but I won’t dwell on that. Back to the sweetness… Billie Joe shrugging and saying “no” when John asked him if the footage with the unreleased work should be locked up in a safe. The guys not getting invited to important parties because they don’t want to pose for photos. Billie Joe telling John he had to get off the phone because he was walking in a bad neighborhood (“Billie’s a walker.”). And maybe this isn’t sweet exactly, but I liked Green Day’s reply to Juliette Lewis, who is a Scientologist, when she asked if her band could open for Green Day: “If you leave your religion you can join us.”

It always takes me a few days to write about something — other than the announcement before and after in the sidebar — but I really like first person stories by people who were there, and whose perspective is similar to the band’s, so I enjoyed this interview quite a bit, and I just wanted to mention it.

~DJRossstar interviewed John Roecker, director of the Green Day documentary Heart Like a Hand Grenade, last night on his radio show. Roecker told Ross that Billie Joe plays a song in the film that is not on American Idiot, and that he plays it both on piano and on guitar. He also announced that The Network will be releasing a new album, possibly titled Omega 3000. Ross says the video of the interview should be up on his Stickam page today. [Via GDC]

~John Roecker, director of the Green Day documentary Heart Like a Hand Grenade, will be on DJ Rossstar’s online radio show on March 19, at 7pm PST. Ross says this is your chance to ask him “anything you want!”

~The filmmaker of Onenineninefour, a documentary about punk in the 90s that will be out this year and will include an interview with Billie Joe, was interviewed on Carson Daly. Watch that here. Earlier updates on 1994 here. (I’m still sick, sorry for the lack of posts.)

~Sixten, the artist whose stenciled image of a couple kissing was the inspiration for Green Day’s album cover, talks about creating that image here. I think the stencil that Sixten posted on the blog is far more compelling than the version used on the album cover. See what you think…

~The filmmakers of the movie Onenineninefour — a documentary about punk rock in the 90s that will include an interview with Billie Joe — sent out a news update. The movie is set for release in 2009. A new trailer should be out in February, and the movie poster is out now. (Earlier posts about the movie here and here.)

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