Alex Winter, who started his career as half of the Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure tandem before transitioning to director of commercials and TV shows, is finally helming a movie about the formation of controversial music file-sharing service Napster. The surprise is that after 10 years of trying to make a narrative feature, Winter’s shooting it as a documentary backed by VH1, the same division that made 2008’s Anvil: The Story of Anvil. Winter originally made his deal with Paramount’s MTV Films and wrote a script, only to watch that division crater and see his birth of a technological revolution storyline drive The Social Network, which even had early Napster pioneer Shawn Parker in a key role. Rather than scrap Napster, Winter is going back to all the sources for his script, armed with a camera.
“The rise and fall of Napster and the birth of peer-to-peer file-sharing technology created by Shawn Fanning when he was a college student, changed music to movies, and made possible everything from Julian Assange, WikiLeaks to the iPod and Facebook,” Winter told me. “It became an expression of youth revolt, and contributed to a complete shift in how information, media and governments work. And it is a fascinating human story, where this 18-year-old kid invents a peer-to-peer file-sharing system, and brings it to the world six months later.”
Technological Luddites like myself equate Napster with the rampant piracy that hobbled the music industry and killed the album, forcing bands to tour if they want to make money. Winter said a documentary format allows voices on both sides do some venting, but he maintains that Fanning’s intention was a pay system similar to what Apple’s iTunes became. “Nobody wanted to deal with this college kid and the music industry took a hard stance and focused on shutting him down,” Winter said. “It’s a gray area. I can understand Fanning’s side, but I can also empathize with the horror that Metallica’s Lars Ulrich felt when a single that wasn’t even finished ended up on the radio.”
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Winter said that Napster’s Fanning and Parker are participating, as well as a group of label heads and musical artists he’s still pulling together. The film’s being produced by Maggie Malina, an exec at MTV Films when Winter first pitched the pic. As for the question Winter inevitably is asked in any interview, he said that he and Keanu Reeves have a Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure sequel script by original scribes Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon. He realizes they’d better get moving to avoid it being a geriatric adventure, but said “it’s early days on that project.”
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Common misconception – bands hardly see a DIME from revenue sales…their money has always been made from touring, merchandizing, appearances, etc. But the money made from album sales went to the record labels, not the artists…and they’re the ones who made the big stink, with the addition of course of Lars Ulrich…if anything, napster helped lesser known groups (like Dispatch) gain a bigger following, and true musicians typically appreciated Napster for what it was…an easy way for all sorts of music to be accessible to all sorts of people…it was a good thing for music, not a bad thing…
So, stealing is okay since musicians weren’t profiting from record sales anyway? Awesome! Hmm… I wonder if they’d have been screaming bloody murder if that money was being stolen from them instead of the record companies.
The Napster Generation is now part of our workforce. Their mantra: “Steal anything you can, as long as you can get away with it.” I hear Wall Street is hiring…
Its funny how people like you stargazer get your panties in a bunch when the little guy actually gets wise and learns to steal l like the aris, geffens, spielbergs, insert corporate entity here do so routinely…I call it payback :)
My panties aren’t in a bunch, “little guy” John. And my comment was a retort to “Jeff’s” comment that stealing is okay with some people. Obviously so.
That said, you have nothing of substance to support your claim of graft from your examples. Spielberg? Ari? Geffen? Bring it, sparky. I would say that distribution companies and large studios rip off creative people daily, but that’s common knowledge so I don’t feel any need to give examples. Why are you so bitter about these particular three people? (Okay, that was a rhetorical question so don’t feel obligated to stress your brain with a response.)
Write something again soon when you learn about punctuation and grammar. We’re all dying to again hear from under-educated people like you.
EXCELLEEEEENT!
Call me later, dude!
I would definitely check this out. Hope it’s better than Ben 10:Alien Force. Okay, I never saw it, but my kids hated it.
Will this doc be presented at the TED conference?
I think Bill and Ted’s music will still bring peace and tranquility to all nations, put an end to war and poverty, align the planets, and promote harmony among all creatures even if it is downloaded illegally.
Be excellent to each other… & PARTY ON, DUDES!
I’m looking forward to this. Napster was an amazing story and it should have evolved to a pay service if the record companies had any foresight. Not embracing P2P was a huge mistake for them as there are no distribution or manufacturing costs with P2P. Instead we ended up with Apple controlling the market with their proprietary format, walled-garden, 99 cent song approach.
If any documentarians want to make a movie about FedEx, I’d love to see that as well. I find paradigm breaking companies/products to be fascinating.
The internet DESTROYED the music industry. ‘A lot of bands don’t see adime…’ Yeah, you’re right, but they still deserve it and they still deserve to make a living. I remember the 90s. We had tons of musical acts. Tons of ‘em! Everything was called Alternative but it was the biggest section in the music store. I would be pretty bored with todays acts. I see music companies (or whatever they call themselves) trying to pitch some act over college television that were terrible. I saw MTV playing some white guy who didn’t rap. Didn’t dance. He just talked with some attitude over some beat and it was awful. I feel sorry for today’s youth. Vanilla Ice was talented. There I’m saying it.
There are good acts out there, but less money and less places to hear them (The internet counts as one place) leaves less material out there and less opportunities. There will only be big media companies putting out stuff, so less diversity and quality even for those people who want to put out great stuff. Amy Whinehouse was talented, but stupid. She died because of how she lived. Layne Staley never said ‘No Rehab’ in his songs. Yes, he was stupid and talented,too. But he lasted longer and he could of been saved.
On a postive note, Alex Winter had this show in MTV a long time ago. It was called the Idiot Box and even though it was around for about 60 minutes, it was funny as hell.
“DON’T MAKE A JERK OUT YOURSELF!”
I don’t really understand how Napster’s to blame for the music industry over-saturating the market with generic crap it couldn’t *give* away. I mean, really, does Rebecca Black deserve even the 15 minutes she’s getting?