/Film Interview: Alex Winter Discusses SXSW Napster Doc ‘Downloaded’
Think about Facebook, iPods, iTunes — all things you might use every single day. They all have seeds in the “little program that could,” calledNapster. Co-created by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker in the late 1990s, the file-sharing service/social network was not only ahead of its time technologically and socially, it completely changed how the public consumes media. If it wasn’t for Fanning and Parker, who knows how long it would have taken for corporations to allow you to download music on your computer or rent one of their movies without leaving your house.
All this is at the center ofDownloaded, a brand-new documentary byAlex Winter. Winter (seen above with Fanning and Parker) is best known as an actor (Lost Boys, Bill and Ted) but has been directing for some time. WithDownloaded, he tackles a massive topic with authority and energy, telling the story of Napster from its earliest moments through its culture peak and long term fallout. It world premieres this week atSouth by Southwestin Austin and will be released by VH1 Rock Docs. After that, you’ll be able to see it on demand and online.
We spoke to Winter aboutDownloadedand found out it was a project he’d been developing for long time before it evolved into its current state. He talked about trying to focus such a huge topic, culling together a huge wealth of media and, of course,The Lost BoysandBill and Ted 3. Read the interview below.
/Film: So when I think “Alex Winter,” I think ofBill and Ted, orLost Boys.I’m not thinking about Napster. How did you become a part of this project?
So I just thought it was extraordinary and once the dust settled and we realized what a legal minefield this was, I kind of started following the story and discovered just from really being a newsreader how captivating Fanning was and Parker was and so I approached Fanning in 2002 to make a movie out of the story, which I just thought was an incredible story. I pitched it to a studio and wrote it for a major studio to direct it and I took a couple of years of research and all of that and like a lot of studio movies, it never got made. I just took off on to other stuff for a while and then a few years ago I got really disheartened by how little movement there had been since the early 2000’s in terms of different sides coming together, old paradigms, new paradigms, artists, public. There was just so much contention and so much divisiveness, so I thought at that point “Why not make it a documentary?” I really knew everybody involved, since I did so much work on it as a narrative. I knew all of the Napster guys, all of the record label guys, all the tech gurus, and the legal or ethical mavericks who were dealing with copyright and internet rights, so I figured “Why not just make a movie that lets all of these guys talk and I’ll get the hell out of the way?”
So you sort of wroteThe Social NetworkbeforeThe Social NetworkwasThe Social Network.
So how did you hook up with VH1 on the film and what’s the release plan?
That was one of the things I notice watching this movie. I just keep getting blown away by all of the footage that you guys had of Napster, like what it looked like on a computer in 1998 andSouth ParkandThe Daily Show, then realize “Oh, it’s all Viacom. It’s all connected to VH1.” Did that make it easier to get all of that footage?
Was there any kind of footage that you couldn’t clear? Any kind of iconic Napster thing that wasn’t' there? I didn’t think of anything, but maybe you did.
A couple of times you could tell the documentary edging into much bigger subjects. It briefly mentions Facebook, and a little about Steve Jobs, all of these things that Napster is related to.It is the beginning of this whole thing that we are with now. So how did you manage to keep it so focused when you could just keep going?
AfterThe Social NetworkSean Parker became even more of a cult figure than he was, and you talked to him several times throughout the movie. In this one location I couldn’t stop questioning, he’s in this really weird apartment with a bear skin rug and all of this stuff… is that his place?(seen above)
I was just curious. Also, while you do a great job with keeping the film balanced as the Napster story, they weren’t totally in the right, so you have Metallica and Dr. Dre and record industry input. One thing that I did feel was missing was how those guys feel now. You talked to some record company guys now, but not the artists. Was that something you attempted to do?
It’s just that’s kind of the news of the world that we are in, we know that artists are embracing digital all over the place, because they are all releasing their albums that way now. So I tried to focus on any sort of present day perspective that I thought was rare or interesting take on where we are at, which I thought was provided really well by Noel Gallagher and Henry of “What’s our way forward” I think it was represented really well by Larry Lassek where he just asks the question of “Is the artist going to be as screwed in the future as they were in the past?”
Absolutely. Last two things, non-Napster…The Lost Boysis one of my favorite movies of all time. What are your fondest memories of it looking back and do you think the direct to DVD sequels affected the legacy at all?
I rented it again recently and it’s without a doubt, since I’ve been in this business since I was ten, the most fun I ever had on a job in my life. It was sick. It was just… It was like every actor is a wannabe rock and roll star, right? It was like we were a rock band, like the four of us worked nights in Santa Cruz and road motorcycles. It was crazy and it was enormous amounts of fun. Joel runs a really great set. I made a lot of friends on that show and I was a kid fresh out of film school and it was kind of like stepping into Oz in terms of stepping out of my crappy ramen filled New York world into this giant Hollywood movie. (Laughs) It really was… I wouldn’t know where to start. I mean every night was insanity and it went on for months and months, but it was a really good time.
Awesome and then the last one, the one I’m sure you’ve answered a million times, is the BILL AND TED 3 thing. I’m going to try to spin it a little bit. We know that there’s a director attached and you guys are both interested and there are people working on the screenplay. At this point, what’s the hold up? Do you think it’s actually going to happen?
And we were just talking about media and Napster as sort of the whole reporting of films has sort of changed.
