WGTC: Time for the really hard-hitting question: What’s the worst band name you’ve ever heard?
Lewis: I would never say because I don’t want to offend any… They’d see it in a quote, “Juliette Lewis says this is the worst name ever.” I’ve had this discussion like, “Wow, that’s a goofy name.” Band names are really… Wow, there’s so many coming to mind but I’m not going to say. I mean Green Day. No Doubt.
Weston: No Doubt. I’d say String Cheese Incident, but it’s not really that bad because it’s stuck in my head for like seven years.
Lewis: What’s the worst? I mean the Beatles. That’s a terrible name.
Weston: The Monkees!
Lewis: The Monkees.
Weston: The Turtles.
Lewis: The Zombies. That’s awesome. The Kinks and the Zombies. I really love them.
Weston: The Kinks is something. I love that.
Lewis: You know what’s an awesome name? Canned Heat. I Tweeted this the other day. Sorry for that tangent.
WGTC: No, not at all! Can you guys talk about the importance of music in this film? It’s pretty prevalent throughout.
Lewis: I thought it was so neat, you don’t see this often in movies, but a movie tipping its hat to the Riot Grrrl movement, if that’s what you want to call it. Sleater-Kinney, early PJ Harvey, that was a big influence on the song I wrote.
This is my first time writing music for a film I’m in. I wrote the two songs with my old guitar player, a guy named Clint Walsh who’s incredibly talented. But Jen gave us direction, even though I do music, I keep it way separate from my film self. This was fun to write in character. It’s ’90s music, but I wanted the audience to think it’s kind of good and to dig it, but definitely make it feel like lo-fi ’90s.
We were inspired by PJ Harvey’s To Bring You My Love, which is a real slow, seductive, kind of brooding. It’s starts with this guitar riff which is kind of bluesy. And Clint, my friend, he just translated these ideas kind of beautifully in that riff and then I wrote the melody and we made it explode.
Weston: I was obsessed with Sublime’s punk/ska music while I was filming it. I think that a lot of my character’s voice came from Brad (Nowell) and from his, just impulsive anger that he had inside of him. Which is apparent in his music. I always kind of worship one musician, one singer while I’m in a certain character. That one really helped me connect.
WGTC: Anything else exciting coming up?
Lewis: I’m finally going to release an EP after four years. Not a full-length record. I worked with the guys from Cage The Elephant. Brad Shultz produced it. It’ll be out in the next couple months, and I’m doing a TV show called Secrets and Lies that’ll be out in the fall on ABC. It’s kind of, I don’t want to say it’s in the True Detective vein because that’s its own amazing show.
Weston: That’s more than a vein. That’s a whole artery.
Lewis: Aha! I like that sentence. I’ve never heard that before.
WGTC: That’s good. They should put that on posters now. Jonny, you got anything coming up?
Weston: Couple things on the table. Can’t say.
Lewis: Shut up! He has a movie coming out. This is what you do. You’ve got to hustle. It’s coming out in October.
Weston: Oh yeah, I’ve got this movie, a Michael Bay-produced film, I’m the lead. It’s called Welcome To Yesterday as of now. It’s about time travel. It’s found footage. Has all the elements of fun and comedy and it gets real dark. Also another very personal project to me. I lost a lot of weight for it so I kind of going nuts while I was shooting but it was a good time.
Lewis: It’s really intense.
Weston: Yeah, hopefully it’s coming out in October.
That concludes our interview, but I’d like to thank Juliette and Jonny for taking the time to talk. Be sure to check out Kelly & Cal when it hits theatres later this year.