Three Kids, One Ice Cream Truck, and Green Day’s Biggest Joke

Director Lee Kirk is hoping you’ll have the time of your life watching his new film, New Years Rev—we’ve seen it with an apostrophe, too, though we’re told it doesn’t have one—the Green Day collaboration which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) September 13. 

The title doesn’t convey that it’s a road trip film or even that it is associated with Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool. Boulevard of Broken Dreams or American Idiots Pranked would’ve been better. Those aren’t spoilers.  When Green Day posted a little over two weeks ago “big news, we made a movie!” they called it “a wild road trip coming of age comedy…about a garage band…who think they’ve scored the gig of their lives…opening for us. Except plot twist, it’s a prank.”

The Analog Dogs—played by Mason Thames, Kylr Coffman, and Ryan Foust—are a fictional high school band that set out from Kansas City to California 11 days before New Year’s Eve to play L.A.’s iconic Palladium to support Green Day.

Kirk tells SPIN they mostly shot the movie in Oklahoma City “because Route 66 goes through it and I wanted the movie to have this Americana feel to the road trip.” The plot is really just the hijinks and stupidity of how three teenage boys get to L.A. and what happens when they discover the promise of an opening slot was just a practical joke played on them by the singer’s older brother.

New Years Rev includes tons of Green Day songs, plus two Analog Dogs songs written by Armstrong’s son, Jakob, and an on-film cameo by rising band The Paradox. 

The cast also includes Mckenna Grace, Fred Armisen, Bobby Lee, Sean Gunn, Angela Kinsey, Keen Ruffalo, Ignacio Diaz-Silverio, and Kirk’s wife, Jenna Fischer (The Office, Mean Girls). Armisen was also in Kirk’s 2016 comedy Ordinary World, which starred Armstrong in his first leading role, as an aging punk rocker no less.

New Years Rev is for anyone who had a band with their mates in high school, ever road-tripped to a concert, tried to scam or sneak their way into a show, or had a shithead older sibling—and, of course, it’s for Green Day fans.

In this interview with Spin, Kirk talks about the genesis of the project, the placement of songs, and some Green Day easter eggs. Proceed with caution; some spoilers ahead.

Why was this such a late addition to TIFF? It was only announced a couple of weeks ago.

Because we finished the movie late. I started shooting in February and finished the movie two weeks ago. We just put the finishing sound mix in. 

How did Live Nation and Michael Rapino (president and CEO) get involved? 

The script was sent to them. They were looking to start doing some narrative music films and so they responded to it. I met with them and we started talking about the film and it felt like a good fit for everybody. They’ve been amazing to work with. They were fantastic. 

Was Green Day always going to appear in the film?

Yes, always. From the first conversation Billie Joe and I had, we talked about staging a concert and putting the word out to Green Day fans, “Hey, we’re shooting this movie, shooting a concert, come on out to the Palladium.” We had a few thousand Green Day fans show up and they’re singing the songs, they’re wearing their own T-shirts, they’re into it. That kind of authenticity, it’s hard to get with that many people but that’s real people singing. And then I knew we should have them act in it as well. We should have one other scene with them in the movie. So that’s why we put them in early in the film. 

Did you ever go see Green Day back in the day? 

Oh, yeah. I saw Green Day way back in the ’90s, and then I took my nephew to see the American Idiot musical. I’d lost touch a little bit with Green Day and I was like, “Whoa, this music is amazing. This is so different than ‘Basket Case’ and all that.” So it was interesting because I got back into them right around the time that Billie Joe and I hooked up and started to work on my other film, Ordinary World.

How did you originally meet Billie Joe?

I was chasing an actor for Ordinary World in 2016. We sent it to that actor’s agent and she said, “He can’t, but I also rep Billie Joe Armstrong and he’s looking for something to do.” We said, “Let’s send it to Billie Joe” and he read it the night he got it and the next day he said, “I’d love to talk to you about this movie.” That never really happens with actors. Usually, you have to wait like a month for them to read the script [laughs]. Instantly, I was like, “I like this guy.” It was a really fun time working together. He hadn’t done a lot of acting. So when I cast him, we spent a lot of time working on the role together and rewriting the role to really fit in his voice. We just got to know each other really well. And he ended up writing the music for the movie because there’s some songs that his character would sing in the film. We just became buddies. 

How did the idea for New Years Rev come about?

As he [Billie Joe] tells it, when he thought of this New Year’s Eve Green Day idea a few years ago, he thought of me. He just called me up and said, “I’ve always wanted to do a Green Day movie. I don’t have a whole idea, but I know it should be a movie about some kids who are going to see Green Day play on New Year’s Eve.” So that instigated a conversation between us about what could this story be and eventually it led to the film.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve road tripped to see a band, starting when I was 16, leaving a note for my parents, up to this day. Did you? 

My friends and I drove to see the Old 97’s in San Francisco in 1999 [Old 97’s “Most Messed Up” is in the film], but, actually, my first concert, I drove with a friend to Fort Worth in the late ’80s for U2’s the Joshua Tree tour. His sister and her friend were going, so we said, “Can we go with you guys?” We were like 16. It was about an hour to Fort Worth. They had tickets. We didn’t have tickets and we thought we’ll just buy tickets from a scalper. So, got there, walked around outside the Tarrant County Convention Center. There was a guy, “You need tickets, guys?” “We’re like, “Yeah, we’ll take tickets.” He’s like, “Fifty bucks a piece.” We gave him 50 bucks. We take the tickets up to the window and the guy goes, “These are for last night.” [laughs]. And so, some cop nearby said, “Let me get you guys in.” So, we ended up getting in. 

Did some of the incidents in the film come from real Green Day stories?

So much of the little story pieces in the film have their seeds in real Green Day moments and their lives. The ice cream truck was inspired by the bookmobile [their 1993 tour bus] they drove around in, as young kids, that Tré’s dad had bought and fixed up for them. There’s a moment in the story when a young girl knocks on the ice cream truck and says, “Can I get some ice cream?” And they’re like, “This is not an ice cream truck.” That had its seeds in one time when the bookmobile was parked in front of a venue, a mom and her daughter were thinking they’re going to get a book [laughs] and they’re in there smoking weed or something. And she said, “This isn’t a bookmobile; this is a drug deal.” 

Sleepy, the head in the jar, has the seeds in a true story. In Germany, they played a show and after they needed a place to stay, and they’re like, “Can anyone let us stay?” and this guy let him use his place and when he said, “You’re in this room,” there was a head in a jar on the shelf. They were all quite stunned. And he said, “Oh, don’t worry about that. That’s just Sleepy,” and he left [laughs].

Some of the song lyrics match up to the scene, like “Brain Stew” for the head in the jar, and “Bobby Sox,” with the opening line, “Do you wanna be my girlfriend?” Not all of them do, but some synced perfectly.

One of the real joys of writing the script was I had access to the entire catalog of Green Day music I could use however I wanted, wherever I wanted. That was really fun. I would come up with a scene idea and I would think, “What song can I tie to this?” It wasn’t always about what the song was about; sometimes it was just the feeling of the song. When they head out on the road trip and “Geek Stink Breath” plays, I think that’s a song about taking drugs but the driving nature of that song, “Let’s use that one right there.” And then other ones, like “Bobby Sox,” which is the song after he first meets Olivia, that had the perfect lyrics, the perfect feel to it.

And her name, Olivia, isn’t that an unreleased Green Day song? 

Oh, is it? I didn’t know that. Gosh, you know, it’s funny, I asked Billie Joe, “What should we name her?” and he said, “Olivia.” So maybe.

Are there some other funny things the guys asked to slip in?

One thing that Billie Joe had said about Mike, he does a lot of puns, especially when he was younger. That’s why the puppet does all these little puns. Actually, the characters are not really based on all three of them; there’s little tiny details of them that are threaded through all the characters. 

Those two jokes are pretty good in the diner.

Those are good, right? One of them I read Tré had told that joke years ago and I thought that’s a good joke. I read that in a book somewhere. I’m not sure where the other came from, but that’s very much in the vernacular of those guys. They’re just funny guys. They’ve also got a lot of heart. They’re family guys. They’re intelligent. The idea was trying to make a movie that really feels like Green Day, so it has all those different facets of who that band is.

Will you be releasing the version of “Know Your Enemy” when Analog Dogs guitarist joins Green Day onstage?

I don’t know if we will. There’s a number of other songs that we shot at the concert that we haven’t talked about what exactly we will do with. So quite possibly, maybe we will. That’s really more of Green Day’s territory, rather than mine.

Do you want this film to be a singalong? 

If people start singing, that would be so exciting, just because it means the movie’s working and they’re into it. Primarily, it was made by Green Day for Green Day fans, but, also, a wider audience too could appreciate this film because it does draw on the universal feeling of being a teenager and trying to find your own path and forge your own identity and find your community of people. And so, my hope is that the audience is even bigger than just Green Day fans, young people and even older people. When you go to a Green Day concert there’s all ages at their shows. So if I’ve done my job right, people are very excited every time a new Green Day song comes on. 

Will there be a sequel with Analog Dogs going on tour with Green Day?

Who knows? Maybe. There could be. We’ll see.