'For The Record: Scorsese'; SNL's political spoofs; Devendra Banhart

It's a very Hollywood record — or it relates to Hollywood in the sense that we created this imaginary scene to act as some kind of aesthetic guide to direct us in production.



We imagined this dilapidated hotel. There hasn't been a new guest in 10 years. The wallpaper is peeling. There's an older lady named Jackie with a leather jacket and a cigarette behind the reception [desk]. The light's coming in through this dirty window and you can see the dust going through the rays.



So we're creating this specific imaginary scenario and that's going to act as a guide for how to produce the songs. In that sense, it's very Hollywood because Hollywood creates this fantasy to the rest of the world. 

Los Angeles is a beautiful and really private place — a place that has incredible trails and a place that is really bucolic and ecologically-minded and about community. I live in a very nice little Mexican neighborhood that's very quiet [where] I sit and I work. That kind of gentleness and that kind of calm atmosphere is in harmony with the Los Angeles I actually live in.

I grew up in Caracas, Venezuela and I had an interestingly isolated childhood. I'd been struggling with how I didn't have a voice like Kurt Cobain, Mick Jagger, Axl Rose — although, he's got a pretty feminine, high thing going. But I couldn't sing like them and I wanted to sing.



I knew I just wanted to sing. And I had this feeling — it was kind of intuitive and a very spontaneous thing. It certainly wasn't premeditated. I just put on one of my mom's dresses. I combed my hair in a more feminine way, I grabbed a brush and something in me just unlocked and poured out and I felt like, Ooh wow! From this angle it works!



My voice was obviously much higher. It was almost like discovering my feminine side. [But] it wasn't a sexual thing, it wasn't a gender sort of thing. It was really about that femininity, almost making contact with it. And to embrace that isn't supported by society.



So for me, it felt like I stumbled upon it. And from that moment on, it felt like I could sing from that place.

At one point I thought, Okay, I'm taking this very serious, this is my career now and I need to take lessons. And I did.

That was very helpful, but ultimately the more you work on yourself and the more you're comfortable in your own skin, the more the voice also falls into place. My way of getting to know my voice more and more is actually just not thinking about it and letting it do its natural thing.



So that happened after figuring out ... I really don't need to try and be a better singer. I just need to sing the way I sing.

Shane Scheel: I think originally we just set out to honor a filmmaker. A couple weeks into running the show in Los Feliz at the Vermont Bar, Quentin Tarantino walks in and that began our relationship.



I think we drank tequila till 4 a.m. in the bar and he kept on coming back to his show. We would do it again in a different format. We moved it to West Hollywood last year and he became a regular there.



The same thing happened with Baz Luhrmann. He just showed up one night and gave a curtain speech. That began a relationship with Baz. So we've been able to bait them in with this idea of, We're doing this tribute to you, your work, your choice in music — and then we start a relationship that way.

Anderson Davis: For the Baz Luhrmann version of the series, we couldn't get "Lovefool" [by The Cardigans] and it was for the craziest reason.



It wasn't because of the publisher. The band was in a different country so trying to make that connection is difficult sometimes. "Lovefool," in my mind, was the perfect synthesis of Juliet, the character, and the lyrics of this song. It's kind of a he-loves-me, he-loves-me-not kind of a moment.



Luckily, we had some other options. Of course, Baz Luhrmann’s soundtracks are full of options so we were lucky in that regard, but I was sad to lose it.



Scheel: But we also never give up. We keep saying, Are you sure you don’t want this song in here? That’s where we are with [the Scorsese show] right now and we’re hopeful that this production will allow us to bring some skeptical people out to see the show and to understand what it is.

Davis: I think about lots of different moments in films when the characters are in the forefront and the soundtrack's in the background. And we're really just flipping that. We're putting the song in the foreground and we're contextualizing that song with the character.



So I think about other filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino. I'll often reference from "Reservoir Dogs" because it's probably one of his that's similar to Scorsese's "Mean Streets," using "Be My Baby." In "Reservoir Dogs," there's the moment where he cuts off the guy's ear. 



Horn: Is it "Stuck In The Middle With You?"



Davis: That's exactly right. So you can't imagine that moment without the song. I mean, they're one and the same. In fact, I think there's a story about the band [Stealers Wheel] maybe not being so crazy about the idea that their song will always be connected to this torture scene. But I think it's an amazing quintessential soundtrack-meets-the-cinematic-moment that "For The Record" is all about. 

Well, that's the big challenge because the debate was on Monday and SNL is on Saturday. That's six days that people have had to digest this. So how do they surprise the audience? You've already had a number of late night shows weigh in. 

Alec Baldwin has been so associated with the show for so long, it comes with the added benefit of people saying, well, that's Alec Baldwin playing Donald Trump! 

The Clinton campaign actually did something pretty smart and that is, Hillary Clinton, last year actually did a cameo on "Saturday Night Live," which tends to diffuse any kind of political punch it may have because it shows that the candidate is laughing a long with everyone. The worst thing I think for a candidate to do would be to badmouth the show afterward.