Not long into the interview, Tré Cool got distracted by a street brawl outside his window. "That guy just punched someone in the face — oh, now grandma's jumped in too, swinging her purse at everyone." As he made coffee, he gave NME a live play-by-play of this everyday American chaos — the exact brand of out-of-nowhere absurdity that 'Nimrods: A Green Day Comedy' is trying to capture.
Directed by Lee Kirk, the new film isn't a band biopic — it's a road comedy. Three teenagers, Tommy, Fred, and Chad, get conned into believing their band Analog Dogs is about to open for Green Day, played by Mason Thames, Kylr Coffman, and Ryan Foust. The story grew out of an original idea from Armstrong, with Cool and bandmates Mike Dirnt and Billie Joe Armstrong feeding the writers more real-life embarrassing stories along the way. "It's not a mirror, more like a blurry reflection," said the 53-year-old Cool. "We're part of these kids, and they're part of us."
One story that made it into the script happened in Copenhagen: their host took them to meet "his friend Sleepy," then pulled a jarred human head out of a closet, warning them, "Don't tell anyone I have this." That night, the whole band slept on the floor right next to the head. "It was pretty freaky," Cool recalled, "but back then we were just a bunch of maniacs running around, and it felt weirder if someone WASN'T like us."
A Biopic? He Calls It a Retirement Plan
Asked whether anyone's pitched a proper Green Day biopic, Cool's answer was blunt: it comes up every so often, but they have zero interest in looking backward right now. "We're not done yet — we don't want to sit around reviewing what we've already done, spending our energy talking about the past instead of moving forward and making new stuff." He framed a biopic as a down-the-road option: "Once we're actually old and doing a Vegas residency, that'll be the perfect time to make it."
The real Green Day members make a cameo in the film, appearing at a signing event the three teens crash. The soundtrack features an unreleased demo version of "In the End," along with "Haushinka." Cool said the song choices were entirely up to Kirk's team — he only found out how good the result was when he heard it on Dolby 7.1 in a theater for the first time.
As for the long-running speculation over whether the rock opera 'American Idiot' might get a big-screen adaptation, Cool didn't shut it down — he just noted that 'Nimrods'' success has brought the conversation back up again: "We've proven we can make records, and now apparently we can make movies too." Asked about progress on the next album, he flatly declined to say: "That's one I'm not telling you." Asked whether Green Day has ever considered headlining Glastonbury — the one major festival the band has yet to conquer — he answered easily: "If they invite us, of course we'd want to. Too bad the drummer doesn't book the lineup."
'Nimrods: A Green Day Comedy' is currently in UK theaters; no Taiwan release info has been announced.
