Do It Again

I always bring an extra tape. If you’re a producer, that’s your responsibility. You never know when a tape will fail or be lost or fall into a bowl of steaming Velveeta. Naturally, the first time I forgot to bring a tape was last Thursday for our Los Angeles festival premiere. Guess what? It was also the first time the tape I mailed for the screening couldn’t be found.

That’s right. Around 6:30 p.m. – or an hour and a half before our sold-out screening – I stood with director Allison Anders, who runs the “Don’t Knock the Rock” festival with daughter Tiffany, and Hadrian, the man in charge of the Silent Movie Theatre, wondering how to resolve the fact that we didn’t have a copy of “Do It Again” in the house.

No need to panic. I called my friend Jeremy and editor Brad, who I knew had DVDs at the respective homes. Allison sent her boyfriend Terry (of Gun Club!) back to her place. We retrieved our back-up screeners (which I had also neglected to bring) and readied for our screening.

Funny thing is, Allison and I looked totally calm.

See. Here we are after she handed me $400 to reimburse my plane ticket.

Quick summary: The screening could not have gone more wonderfully.

Now the account. The morning started beautifully with a generous post on the LA Times Pop & Hiss blog.

Later that day, Allison greeted me on the sidewalk with a big hug, which made me not feel at all nervous around a big time director. Kinks tunes were already playing in the theater and DJ Howie Pyro, with his fantastically cheesy orchestrated version of “You Really Got Me,” was setting up. As 8 p.m. neared, a steady stream of my kind of celebrities came to the theater. Wondermints Nick Walusko and Darian Sahanaja, both who also play with Brian Wilson. Dave Jenkins, of the Dave Davies band. Artist Shepard Fairey. Musician/radiohead “Mighty” Manfred Jones. My former Spin editor Tracey Pepper. And Shel Talmy, the super-producer responsible for everything Kinks through “Something Else” and a slew of other (“My Generation” and “Makin’ Time”) revolutionary rock songs.

Then, there was The Marquis, as in Michael Des Barres. At 62, he remains a masterful front man, both sex symbol and ham. This is the dude who led Power Station at Live Aid, played Murdoc in MacGyver and, from what I’ve heard, turned down a chance to replace Freddie Mercury in Queen.

Check him out.

The Marquis knows how to work a crowd. He also knows his rock. When I told the audience that Talmy was sitting in the crowd, Des Barres didn’t miss a beat.

“So did Jimmy Page play on that song?” he hollered into the dark. Talmy replied, “no,” once again dispelling one of rock’s great myths.

All the while, a photographer, who gave off that Kathleen-Quinlan-in-“The Doors” vibe (slightly crazy, slightly sleazy, slightly artistic), was snapping shots. Turns out, she crashed the party and, for some odd reason, grew mucho testy when we refused to dip into our, er, bottomless budget to pay for her shots. (I emailed an offer for a poster and plug for a few photos to post on Facebook and got the following reply: “I have plenty of publicity and my clients are worldwide … I have a family to feed too.”)

Thankfully, Marianne and Todd were there. They brought their cameras.

To start the proceedings, Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Koretz presented a certificate marking the adjournment of the council in honor of Pete Quaife. His office would send it to Pete’s fiancé, Elisabeth, the next day.

“Usually, we do that in honor of great civic activists or famous Los Angeles individuals like UCLA coach John Wooden who just passed away,” he said, explaining why the LA City Council adjourned for the man we knew as “Crutch.” “But I thought because of the huge impact that Peter and the Kinks have made on people all around the world whose lives have been touched like mine has that we really needed to acknowledge him and the Kinks.”

“I don’t think we Kinks fans are necessarily better than other people but I certainly think our music is for sure,” Koretz said.

Next, the film.

I had already decided not to watch. I’ve seen “Do It Again” about 30 times now. Nothing against the movie, but I know what happens. My plan was to hang near the food truck, consume some BBQ and take in the warm, LA night. My plans changed as I watched the first scene.

I realized that this was the perfect audience. They got every joke, even those that we had determined through multiple screenings were too obscure. I mean, they laughed when our two-second freeze on a drunk Paul Weller flashed on the screen, a shot that normally passes too quickly to make much of an impression. I realized that about 73 percent of the room had, like me, e-mailed the pic to friends after the press got hold of the shots of one of Weller’s less impressive nights on the town.

“It’s going over well,” Albert Berger, the producer of, among other films, “Cold Mountain,” “Election” and “Little Miss Sunshine,” assured me when I bumped into him in the back.

The audience seemed happy, cheering after the film ended. I was particularly pleased to get a big hug of congratulations from Marianne Spellman, a writer and Kinks fan who I admire. I also know, from some harsh and honest critiques of previous cuts, that Marianne is not an easy sell. If she didn’t like “Do It Again,” she would have told me.

And the Marquis welcomed me to the front by yelling: “How big is his fucking balls? How big is his balls?”

His first query was also choice. “I just think this is the most extraordinary and confident man who would attempt to put the notorious assassins of rock back together. What were you thinking?”

There were lots of other questions. What did Dave say? Will this ever come out on DVD? What did you learn? Then, we had a quick intermission, and a special show of rare Kinks clips curated by Dr. Charles Beardsley kept the night going.

There was something charming about that part of the night. It felt like being at a sleepover when I was kid, chomping down Pop Rocks and huddling around a TV to watch Friday Night Videos. There were young Ray, Dave, Pete and Mick goofing around as they did the lip synch to “Wonderboy.” As always, I was just sorry the night had to end.