Vedder, Penn Set For THR/Billboard Film & TV Conference
Eddie Vedder

October 05, 2007, 4:50 PM ET

Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder and actor/director Sean Penn will be the subjects of the keynote Q&A at the Hollywood Reporter/Billboard Film & TV Music Conference, to be held Nov. 1-2 at Los Angeles' Beverly Hilton. Vedder and Penn will be interviewed by Billboard executive editor Tamara Conniff on Nov. 1 about the Penn-directed "Into the Wild," for which Vedder composed the soundtrack.

"He was in Hawaii when I tracked him down," Penn tells Billboard of Vedder, with whom he first collaborated on the 1995 film "Dead Man Walking." "He got a copy of the ['Into the Wild'] book and read it. He called up very invested already -- he really connected with it. I said, 'Call me when you get back and I'll come up to Seattle,' and that's what happened. I brought up like a three hour-and-15-minute cut of the movie, and we sat and watched that. His words were, 'It's on,' and that was it."

"Into the Wild" is based on the true story of Christopher McCandless, who, upon graduating from Emory University in 1990, gave all his money to charity, cut off all ties with his family and embarked on a cross-country odyssey that ended tragically two years later in the Alaskan wilderness.

Vedder's soundtrack, which essentially serves as his first solo album, debuted last week at No. 11 on The Billboard 200.



http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/art ... 1003654577



The 2007 Hollywood Reporter/Billboard Film & TV Music Conference

http://www.billboardevents.com/billboar ... /index.jsp

Can we have one major super-thread for all the publicity about Into the Wild? Between threads like this and a thread for discussing each song from the soundtrack, the front page is really clogged up with Into the Wild threads.

No offense, of course, to the original poster. Just my two cents.

major publicity events probably deserve their own thread--esp if it'll produce something we can watch/listen to

Give the way the news feed works on TSIS now it is better for them to be seperate as well

i agree frank thers too many fucking into the wild threads,...frank, you should punch someone in the stomach.....

That's a good point. This does look like an appearance. I'm really curious about it.

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just got an email from a friend saying she's going to that tonight (she works in TV).

Will report when I hear more (I suggested getting a tape recorder )

That's great! We got an inside scoop. heh

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just heard by SMS it's finished.
apparently Ed's not comfortable speaking ..what's new? (for press conference type thing anyway).
waiting to hear more details later..

Thank you for the update!

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That's the report we got:

That's plenty. Thank you!

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Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for sharing that. It gives you some idea of what the interactions were like.

Here's Billboard's summary which includes interesting comments by Michael Brook:

Sean Penn spent a decade preparing the film adaptation of Jon Krakauer's 1996 book "Into the Wild." But it only took him a few hours to secure the services of Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder to write the soundtrack for the project.

The pair's creative partnership was the subject of a keynote address today (Nov. 1) at the Hollywood Reporter/Billboard Film & TV Music Conference in Los Angeles. Vedder and Penn were joined in conversation by Michael Brook, who wrote the "Into the Wild" score.

"The script had been structured to have songs carry some of the narrative," Penn said. "We'd use a lot of Michael's stuff to temp to during the shoot. I just asked [Vedder] initially for a song [and] rather quickly he started sending things down. The most important moment in the collaboration was just sitting at his place watching the movie together. He'd send these songs down and they'd just work perfectly."

Brook likened the process of blending his music with Vedder's songs to "a kind of conversation" and said he was delighted "how much experimenting there was, which is what I always like best. Some of the music I wrote just reading the book. A lot of that we threw away, but some of it actually wound up in the film. At the beginning, you're not looking at the picture so much. You're just thinking, 'What is the atmosphere?'"

For Vedder, who previously turned down persistent requests from Penn to act in one of his films, writing for "Into the Wild" was akin to finding "the perfect wave. Sean had found the perfect wave by the time he talked to me about it. It was just a pleasure to surf this perfect wave. All I had to do was get back on the boat and sing for my supper."


He added that working with Penn and the family of the story's main character, Christopher McCandless, top of mind was a welcome creative challenge. "In our group, or the way we're used to doing it, we have five guys and we're all kind of the boss," Vedder said. "This felt more like, these people I felt responsible to were the boss. I felt really comfortable in that position."

Vedder and Penn have given only a handful of interviews about the project, but joked about their true reason for appearing at the conference. "Our motivation in being here today is primarily those briefcases full of cash from Billboard," Penn said with a laugh.

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/art ... 1003667165

Photos:
http://tinyurl.com/3x9u5q

Buahah. Awesome. Love the hat! Think he dressed up for the gig with the academy?

ps. No. He went as himself. Halloween was the day before.

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Dunno for sure, its possibly in connection with this but Glen saw Ed being interviewed at length on stage on cameras at that AA board gig the other day. He didnt get me a setlist. Oh well.

Interviewed at the gig itself while on stage? ::blinks:: You don't mean his usual banter but a person asking questions? Was the boards asking questions?

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no there was someone onstage interviewing him. Is it a dvd they send out to the academy members maybe? Glen was interviewed too but he never said what it was for. i dunno.
Just heard how it works, all the actors vote for the nominations for best actor, camermen votefor cameramen ,effects units for effects units etc etc then the people who win that are the official nominees & then voted for by the entire academy. weird. It's ed's so. fucker.