You know when you’re having a conversation with a friend, and you bring up a subject or something you’re enthusiastic about that they’ve never heard of? Your reaction is always the same: “How have you never heard of this before?” Director and producer Denny Tedesco has done that to us with the documentary The Wrecking Crew. Magnolia Pictures is rolling out a national theatrical release for the film beginning March 13, but the project started to take shape back in 1995.
The Wrecking Crew was a group of studio musicians in Los Angeles who played on hits of the ‘60s for the Beach Boys, the Monkees, the Mamas and Papas, Sonny and Cher, Frank Sinatra, and many others, with little to no credit from music labels. The only ones who truly knew about them were the producers who kept hiring them and the musicians they were making the music for – until now. Tedesco’s documentary isn’t one of those films that tries to set the record straight, but it rather artfully and poetically shares what was taking place during the music industry at that time.
One of the ringleaders of the Wrecking Crew was Tommy Tedesco, a legendary guitarist who was diagnosed with terminal cancer decades later. His son, Denny, wanted to share his father’s story, and what he came up with is a fantastic narrative that both music and film fans should watch. You’ve probably heard Tommy Tedesco’s riffs before, but you just may not know they’re his: he created the musical themes for the TV shows Batman, Bonanza, The Twilight Zone, and so many more, before passing away in 1997. Now he and this group of musicians dubbed the Wrecking Crew finally take center stage, thanks to the efforts of Denny and others involved on the film, like cinematographer Rodney Taylor, ASC, whom we caught up with while he was working on season two of FX’s Married.”
Denny and I many years ago were crew members for IMAX, and when we started off, he was the key grip and I was the camera assistant,” Taylor recalls. “Our first film was The Ring of Fire [1991] with cinematographer Mehran Salamati, which we shot in Japan. It was an amazing experience, but I remember a drive when we had to move from one city to another – Denny and I were talking and he told me his dad was a studio musician. I love music and when I was a kid, I listened to a lot of it, so it was cool hanging out with a guy who had a dad that played guitar. We ended up finding this ‘60s radio station in Japan, and a Beach Boys song came on and Denny said, ‘That’s my dad playing.’ Then another song would come, and he would say the same thing. I thought, you’ve got to be kidding me, how many songs does your dad play on?”
Denny ended up telling Taylor the story of the Wrecking Crew, and Taylor became fascinated with it. “We worked together back then, but we became really close friends,” Taylor points out. “When Denny told me his dad was diagnosed with cancer, he said he wanted to start interviewing him right away. It’s been twenty years since our first shoot day. The idea was to get all these legendary players together in a room and just let them tell stories about the old days. We kind of stole from Gordon Willis and shot it like The Godfather, but instead, the godfathers of music.”
The documentary was a passion project for Denny, so there was no budget to speak of, but that didn’t stop him from collecting a huge crew for his initial shoot. The team ended up shooting 16mm using two cameras on dollies for the musicians’ roundtable. “Our key grip Rosie was a big guitar player and sitting in the corner of the room was Tommy’s Fender Telecaster, so I asked Denny if Rosie could play it. Denny let him and after he started strumming, I jokingly said this is your payment, [to]which he replied, ‘This is the best payment I ever got’,” laughs Taylor.
The story is a mixture of stock footage, photography, and interviews from those in-demand players: bassists Carol Kaye and Joe Osborn, drummers Earl Palmer and Hal Blaine, pianists Leo Russell, horns Don Randi and Steve Douglas, as well as musicians Cher and Brian Wilson, and producers Ray Pohlman and Lou Adler – in all, over thirty interview subjects are included in the doc. The budgetary concerns of shooting on film led Denny to switch from 16mm to digital, using a Canon XL, Panasonic 100A, and Sony’s EX1 to finish the project. “The doc could be used in a history of digital cameras,” jokes Taylor. “We begged, borrowed, and used any digital camera we could get our hands on.” One of the more challenging aspects to the production was coordinating with the musicians’ schedules. “Getting the Wrecking Crew on camera was the easy part. It was getting ahold of managers and coordinating with musicians who seemed to always be either recording or on the road. Denny really did an amazing job, and when I couldn’t make a last-minute interview, he had other people to help,” says Taylor.
When that was the case, cinematographer Trish Govoni stepped in, with additional photography from a dozen others. The same could be said for production sound, where four different mixers helped out, including Mike Reilly, Paul Marshall, Briand Bidder, and Denny’s brother, Damon Tedesco. For post, only one editor was needed in the chair, Claire Scanlon, with Bob Bronow, CAS providing the final mix.
What proved to be the most daunting task after filming was obtaining the licensing for all the music. There are over 110 different songs in the project and while record companies were supportive, it’s still a business, and people needed to get paid. It took several years of negotiating and fundraising, including a Kickstarter campaign, to pay for publishers, labels, stock footage, and the music union. Denny met with the American Federation of Musicians back in 2006, but it wasn’t until 2013 that he found out he had to pay $200,000 to be split among the contracts. “We always knew the music licensing was going to be a huge issue. They played on every hit record of the ‘60s,” Taylor notes. “The music union wouldn’t give any kind of deal, so Denny had to raise the money to get it released.”
The cinematographer admits he enjoys documentaries and telling stories with a camera. “My dad was a great storyteller. He wasn’t involved in film, but he was in the Coast Guard and a fisherman. He loved sharing stories and I loved listening to them because he could tell them so well. I’m not sure where this whole camera thing came from, but I love telling stories. Each show has its own set of challenges, but no matter what format you use, you can always tell a great story with one.”
You can catch The Wrecking Crew in select cities or find it On Demand starting March 13.
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I got to see a preview a couple years ago in San Diego when Denny was still trying to get funds together. I’m glad to say I helped with the Kickstarter funding and am anxiously awaiting a personal copy of the DVD. If you haven’t seen this film, you MUST and will smile and sing-a-long throughout the entire thing!!