FAST TIMES ON SUNSET STRIP

EVGENIA PERETZ

This fall, seven young movie actors will reincarnate the dreamy, druggy rock scene of 1972 Los Angeles, thanks to veteran producer Art Linson, who handed the making of Sunset Strip over to a new wave of talent

The Coming Attraction

Just when you thought you’d seen the last flicker of Hollywood’s homage to the lava-lamp decade, here comes Sunset Strip, a raucous trip back to L.A.’s unbridled rock scene of 1972 —and to the dreamers, drummers, groupies, and snakes who swirled within it. The film, scheduled to open this fall, is the brainchild of producer Art Linson (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Heat, and the upcoming Pushing Tin and Fight Club). It follows the picaresque, often pathetic adventures of seven young artists and musicians (played by Simon Baker, Jared Leto, Anna Friel, Rory Cochrane, Nick Stahl, Tommy Flanagan, and Adam Goldberg) in their intersecting quests for love, glory, and high times on a single day. A flesh-and-bong version of American Graffiti, Sunset Strip asks the question “Where were you in ’72?”

In Linson’s case, he was assisting record producer Lou Adler and John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. Which made him a resident expert on the “time when people just said yes”— and on the hangouts, such as Whisky a Go Go and Canter’s, that provide the film’s backdrops. But to ensure that Sunset Strip didn’t become a personal exercise in nostalgia, Linson handed his baby over to a group of newcomers, who either were not around in 1972 or spent it in diapers. His 29-year-old son, John Linson, served as co-producer, and under first-time director Adam Collis, 31, the cast members improvised daily, stamping Sunset Strip with their own idiosyncrasies and 90s “issues.” Jared Leto, playing a megalomaniacal guitarist, imagined himself a mixture of “Gregg Allman and Don Henley, with a little Ted Nugent thrown in.” Anna Friel, who plays a costume designer to rock stars, taught herself how to sew and requested personal mood music during filming—Natalie Merchant, in her case. And Adam Goldberg, for his role as music manager Marty Shapiro, lived out every Jewish homeboy’s fantasy by getting to say, “Come on, nigger—that’s righteous/” But as the photograph shown here attests, it was, Goldberg admits, “pretty worth it just to have the Afro.”