Green Day Biopic May Have To Wait, Says Tré Cool

It’s 10am in California and Green Day drummer Tré Cool is making his coffee and about to drill down with NME into Nimrods, the new feature film comedy inspired by the band. “One second,” he says. “Sorry, there’s a fight on the street here. You know, it’s America. They’re always fighting in the streets.” His interest is piqued by an altercation outside his window. “Oh, that guy just hit the other guy in the face. Oh, now Grandma just got involved… slamming with her purse. Oh boy, you never know what you’re gonna get.”

It’s the sort of everyday roughhousing you might find in Nimrods: A Green Day Comedy, to give it its full title. Don’t expect a typical biopic here – one that might show the band forged in the late-’80s Bay Area punk scene, releasing debut album ‘Dookie’ in 1994 – or, for that matter, winning five Grammys and selling a staggering 75million records. Rather, Nimrods comes inspired by the early, scrappy adventures of Cool, bassist Mike Dirnt and lead guitarist/vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong.

From an idea originally formulated by Armstrong, Nimrods is a wild coming-of-age road movie, as a trio of teenagers – Tommy (Mason Thames), Fred (Kylr Coffman) and Chad (Ryan Foust) – are pranked into heading to LA under the belief that their band Analog Dogs is about to open for Green Day. Cool and his bandmates fed director Lee Kirk anecdotes from their pre-‘Dookie’ days. “It’s not a mirror image but is it is definitely a fuzzy reflection of us,” says Cool. “We’re a part of these kids, and they’re a part of us.”

With the band even cameoing (at an in-store that Tommy and co. crash), it’s really a love letter to their legions of fans. “I mean, we love them, and I guess it is a special relationship we have with them,” says Cool, 53. “I’ve been to shows and seen other bands’ fans and it’s not that our fans are crazier or better looking… which they are, very much so! But they’re so cross generational. There’s different age groups of fans. We’re their band and it’s a part of a culture of misfits that belong together.”

What sort of stories did you tell Lee Kirk as he was preparing Nimrods?

“A lot of them were cooked into the script. Like the severed head… that actually happened. We stayed at this guy’s house, and he’s like, ‘Yeah, I want you to meet my friend Sleepy.’ We’re in Copenhagen. And he pulls his frickin’ human head in a jar out of his closet. He’s like, ‘You can’t tell anyone I have this!’ And we’re like, ‘Holy fuck!’ And then he set it down, and we were all sleeping on the floor next to this head. It was pretty scary.”

Would you say you were particularly wild in your younger days?

“Yeah, I would say. I mean, that’s what people would say about us. We were just us. There was no barometer because we were just this traveling pack of banshees that just behaved in our way, and we just did our thing, and we didn’t realise that other people weren’t like us, I guess. We were just all batshit crazy, and we gravitated to other people that were similar, other bands and creatives and stuff. So it becomes a scene at that point. I guess you call it wild in comparison to some other people.”

Was there a debate about which Green Day songs to include in the film?

“We stayed away from that. We let Lee and company handle that because… he’s writing the movie. He should know what the right mood is – and he sure did. And it was a surprise to us when we first saw the screening when the songs came on. There’s a demo version of ‘In the End’… it’s from an old, unreleased demo. And then ‘Haushinka’ being played… that’s awesome. Hearing that song in like a Dolby 7.1 sound system in a theatre, it’s pretty amazing.”

Had you ever had a proper Green Day biopic proposed before?

“Yeah. It happens every so often. Every couple of eras, someone’s like: ‘We should make a film about your life.’ Like, we ain’t done yet. We don’t want to sit and look back and spin our wheels, spending our energy talking about what we’ve done when we’re still doing stuff.”

Do you feel that Nimrods, with its DIY punk spirit, suits the ethos of the band?

“Absolutely. It’s a relevant movie, and we feel like we’re a very relevant band – and, like I said, we’re not done by any means. So, a biopic story is more of a retirement plan. We’ll do that when we’re actually old and we’re doing our residencies in Las Vegas or something… that’s probably a good time to do it.”

Are you guys planning some more music? Where are you at now with the next album?

“I’m not going to tell you that!”

There was talk of your rock opera ‘American Idiot’ being turned into a movie. Has that talk gone away or could it come back?

“I think it’s probably more talk now that Nimrods is such a hit. It’s great. We’ve shown that we can make records – and apparently we can make movies too. So, let’s do it. We make musicals. We can make ‘Dookie’… every morning!”

‘American Idiot’ particularly feels like it’s built for the big screen, right?

“Yeah, just got to do the right [thing]. Come on, we just put out Nimrods! You’re trying to make us make another movie! That’s like as soon as you put a new record out, two weeks later… ‘Oh, you guys gonna go back in the studio?’ Well, look, I’ll tell you this: we’re very proud of ‘American Idiot’, and it’s an incredibly important record to us – and we’re not not talking about it!”

One thing the band hasn’t done is headline Glastonbury. Would you love to do that?

“Yeah. If they ask us. It’s the last great festival that we haven’t done.”

Did you ever get close?

“I just go with what’s on the day sheet! They’re not really calling the drummer!”

‘Nimrods: A Green Day Comedy’ is in UK cinemas now