Officially, Cameron Crowe made his debut as a director with 1989′s Say Anything. In reality, his very first film was Tom Petty: Heartbreakers Beach Party, a 1983 documentary that aired just once on MTV and was thought to be missing — until now.
The film, including outtakes, will air on big screens worldwide Oct. 17 and Oct. 20, including at nine North Texas movie theaters (find details at tompettyfilm.com).
Crowe, who was still a Rolling Stone feature writer at the time, describes Beach Party as “a video profile” in one of the film’s jokey meta scenes. As profiles go, it’s pretty slim compared with Peter Bogdanovich’s excellent four-hour Petty doc Runnin’ Down A Dream (2007).
Still, it’s a must-see for Petty devotees, filled with in-depth interviews, enthralling concert footage and a lost-backstage sequence that inspired the “Hello Cleveland” gag in the 1984 comedy This is Spinal Tap.
To coincide with the film, Petty’s estate is releasing an expanded version of Long After Dark (1982) on Oct. 18. The “deluxe edition” features rare live tracks, outtakes and, of course, “Heartbreakers Beach Party,” a comic surf-rock wipeout first issued as a B-side to the Dark single “Change of Heart.”
