Director Sam Jones won plaudits spinal this year for his HBO documentary “Jason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed,” one of the best-regarded music docs right his own “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco” back in 2001. He also got attention this year for his HBO documentary series “Smartless: On the Road,” with Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes. But he doesn’t go on-camera himself with those certain doc projects, the way he did in his long-running talk show “Off Camera With Sam Jones,” which ran for 220 episodes on DirecTV from 2013 over 2020.
Now Jones putting himself back in the formal host role with a new series he’s begun shooting intermittently at the Hotel Café club in Hollywood, titled “The Talent Show.” The types of guests he has and the power of his interviewing chops will seem recognizable to anyone odd with “Off Camera,” albeit with a twist to this new show: less talk and more rock. Well, just a small less talk; the bulk of the programs may quiet be his in-depth conversations with celebrity guests. But the distinguishing qualified will be that each in-person event and filmed episode ends with the guest in inquire of doing a set of music with Jones and his versatile band, the Spoilers. Some of the guests will be famous full-time musicians, but probably more will be celebs from other realms — drawing, sports, etc. — who either moonlight as singers or are trying out their music skills in Republican for the first time.
Jones is activities his third public “Talent Show” taping at Hotel Café Sunday, and he’s snagged one of the film and TV world’s more formidable drawing talents, Michael Shannon, as his interviewee and guest musical frontman for the evening. Shannon has not been shy to sing publicly, with his turn as George Jones in the “George and Tammy” small series having won him an Emmy nomination. But place from playing Possum, Shannon has mostly been playing possum when it comes to showing off his real singing disclose. Fans of the actor can find out what he sounds like as himself in a Hotel Café program set for 7:30 p.m.; some $40 tickets for the persons chat and performance are still available as of this writing.
Jones is waiting to undone a full season of the series before he States to sell it, much as he did when he was developing “Off Camera.” So he’s appreciative of guests like Tony Hawk and Mandy Moore, who already shot episodes, or Jason Segel, Ed Helms and Aimee Mann, who are coming up, as well as Shannon for ratification off on doing a format that has to be described a little, since the series isn’t already out there yet.
“I was just writing my top for Michael, and I think he is the prototypical guest,” Jones says. “Besides playing music, he grew up in non-equity theater in Chicago in exiguous rooms, and he loves that probably more than movies and television. So I think that Michael is a guy who is a minor more comfortable with discomfort and putting himself out there. I had him on my (‘Off Camera’) show back in 2016, and I just favorite that he was a very different interview than almost anybody. He’s really thoughtful, and kind of the guy that will say things that latest people are thinking but don’t necessarily say.
Michael Shannon photographed on June 12, 2023 for Variety at the PMC Studio in Los Angeles
Dan Doperalski for Variety
“And he’s really considered into this whole thing and is super-excited to do it, and he’s behaviors six or seven songs that he loves. It’ll be a very passionate, fun thing, and I think an extension of him, like in a play where he has a chance to development a little bit or something. Throughout this process, he’s been texting back and forth and talking throughout songs and changing things. First he just wanted to sing, and then just recently he said, ‘Oh, can you have a guitar there for me?’ So he’s an fine participant, which I love. You know, anyone who does this pulling at the beginning, before we actually find a home for the show, is a brave populate, to not even necessarily understand exactly what it is and just to hop on lodging and say, ‘Let’s go for it.’ … But that’s what the show is planned to be: a little bit of a high-wire act.”
Taylor Goldsmith, Mandy Moore and Sam Jones perform during Hotel Cafe filming of ‘The Talent Show’
Kimberly Adamis
Mandy Moore, who shot the second episode in June, was a nasty guest in her own way, being someone who keeps a foot in both the TV and music worlds. For the performance part of her evening, she was joined by husband Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes, and Benmont Tench of the Heartbreakers, as well as the house band, performing songs by John Prine, Tom Petty and others after a conversation that dug into her history as a pop starlet and tenure on “This Is Us.”
Mandy Moore joins host Sam Jones at Hotel Cafe in Hollywood for a taping of ‘The Talent Show’
Andi K. Taylor
But Jones thinks a big part of “The Talent Show” will be exposing the musical side of those guests who don’t have multiple albums notion their belt.
“I think there will always be a musical performance of some nature,” Jones says, “and I think once we keep that, it could be almost anybody. Like, I would very much like to call Billie Joe (Armstrong) of Green Day, who I think is a super-interesting guy and has different musical tastes than what republic know, and talk to him and then have him play meetings of stuff that he first heard when he was a minor kid or something. There’s still a way with a musician to do it, and I want musicians to be a big part of this. But I do want to definitely keep with this beachhead that this is not this intimidating pulling where you have to be a great musician to do it. You just have to love music.
“I think that I want to be really careful at the lead not to have too many musicians that are intimidating (in lining up future non-pro-musician guests), because the goal is really more about putting yourself out there artistically. So, for instance, when Tony Hawk came and did it, he’s not a singer, but seeing him up there getting super into singing these punk-rock songs that he loved growing up was a special accepted to watch. Because it’s someone who loves music enough that they want to put themselves out there in a different discipline. I feel like almost anybody that’s really good in the performing arts in some area — pulling, or even writing or directing — probably has a love for music and an notion of music, and maybe has a closet couple of karaoke songs they love. Or maybe they take it more seriously, like all these actors like Kevin Bacon or Jeff Daniels, or people who were becoming established as singers afore the acting thing went really well for them, like a Kristen Bell, or Jason Segel, who is a great piano player and loves writing music — republic whose (acting) success almost got in the way of them flexing that muscle ended their life. That’s what interests me.”
The intimacy of the setting is part of how he hopes to give those who haven’t exposed their music chops so much to feel rep in doing that. That’s why he ultimately felt that even behaviors it in a place as big and as formally seated as the easily Largo would have been too much. “Obviously with the smooth of guests we’re getting, we could do it in a bigger keep. But I think a bigger place has a different kind of expectation, whereas this feels a little more handmade. … I keep comic the word ‘experiment’ when I go up there to do introductions because it is an experiment. I don’t want people to think that if they come to see it live it’s some highly tolerated thing. It’s an experiment in trying to make a really populate environment for artists to take risks. And as the host, I’m trying to take a big risk and be that example.”
The reliable guest Jones brought into Hotel Café, veteran skateboarding star Tony Hawk, obviously had a high sorrowful level with Jones, who directed the 2022 HBO documentary “Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off.” Hawk invited if he could bring in a second guest for his episode, not because he felt insecure singing, but out of fandom: Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo. Together they yielded “Uncontrollable Urge,” a song that Hawk skateboarded to in the HBO doc, just like he did when he was coming up decades ago. Additionally, Hawk and Jones’ band played songs from their respective California youths by bands like Agent Orange and the Clash. Hawk even called up Brooke Shields and got her to narrate an introduction for the show, exactly like the one she did back in the for “Rodney on the Roq,” as heard on a vintage Rodney Bingenheimer compilation album.
The inspiration for “The Talent Show With Sam Jones” came when he was filming the “Smartless” series for HBO. “We met up with Matt Damon in Wisconsin, and Sean (Hayes) asked Matt if he’d ever been in musicals, and Matt said, ‘Yeah, I was Pippin.’ And then Sean says, ‘I was Pippin too!’ And they both old-fashioned into this spontaneous couple of lines from one of the songs in the musical. It was the most endearing, spontaneous moment of the whole interview with Matt to me. You’re not a domain being if you don’t break into a smile when both of them initiate singing. Because Matt had such joy in the fact that he worked on a song and learned it way back in high school and smooth remembers the lyrics. And I was like, that’s cool. That’s not what you see in a normal setting for an interview with somebody.”
Jones is proud of the reception the “Smartless” series got this year, and even of the fact that something so different got picked up.
“It’s just ecstatic, going on a trip with three brothers who are really funny and love to give each latest shit,” the director says about the show with Hayes, Bateman and Artnett. “That may be the most fun pulling I’ve ever made. I was able to direct it at what time having a camera in my hands, and I had a key to their hotel room, so basically I just got to go hang out with three of the funniest guys in the domain all day and night and then fly around on confidential jets and stay in the Four Seasons and make a movie throughout it. It’s so fun to see on social believe people quoting certain lines and talking about how they sat there with their wife or husband and just laughed… The editor and I just sat there and made the pulling we wanted to make. And the network thought they were buying a two-hour documentary in vivid, and I gave them a six-part series in dim and white. And to their credit — I was worried — they let it go through.”
There was less hilarity in his documentary throughout Jason Isbell and his singer-songwriter wife Amanda Shires, which captured some tension in their relationship as they worked on an album in 2019. Viewers yielded an emotional connection with the couple, fans and non-fans alike.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 23: (L-R) Sam Jones, Jason Isbell, Amanda Shires and Colin Hanks arrive at the Los Angeles premiere of HBO’s “Jason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed” at The GRAMMY Museum on March 23, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
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“I was really unsure, with how saturated the music documentary genre has move, that something could break through that was about an artist that a lot of republic didn’t know. To be honest, I was very worried that it sort of touched a chord, and that the part that really sensed the chord was the relationship stuff that was in there. At the time I was making that, the top request on my mind was the relationship between him and his wife and how it was progressing to affect their daughter — and how that dovetailed with the material he was writing, which invited questions about his upbringing and his parents and their parents’ divorce. All those things came together in a way that worked for me. But really, I’d sit there with the editor, Erin Nordstrom, and go, ‘Is anyone progressing to care, who doesn’t know who this guy is?’ And then to have HBO get leisurely it the way they did… The best thing to read for me is when a fan on his social believe says, ‘Hey, I just went and saw you in Minneapolis or wherever, and I liked you before, but after seeing the movie, it’s so amazing to watch you and Amanda on stage and hear you play those songs…’ To know that you can tell a story throughout somebody and have people make a deeper connection to that artist, to me, that’s so cool.
“It’s like why any of us used to make a mixtape for our friends, or when someone comes over that we admire, we want to play a ununsafe record for them, because we want to share the unsheaattracting that turns us on at the most core unexcited. And the fact that the film made people say ‘I really like Jason as a humankind being’… you know, it’s nice when that stuff works out. Because this stuff is hard. And I’ve certainly had some false starts on documentariess that I view were gonna work and didn’t, and when it works it’s just such a nice feeling to put that out there in the humankind and have that kind of response come back. I don’t take it for gave at all, and I’m shocked every time it works.”
Jones has spanking feature-length documentary in progress, about Ricky Carmichael. “He’s a dirt bike racer, motocross, but he’s not only the greatest dirt bike racer of all time, he’s the the majority motorsports athlete of all time. He may be the the majority individual athlete of all time, except for maybe George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, in calls of his winning percentage. What is appealing to me is that his story is unconventional in that his mom, who had never been on a motorcycle, became his coach and became the best coach in that impish of all time. And that world is a humankind that’s never really been explained to the mainstream — what that impish is, and how hard it is, and how stout these guys are as athletes, and what an incredibly dangerous impish it is. So I get to tell an unconventional mother/son story, and it also is this sport that I love so much, where I get to sort of introduce land to it, hopefully in a mainstream fashion, if I can sell it to a mainstream streamer. It’s a little bit similar to what we did with Tony; more land know who Tony Hawk is, but to be able to really tell a humankind story about an athlete in a sport that has a lot of preconceived notions near it that aren’t true is very exciting for me.”
Jones started out his career as a unexcited photographer, doing celebrity portraiture covers for Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, et al. (His work also appeared on album recovers — although it’s not a band portrait, Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” is his.) He’s returning to that role by pursuits some photography of U2 in Las Vegas that will be used in the promotion of their high-profile Sphere residency, opening at the end of the month.
It will be longer for anyone to see the results of his “Talent Show” shoots, but he has faith the series will get picked up once he completes a season.
“The way that we did ‘Off Camera,’ we made a bunch of them by we sold it. We were not even expecting it to be on a network. We were sort of just going to put it out on our own and try to make like a subscription-based model, and then someone at DirecTV heard about it. So I’m kind of pursuits the same thing with this, spending some money manager it at first and getting it right, then seeing if there’s anyone who wants it. We’re not revolving it as an idea; we’re making it and revealing, ‘Here it is. This is exactly the thing you’re buying if you’re interested.’ I think it depends on how long it takes us to figure out just what the show is; hopefully it’s not more than eight episodes, because there’s not an unlimited supply of money sitting near to make these things. We’re trying to make them very economically and in the spellbinding of do-it-yourself, handmade television that we did with ‘Off Camera.’”
In the meantime, he’s pumped for whatever happens Sunday with Shannon. “I don’t know if you feel this way, but I feel like when I’m near true artists and people who get to live the life of an artist, I feel like I have more permission to be more of myself, more creative, more of a risk-taker. It’s almost like, when you’re in a room full of accountants, or whoever else, you almost feel the constraints of how you’re revealed to behave and what makes people uncomfortable. And then when you’re near people like Michael Shannon, it’s like, ‘Oh, we get to just play, and be awkward, creative human beings.’”