A new music series produced by Gunpowder & Sky and Audible, “Words + Music,” will premiere on MGM+ this fall, with episodes featuring Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow, John Legend and Alanis Morissette sharing some of their most personal songs and the stories behind them in front of big screens illustrating those tales.
The series, recently filmed in front of small live audiences on Amazon MGM Studios’ volume stage in Culver City, will premiere on MGM+ Nov. 30. It’s a natural outgrowth of the celebrated “Words + Music” podcast that Gunpowder & Sky has done with Audible over the last few years, in which some of the greatest recording of all time shared semi-longform narratives of their choosing.
Backstage at a recent filming of Costello’s episode, Gunpowder & Sky CEO Van Toffler told Variety about the vision for the series. It’s hardly Toffler’s only going concern at the moment, as he is also returning to his old stomping grounds, MTV, to produce the upcoming Video Music Awards. But “Words + Music” is clearly holding a special place in his heart.
“We had no intention of doing a TV series when we were starting the podcast, which we just thought was a wonderful way to tell stories and hear new versions of these songs for the podcast,” Toffler said. “And then technology really kind of pushed us to do this for TV, because these volume stages is where they shoot so many huge movies, and it allows you to find new ways to visually represent the stories. With Elvis, we have his artwork as well as images from his childhood or places in his life represented behind him, and we can go back and forth between the story and the band. So it’s sort of a combination of ‘Unplugged’ and a movie.”
Toffler, the former president of MTV Networks, points out that as partners on this new show, he has Alex Alex Coletti — who did Costello’s “MTV Unplugged” more than 30 years ago — and Bill Flanagan, a creator of VH1’s “Storytellers” and CMT’s “Crossroads,” with plenty of decades of collective experience in combining music and words before that was the actual name of a series.
Says Flanagan, “You know, it’s 25 years later, so the technology offers us opportunities to tell stories in kind of a three-dimensional way, and that’s the main difference. I mean, the ‘Storytellers’ format was kind of old when we started, in the sense of there were always folk singers who sat on stools and told stories, and it’s been around as long as music has been around, I suppose, when cavemen sat around a campfire and told stories” alongside whatever campfire music might’ve sounded like at the time. “But the screens definitely set this apart. As Elvis said, ‘The show is called “Words + Music,” but we’re gonna do words and music and pictures.’”
With the Costello taping about to start, Flanagan was bullish on the audio-visual history that the singer-songwriter himself brings to the show. “Elvis did the first ‘CMT Crossroads,’ with Lucinda Williams,” Flanagan pointed out. “And Elvis was the second “VH1 Storytellers’,’ after Ray Davies did the first one’ — he came to the first one, which was Ray Davies, and checked it out and said, ‘Yeah, I can do this.’ So he’s very dependable, and someone you can count on when you’re trying to sell a new project. He has a unique way of using the screens, which is he happened to have a hundred paintings that he had done, along with using photographs and other footage. When he comes to the party, he’s a full collaborator.”
On the strictly technical front, Gunpowder & Sky says that the filming on Culver Studios’ Stage 15 features a 79′ x 80′ LED volume with a 26-foot ceiling and a 74-foot scenic deck, an immersive virtual production environment powered by 105 motion-capture cameras, and ROE BP2 LED panels.
So it’s a bit more grandiose than the podcast that had the same name, which offered the intimate speaking (and singing) voices of stars from Pete Townshend to Mariah Carey to St. Vincent to Snoop Dogg.
Says Toffler, “The great thing about this series is, just like with the ‘Words + Music’ podcast, there’s a loose format, but ultimately it’s customized for each artist’s vision. And also their own artwork. With Sheryl, who we taped first, I’d done a documentary with her, so we already had so many photos from her childhood. But Elvis decided to give us his original art. And he’s one of the greatest raconteurs of our lifetime, and also the lyrics of his songs are so vivid. You know, musicians, songwriters, they’re super humans. They can express what we all feel so much better than the rest of us humans can. And the reason why I’ve been around music my whole life is the way that music scores our lives… our heartbreaks and our elation. And Elvis’ songs are so vivid that he’s perfect for the format.”
Gunpowder & Sky has spend the last decade indulging in unusual ideas as well as more traditional ones. “When I left MTV about 10 years ago and started this company,” says Toffler, “it’s no coincidence that I ended up telling stories around music and weaving music into almost everything we do, from virtually bringing Biggie back to life — because he never died, he lives on in the virtual world — to a Sabrina Carpenter concert in VR, to telling stories through animation. The first thing we did at the studio was ‘Drawn and Recorded’ with T Bone Burnett, telling stories from Merle Haggard breaking into a diner that he thought was a bank because he was drunk to ODB saving a child’s life.” At present, their documentaries division “is working on a Jim Morrison doc now, and a Jessica Simpson doc, and one about MySpace. We always find inventive ways to tell stories around music, or have music underscore our stories. So, I’ll try anything once, and this is definitely novel, this series.”
Will there be further seasons? “I’d love to be telling more stories, and hopefully MGM will let me do that.” HIs wish list is long: “I have them in my head. We talk to musicians all the time and they’re looking for new ways to present their music.”
In the meantime, Audible and Gunpowder & Sky have “Words + Movies” as a podcast series in the tradition of the original “Words + Music” audio-only show.
In that series, filmmakers “tell stories and we integrate their film clips or music that influence them or films that aren’t their own that Influenced them. Ron Howard talks the transition from a child actor to a director and directing Bette Davis for the first time. Cameron talks about ‘Fast Times’ and ‘Jerry McGuire’ and all the great movies he did, and Richard Linklater also talks about how he uses music — it’s so integral to him being from Texas. And Natasha Lyonne is doing hers in character. It’s another different way of telling stories.” It’s not yet in the cards, but he would love to see this become a TV production as well. “I don’t know if they’ll allow me to present that visually, but you can imagine putting those movies behind them on a stage like this; it would be magnificent.”
“Words + Music” is part of a deal between Audible and Amazon MGM Studios to develop projects inspired by Audible’s content library, led by Audible’s head of TV and film, Jackie Levine. Besides this series, MGM+ also recently acquired author Michael Connelly’s “The Wonderland Murders & the Secret History of Hollywood,” developed from the Audible podcast of the same name.
Imminent for Toffler, of course, as production on “Words + Music” has wound down, is his return to being at the helm of the VMAs, this time as an outside producer, after a big break following his nearly 30 years with MTV.
Doing at least double-duty at the moment, he says, “I did not plan on being in production nonstop, even on the weekends. I’ve been dragged back into the Video Music Awards on Sept. 7 and, hopefully, there will be some mayhem.”
