When Billie Joe Armstrong Asks You to Make a Green Day Movie, You Don’t Say No

Even the most jaded cinephiles lamenting the plethora of movies about legacy music acts will have to reluctantly admit that “Nimrods” does something we haven’t seen before. Lee Kirk‘s new film is a tribute to Green Day and its three generations of fans that also stars the band members as themselves and makes full use of their musical catalogue. Yet it’s primarily a fictional coming-of-age story, one that’s more interested in emulating John Hughes and Cameron Crowe by capturing the misadventures of music-loving kids, rather than simply singing the praises of its subject matter.

The film follows three teenagers in a rock band who think their lives are about to change forever when their leader (Mason Thames) gets a prank call inviting them to open for Green Day on New Year’s Eve in Los Angeles. It appears to be a life-changing opportunity (at least in the eyes of anyone still young enough to have that much faith in the human race), so they scramble to drive across the country in time for the gig. Like any great road trip movie, complications ensue.

Many of the antics they get into on the road were inspired by real things that happened to Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tre Cool in their early years of touring with Green Day. Those elements combine to make “Nimrods” something truly unique: part biopic (in an indirect sort of way), part concert film, and part fictional road trip comedy. But more than anything, it’s a film about Green Day fandom and the ways that their music has shaped so many of our lives.

It was also a delicate narrative needle to thread. The initial idea belonged to Armstrong, who then brought in his close friend and frequent collaborator Kirk, who had previously directed him in the 2016 film “Ordinary World.” During a recent conversation with IndieWire, the two men explained the creative process that led them to a movie that you couldn’t make about any other band.

‘Nimrods’

“It started when I saw the movie ‘200 Cigarettes.’ It’s a nostalgia movie about all these people coming together on New Year’s Eve in New York City,” Armstrong said, referring to Risa Bramon Garcia’s 1999 ensemble comedy. “And I thought, ‘Man, wouldn’t it be cool to do a New Year’s Eve movie with Green Day?’ And then I text Lee, talked to Lee, and we just started getting the ball rolling from there.”

Kirk quickly realized that his biggest challenge would be designing something that could appeal to multiple generations of Green Day fans. The band occupies a place in modern music history that’s largely unique to them: they’re old and prolific enough to be considered a classic rock act, but contemporary enough that many of you probably winced at that phrasing. Every new generation of teenagers falls in love with their music, and their concert audiences often contain as many high schoolers as original fans who are now old enough to be grandparents.

“I was like, how do I make a movie for these generations of fans? Even though it’s teenage kids in the movie, it’s really a movie for their generations of fans,” Kirk said. “When you go to a concert, you see everybody from 15 to 55 singing and dancing. So that was the challenge, how to make a movie for all of them.”

Therein lies the brilliance of the “Nimrods” formula. The film places its Gen-Z ensemble front and center, but builds its plot around the largely analogue adventures of Green Day in the early ‘90s, allowing it to be nostalgic enough for anyone who lived through those years. Kirk made a point to fill his mis en scene with anachronistic technology items like old tape recorders and pay phones — and having access to all of Green Day’s music certainly didn’t hurt.

“Writing the film was an absolute blast because I knew I had the entire catalog. And I like to write with music, but usually when I’m writing with music, it’s not music that’s going to end up in the movie,” Kirk said. “Probably about 80 percent of the songs that are in the movie were in the movie when I wrote the script. And so it was an embarrassment of riches for me to have that. And so then I thought, well, what are different ways I can use the music in the movie? Sometimes it’s score, sometimes it’s performed, sometimes the characters actually will be singing the song and just finding fun ways to use it and also use music that covers their entire breadth of music. So it’s not just hits, but it’s a lot of deep cuts and hidden gems in there.”

‘Nimrods’Courtesy of Inaugural Entertainment

Everything builds towards the fateful New Year’s Eve concert at the Hollywood Palladium. Much like in “200 Cigarettes,” the entire ensemble comes together and misunderstandings are resolved. But unlike “200 Cigarettes,” you also get to watch a real Green Day concert. The production assembled thousands of fans as extras who were essentially gifted a free Green Day show at a smaller venue than the band usually plays.

“It felt like a real gig because we had real fans that were in there and we played almost like a whole set. And so it was really fun,” Armstrong said. “And the Palladium, we’ve been playing there since we opened up for Bad Religion there in 1993. So everything coming full circle into this movie, it was great.”

Movies and rock and roll are both relatively new art forms that keep surviving despite each generation being ready to declare them dead. Kirk and Armstrong both cited “Nimrods” as a project designed to keep the flame of both rock music and classic comedies burning. But it also became an acknowledgement of the fact that these mediums prevail because kids like them, and every generation manages to embrace them with a youthful vigor that manages to cut through their parents’ ennui. That’s why Green Day continues to sell out stadiums, and why the band’s popularity seems unlikely to wane anytime soon.

“Ultimately, I feel like if I’ve done my job, if after the movie ends, a kid turns to their parents and says, ‘Can I get a guitar?’ That would be pretty sick,” Kirk said. “But the personal part of the movie for me was I have kids and they’re not like me. They’re not doom scrolling all the time. You know what I mean? They’re planning their lives. They have hopes and dreams, and they’re thinking about what they’re going to do with their lives. And I wanted to make a movie that just reflected that, that there’s a generation of kids coming up that have plans and hopes and dreams, and I want them to walk away from the movie feeling inspired by that.”

An Inaugural Entertainment release, “Nimrods” opens in theaters on Friday, August 14.