WELCOME TO TOFOGSWORLD!
Home of the Unofficial Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts Fan Site
|
 Austin TX Stubbs BBQ 2000
|
`Gladiator' gone from many screens, but hardly forgotten
By DAWN DIXON COTTER
Special To The Observer
10-01-2000
I savor the special moments in my life: college graduation, marriage, the birth of my daughter, the day I spoke with Russell Crowe!
It all began with a movie last May. And June. And July, August, September.
The ritual
"One for `Gladiator,'" I say for the 39th time since the opening of the Roman epic starring His Aussie Blokeness. I grab the ticket and dash to the concession stand for the next part of my ritual.
"A medium buttered popcorn and Diet Coke, please." The teen counter boy, his face pierced and studded, shuffles in slow-mo. I tell myself to stay calm. A 40-something woman who's seen a movie a gazillion times can afford to miss the first scene - the Battle of Vindobona, the best part!
Counter boy hands me change; I spare his life. I snatch some napkins and march off to the darkened den of stadium seating, muttering "Maximus" under my breath.
Yes, Maximus. Or is it Russell? I'm obsessed. But it's OK - I can quit anytime.
I'm a functioning financial editor by day and a screenwriter by night. As a wife and mother, I cook and clean on a tree-lined street in a house Martha Stewart would be proud of.
And yet And yet
The obsession
My husband stows his golf bag in the trunk of his car as I'm getting into mine.
"Where you going?" he asks.
"Movies," I mutter.
"Not `Gladiator' again. You're obsessed."
"Bye! I'll be in Rome for the rest of the afternoon."
When I arrive at the theater, Marsha (who's too embarrassed to use her real name here) greets me. She's 40 and is a public relations executive in Charlotte.
Marsha has seen Gladiator 10 times - three times with me - and collects the Oz man's other movies. She went cold turkey off Crowe for awhile. She stopped traipsing to theaters, deleted Crowe bookmarks from her computer, trash-canned the cyber-folder filled with stories from 50-plus fan Web sites and megabytes of gossip about Meg Ryan/Russell Crowe sightings.
A week later, she went back to "Gladiator" to drool over Russell's muscles on the pretense of enjoying the special effects, not ogling the Thighmaster in every scene.
Crowe's loyal legions cross ages, races and socioeconomic strata. Women on the verge of a Russell breakdown are addicted to Hollywood's golden-male image: masculine, capable and sexy, like Bogart, Gable or Wayne. They're flawed but good-hearted men who get things done, no whining. Witness Crowe as Bud White in "L.A. Confidential" or Cort in "The Quick and the Dead."
I agree with Montreal Gazette writer Lisa Fitterman, who says sensitive New Age guys (SNAGs) are not what women want: "I am beyond hot. I want heat. I want Russell Crowe."
Give us take-charge heroes who can take care of us. I envy the June Cleavers of generations past, who weren't expected to bring home the bacon and cook it, too.
"All we do is juggle," says my friend Cindy, a fellow Crowe-caine who is a married loan officer and mother of two in Houston. "The rules governing behavior between the sexes are confusing. Yes, women have it all now, but we have to do it all, too. I get tired just thinking about it."
Crowe-ing has given us new life.
The band
Cindy and I rendezvous in Austin, Texas, seeking 3-D Russell. To worship Crowe, you must know the music he creates with his band, Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts, TOFOG or the Grunts.
The band was in Austin in August to record a new album, "Bastard Life or Clarity," and while there, they rocked three consecutive Friday nights at Stubb's Bar-B-Q. It's dusty, musty and Texas-cute, with a big awning-thingy over the stage and no seating.
Yes! We could get up close!
Before tickets went on sale, Stubb's got 200-300 calls a day from all over the world. The 6,600 tickets sold out in 90 minutes.
Cindy and I fold into line one Friday at 11a.m., some fans having camped out since 5:30a.m. We broil in 100-degree heat for nine hours and bond with our fellow Russell-holics. Some get treated for dehydration by emergency services. Others glug water, fan with cardboard and relay back and forth to the shade.
At 8p.m., the whole salty, disheveled hive of us swarms toward the stage like the busy little bees we are - and waits another two hours. A string quartet plays too-lovely music. An Australian comic runs a balloon through his nose and pulls it out his mouth. Cindy plops herself down onto the gravel, mouth turned down at the corners.
When Maximus, I mean Russell, finally appears, all hell breaks loose.
Russell courts us with "How the f*&% are you, Austin?" He launches into a husky version of "The Legend of Barry Kable," all hyper swivel, passion and sweat, as captivating as the thin Elvis.
I examine the baseball cap I bought for Russell: Dark blue with white embroidery, "NC Tarheels."
My arm goes up, waving the hat. Women throw lingerie that he doesn't touch. My arm goes up again. "For God's sake," says Cindy, tired of my elbow against her nose, "throw the d--- thing!" We throw it together.
Russell walks to the front of the stage and sees my hat. He picks it up and reads into the mike, "Nawth Caro-loina Tah-heels," then looks down to find the giver.
I would kill for lipstick at this moment. I wave - it's me, me, ME. He smiles, then sniffs the inside of the cap.
"You've wawn this," he teases.
No, no, no, I shake my head like a rag doll.
"Are you shu-ah?" Blue eyes twinkle.
Oh, to be cool like Lucilla in Gladiator and say, "Rich matrons pay well to be pleasured by the bravest champions." Instead, I squeal, "No, I haven't worn it, I swear. I bought it just for you!"
"You bought it just faw me?" So gracious. "Thank you."
Gaaah! I turn to stone. Thank goodness for the crowd - no way for me to crumple to the ground.
The horde
So are we just groupies? Freaks?
No, we're ordinary people with jobs, husbands and children - but maybe a touch more of the giddy-headed enthusiasm that keeps life interesting.
Because family and friends get terribly vexed with the whole thing, though, we have to turn to our online support groups: Maximum Russell Crowe, the Barbarian Horde, the Crowe's Perch, Russell Something to Crowe About, Russell Crowe Heaven and Russell Crowe Eye Candy, just to name a few. (If curious, try www.maximumcrowe.com.)
In cyberspace, sisters worldwide give us up-to-the-minute reports on what Maximus, I mean Russell, is doing. In a network the CIA would envy, Crowegirls out-scoop newspapers and magazines by hours, days, weeks.
Only a couple of hours after the July TOFOG concert in London, Harriet (from Liverpool) sleepily logged onto Russell Something to Crowe About to say she'd seen Meg Ryan at the concert, looking all happy and possessive. Grrrr!
"He finally stripped off the black long-sleeved shirt to reveal a black singlet (Brit for tank top)," she says in her concert posting. "It's tosh about him putting on a few pounds. Hmmmm. Those arms! And those bloody eyes of his are amazing had me rooted to the spot, unable to utter a word. Soooooo blue! You see them in the films and you know they're nice, but Omigod, in real life, they are just to die for!"
It's not just lust, you know.
We also ponder intellectual things, like the role of Big Tobacco in "The Insider" or the protagonist's struggle in "Gladiator" or Russell's chameleonlike acting ability. Or, well, just who is he sleeping with, anyway?
The next phase
I'm disconsolate these days, riffling through the movie section of the newspaper. "Gladiator" disappeared from Charlotte theaters a few weeks ago.
As a Maximus junkie, I've absorbed the depressing shock that I might never see the epic on the Big Screen again.
Is that all there is?
No! There's the DVD edition due out Nov.21.
I've already ordered mine. And believe me: I'm not the only one.
This Russell Crowe fantasy may end one day. But not yet. Not yet.
Dawn Dixon Cotter makes a living working for First Union but dreams of working for Hollywood.
Cotter "Crowe's loyal legions cross ages, races and socioeconomic strata. Women on the verge of a Russell breakdown are addicted to Hollywood's golden-male image: masculine, capable and sexy, like Bogart, Gable or Wayne." ________________________________________________________________________________________
Interview With Actor Russell Crowe
Austin Confidential
by Marc Savlov
It's 8am, and Australian actor Russell Crowe has lost his beloved leather jacket somewhere in Austin. His outbound flight back to Los Angeles is scheduled to leave in a matter of hours, and during the past couple of days, while in town for the Austin premiere of his new film Breaking Up at the Austin Film Festival, the leather has vanished. While his publicist frantically places phone calls to the various radio and television outlets he's visited to track down the missing garment, Crowe saunters into the Four Seasons suite, grabs a quick coffee, and immediately pulls out a pack of Marlboro reds, lighting up the first of several that will ash out over the course of our interview. Those piercing green eyes, half-hooded by the sleepy, thoughtful brow, are the first things you notice about Crowe. That and the wiry, muscular, fighter's physique that is on prominent display in his current film, L.A. Confidential, as well as his most notorious, Geoffrey Wright's ultra violent skinhead epic Romper Stomper. In person, his earthy good humor belies the imposing, shotgun rage he exposes in so many of his film characters. You get the feeling, all things considered, he'd much prefer to be at home on his farm outside of Sydney instead of making the interview rounds. Still, he's gracious to a fault, and it's easy to see why so many people are convinced the actor is on the verge of cinematic superstardom -- the type that could rival that of another notable Aussie, "Mel... whatsisname" (as Crowe so charitably puts it).
For an actor who's made 18 films in the last seven years (his first was The Crossing in 1990 and, most recently, he wrapped Heaven's Burning in Australia), he seems remarkably, well, sane. That's a hellish schedule by anyone's measure, but Crowe keeps getting better at it. Jocelyn Moorhouse's 1991 film Proof, in which he played a gentle dishwasher caught between a blind photographer and his manipulative housekeeper, attracted the praise of many critics, but it was Romper Stomper, in 1992, that proved utterly that Crowe was a force to be reckoned with onscreen. As Hando, the vicious, tattoo-bedecked leader of a group of white supremacist skinheads, he was a marvel of concentrated evil. That film was a tremendous success in its native Australia and netted the actor international acclaim as well as, unfortunately, the unwanted and entirely unwarranted attentions of various real-life skinhead groups, who erroneously viewed the film as some sort of Aryan call to arms.
After that, Crowe went on to land roles in various American films. He has played the gunslinging priest opposite Sharon Stone in Sam Raimi's surreal western The Quick and the Dead, the computer-generated serial killer SID 6.7 in Virtuosity, and Salma Hayek's fickle photographer boyfriend ("He's a dick, really...") in Robert Greenwald's Breaking Up.
(Austin is one of two U.S. cities to open Breaking Up for test-market theatrical runs this Friday, October 17. It will play at the Village Theatre.)
After a few more harried phone calls, the lost leather is located intact, and Crowe, noticeably relieved, sits down to chat about his career thus far. But first, another Marlboro.
Austin Chronicle: Romper Stomper was a huge success for you Down Under, but was released only marginally here in the States. Let's talk a little about how you got involved in the film.
Russell Crowe: Geoff Wright [the director] had seen Proof, in which I was playing "a gentle dishwasher," as he called it. There's one scene where this fight begins in a drive-in movie, and I think I read somewhere that Geoff Wright cast me in Romper Stomper because I was "the most vicious gentle dishwasher" he had ever seen.
There was somebody, another actor, that was up for the part [in Romper Stomper], and part of what he did, in terms of the audition process, was actually shave his head. Well, some people, when they shave their head, it gives them a certain power and a certain look, but this guy was one of those people who had a skull that rose to a sort of point, and so by shaving his head he kind of got himself out of the job.
The first question that I asked Geoff when I read the script, though, was if he was a Nazi. But he's a very, very intelligent filmmaker, Geoffrey, and even down to the music that was used in the film -- all of it was composed by a really well-respected classical composer in Australia. He went "oi!" for a while. There's nothing about the film that's even remotely Nazi, even down to when I was quoting from "Mein Kampf", we didn't really quote, we sort of paraphrased. Nobody that believes in that kind of ideology received any kind of benefit from that movie.
AC: Was there any kind of backlash from Romper Stomper? Skinheads showing up in theatres or things like that?
RC: Well, the skinheads definitely went to see the film, yeah, but in Australia Romper Stomper was a big hit movie, it was a "blockbuster," for want of a better expression. What it did, in Australia, was to put racism on the breakfast table, and it made everybody examine their own bigotries, which was a very healthy thing. It was certainly divisive, in terms of film critics and stuff. One of the major film critics in Australia said something to the effect that the negative should be burned, which just made the filmmaker shake his head very sadly, you know?
The characters who believe in that Nazi ideology are either dead or in jail at the end of that film and so it very clearly makes its point. But Geoff Wright is a very powerful filmmaker, and so at a certain point in the movie the audience realizes that they have become so steeped in the gang life that they are now making decisions from within the gang. What it comes down to at the end of the day in Romper Stomper is it's just a very harsh and strange place to find a very simple love triangle.
But never in any way was Romper Stomper associated with or in support of any organizations that hold those beliefs.
AC: How was it working for Sam Raimi on The Quick and the Dead?
RC: Well, Sam's a lot of fun. He's kind of like the fourth Stooge, you know? He's obviously gone along now and made a whole lot of money doing these TV shows, you know, Hercules and Xena, but he's getting ready to start making feature films again.
That was my first American film, and there was a lot of pressure on it. Coming into a big-budget situation like that, it was definitely Sam's movie, but at the same time he's also a director for hire on it, you know? There was a lot of pressure going into that film because on paper I'm supposed to be the third lead, and you've got like 20 well-known actors there going, "Who is this guy?" I think only Sharon [Stone] and Leonardo DiCaprio had seen any of my work when we started the film.
AC: You've done a tremendous amount of films in a relatively short time. Is that because of good offers or was it a conscious decision to get out and work your ass off?
RC: Well, there are many, many more offers now. This year has been the first time since I started making films that I've actually stood back for a while and had a real look at what I wanted to do next. Not that I don't consider everything really strongly before I make a film. What I mean is I'm not making the same decisions this year that I would have made last year or the year before. At first, I think it was about a body of work, about discovering a new medium and then doing a whole lot of work in that medium in a short period of time, in Australia. But then, very quickly in Australia I got all the recognition that there is to get there, in terms of awards and stuff. And so I suddenly had to look overseas and look at expanding where I was going to work. In Australia, once you get that level of recognition you're supposed to sit down for 10 years and they'll rediscover you in your forties, you know? But I wasn't satisfied with that because I was only just starting to work. Even after 18 films, there's still no easily explained technique involved in what you do.
AC: Can you tell me a little about how working in Australian cinema differs from working in Hollywood?
RC: For the most part, the Australian film industry operates off government grants. There's a thing called the Film Finance Corporation that's set up to assist directors with their first and second features, though it can work with people who have, say, made 10 movies as well. What it's mainly about, though, is giving people who have been to film school a real opportunity to make themselves a calling card. And generally, if they achieve any success on a national basis, in terms of film festivals and so on, after that the financing for their third and fourth and fifth film should take care of itself.
We've got two really big studios in Australia, we've got Warner's in Queensland and Fox in Sydney. But every major center has television and film facilities and every state has its own film board and also a state investment arm of the federal investment arm. It was all designed in the early Seventies by a guy named Goff Woodlawn who wanted film to be a medium that would be used to chronicle the culture. And basically since the Seventies, the government has taken a very positive view toward supporting what is the most expensive medium of the arts, really.
AC: Do you prefer working in Australia to, say, Los Angeles?
RC: I like being at home, for sure. The job is exactly the same, though, whether you're doing the work in Australia or Canada or Guatemala or wherever, the job is pretty much the same. The available technology is different, you know, when you're dealing with a $35 million budget. But for all the kind of automated dollies and 360-degree panning cameras that someone like Sam Raimi uses, Geoff Wright can strap his DP on the back of a motor scooter and get the same effect, you know? When there's a problem to be solved, guys like Robert Rodriguez and Geoff Wright step up to the plate.
AC: L.A. Confidential... did they approach you outright for that, or how, specifically, did you become involved?
RC: Actually, Curtis [Hanson] sees that in a slightly different light, because he'd seen Romper Stomper and he had me on a list. The very first time I heard about it was from my agent, who for once in his life did some work and read a script that was good and then sent it on to me and said, "What do you think of this?" No, actually, he's a great guy, but... I read it and I was really impressed by it and thought, you know, it's a great script, but it's never going to come our way. So he called Curtis and Curtis said, "I'm glad you called!" We had a couple of long-distance conversations and then got together and did some scenes, and then the hard part started because at that point there was nobody else cast in the film.
AC: Had you read James Ellroy's novel before you got the part?
RC: I hadn't, no. I knew of Ellroy from his book The Black Dahlia, but it wasn't until after reading the script and getting involved in the project that I started to look through his other books. Obviously L.A. Confidential but also White Jazz and his book of short stories called Hollywood Nocturnes.
AC: Have you read My Dark Places yet?
RC: I haven't read it -- I've got like seven or eight copies that people have given me. I know the story intimately though, because he was writing it while we were shooting L.A. Confidential, so it was one of the things that we talked about, you know, pretty much all the time. I know the detective Bill Stoner, who did the project with him, also, but I haven't actually gotten around to sitting down and actually reading it yet. For a while there, every place that I went, somebody would give me another copy of the book, and I'd be like, "Oh... thanks," because, you know, I'd gotten a copy directly from Ellroy himself before it was published. I don't know. It just seemed like everyone thought it was a really good idea to buy me this book.
AC: So you got to hang with Ellroy on the set then.
RC: Absolutely, yeah. One of the greatest things about Curtis Hanson as a filmmaker is that he just operates on a level of intelligence and sensitivity that the next man (or woman) doesn't possibly possess, or would care to possess, you know? Curtis was turned on to this whole idea by reading a book by a novelist called James Ellroy, so it was still very important to Curtis that he preserve Ellroy's voice within the movie. By the time you start principal photography, most novelists who've sold the rights to their books in Hollywood are feeling somewhere between steamrolled and raped, and that's mainly because the filmmaker or the producers don't care to preserve that voice. To them, it was purely a business transaction.
And so, just before we shot the film they showed Ellroy the script and the fact was that he liked the script but he was still suspicious of the whole Hollywood process. I think he's gone on record as saying that when they gave him the advance money for L.A. Confidential, the film, he just took it and he laughed, thinking that there's no way in the world that anybody in this town will ever be able to convert this book into a movie. Because he doesn't write for the cinema, he writes for the individual's imagination.
Having that kind of consideration -- of trying to preserve the original feeling in the book -- meant that Ellroy was available to talk to you, and he was a goldmine of information. There are many, many questions, and I think that the technical term for what I do in a rehearsal period is "become a pain in the ass." I'll ask question after question because you never know where you're going to find that one little bit of information that's gonna drive a certain part of a character. And Ellroy's absolutely enthused about these characters, so you could call him about any aspect of the character and he gives the answer straight away. That was the first time I'd experienced that.
Ellroy actually went on the road with us to support the film, which is just totally unheard of. We were up at a press conference at the Toronto Film Festival, and, the great thing about having him at a press conference is that he kind of establishes a "no limits" understanding between the journalists. So the first question was something like "James, do you think you'd like to direct a film now?" Because that's what most novelists want, after they see Hollywood's treatment of their stories. But he said no, and so the reporter says, "Come on, James, how do you know you don't want to direct a film until you've directed a film?" and Ellroy replies, "Listen, pal, I've never f---ed a porcupine, either!"
When you start a press conference off like that you can pretty much go anywhere you want.
AC: The new film, Breaking Up, is essentially a two-person dialogue. Did that pose any problems for you seeing as how it's not what you're usually doing?
RC: Well, what I've tried to do since being invited to make movies in America is not just take safer large studio and budget options. I've done some of those but I've also done, like, multiple co-production things with French, English, Spanish money -- things like that. I've tried to make smaller films, as well as the larger ones, because I'd like to look at the American film industry from many different levels and not just from the big one.
Breaking Up had a small budget and it was a very complex script in terms of what it asked from performance. Mainly, it was a series of really late nights -- just trying to cram those lines into my brain, you know? Because of that low budget there was no real rehearsal period. It was like "here's the script" and you're off. At the time we made it I was coming off Virtuosity with Denzel Washington, which was a very strange filmmaking experience in itself because of all the blue-screen work involved. I mean, you're in this blank room grabbing stuff out of the air that doesn't exist, and then three or four months later you've got a rose in your hand or you're playing the piano or something like that.
So Breaking Up was about getting down and doing something a little bit more basic and real and performer-aligned. It was a really fast shoot, something like 28 days, really intense. Part of the shoot was in New York City, and we were there at the same time as the Pope and the chess championship and the president, you know? I mean, there's bad enough traffic as it is, but when you bring all those clowns in... it was pretty rough.
Day to day, just working on it, was pretty challenging to try and tell that type of a story, which is really uncomfortable subject matter for most people anyway. Trying to stay true to the reality of those characters, you know, because they're both in their own ways sort of charmless people, copping out by taking a secondary option, right? They've met the person who is the passion of their life, but it's kind of too difficult. Trying to find the core of that love so that the people in the audience, when they see the movie, can say that "even though I might not necessarily like this guy, I know absolutely that he's really in love with this woman," and for all that character's faults, he can be forgiven because of that essential fact, that love.
It was funny playing that character, because to me -- and Robert [Greenwald, the director] doesn't really like it when I say this -- I just saw him as such a dick, you know? To me, he just doesn't have a handle on the things that are important in life. So it's interesting playing a character like that.
______________________________________________________________________________
Frantic women bid to see Crowe play
By DALE PAGET
Friday 23 June 2000
Russell Crowe fans are in a bidding frenzy for tickets to see the star of Gladiator and his Australian rock band Thirty Odd Foot Of Grunts perform at a BBQ restaurant in the United States in August.
The concert tickets that originally sold for $12 each are going under the hammer for more than $200 at internet auction sites.
The manager of Stubbs BBQ restaurant, David Gould, said the 4500 tickets to the three concerts at his venue in Austin, Texas were sold out in two hours.
Crowe fans from all over the world have been calling, faxing and emailing Mr Gould hoping more tickets will go on sale.
"It all seems to be about Russell Crowe. The music was brought up in one out of every 200 phone calls," said Mr Gould.
"A lot of women are coming to see one of their favourite movie stars. I think the fact he is not touring - it's just these three shows also really created quite a demand for it."
Crowe and his band have released four CD's. Next month they will record an album in Austin before performing in the three concerts on August 4, 11 and 15.
Crowe, who sings and plays guitar, describes the band as "a creative outlet" and says the name Thirty Odd Foot Of Grunts was chosen because it "meant nothing. It was just a series of words, which just rolled off the tongue".
Crowe's last movie, Gladiator has earned over $150 million at the American box office.
His fans are willing to part with a lot more than the price of a movie ticket to see Crowe in person.
Bidding for a pair of tickets to see Thirty Odd Foot Of Grunts at the auction sites, ebay.com and Amazon.com is averaging around $200 each with fans spending up to $255 on a ticket.
Mr Gould said most of the people trying to get tickets were women.
"I've been taking calls from women all over the world, India, Denmark, Finland and all over the states," he said.
"It is like seeing Beatlemania, frankly."
______________________________________________________________________________
Trying to catch a glimpse of the band
Fans lionize Gladiator’s Russell Crowe as he and his band Slay ‘em in the great Texas outdoors.
Entertainment Weekly
© Copyright Entertainment Weekly, 2000
August 2000
By Brian M. Raftery
Russell Crowe -- eyebrows furrowed, black guitar hanging at his side stands in the 90-degree heat of an Austin, Tex., outdoor stage, his face heavy with emotion. As he introduces "Memorial Day," a song he wrote about his late grandfather, Crowe pauses to look skyward (could he be near tears?) when suddenly a sharp voice pipes up from the front of the crowd: "Take off the shirt!" squeals a young woman. Unable to get his attention, she ups the volume: "TAKE... YOUR ... SHIRT .. OFF!"
It's got to be just a tad vexing to the Gladiator star slash-part-time rocker. But it's hard to fault the fans here for turning the Aug. 4 gig into a bit of a Circus Maximus. After all, Crowe and his six-piece bar band -- the obscurely titled 30 Odd Foot of Grunts -- were playing Stateside for the first time since the Aussie actor unleashed hell on screen. And tickets for the three Texas gigs which the Grunts are squeezing in during a break from recording at a local studio sparked an online frenzy, with auctions pushing ticket prices as high as $2,000.
And who was scooping up the tix? Put it this way: Not since the Kiss reunion has a rock show drawn a crowd wearing this much makeup. Gazing at the preponderance of gals in the audience, Australian warm-up comic Nick Penn noted: "We have 2,300 [people here]. That's 2,000 women and 300 gay guys."
Indeed, most of the eager female fans who lined up hours before the gates opened gushed more about Crowe's looks than his hooks. "I've never heard his music," admitted 32-year-old Austin furniture-store employee Janice Chavez. "I'm just here to see him," she said, adding hopefully, "and maybe Meg." Still, not everyone was there just to get within drooling distance of Crowe and his equally famous new girlfriend, Meg Ryan (who didn't show). "There's a story to every song that Russell writes," praised Phyllis, Johnson, 71, a Dallas administrative assistant. "Some of them are really jivey and some of them are really sweet."
Sweet -- and sweaty. By the time Crowe and his bandmates took the stage, the only relief from the heat was the pork-and-perfume-scented breeze that occasionally flapped the two Australian flags hanging above them. "G'day, Austin," Crowe, clad in a black button-down shirt and blue jeans, barked playfully. "How the f--- are ya?" With that, the Grunts charged into a two-hour-plus show, during the course of which Crowe, perhaps loosened up by the endless supply of onstage beer, eased into his role as frontman- shaking his hips, executing some Roger Daltrey-style aerobics, and handing over a slightly used cigarette to a fan (look for that on eBay next week).
And he talked. A lot. From the weather ("I got to go change me undies -- they're a bit wet and sticky") to politics (after damning democracy in general, he added, "And that includes you, G.W.! And that includes you, Al! And all you other f --- ers!") to teasing the mostly local crowd for their lack of line-dancing skills ("Here we are in Texas and all you people are bobbing your heads up and down!"), Crowe bantered away before almost every song -- and yes, he did eventually strip down to a black undershirt.
Still, Crowe's big mouth is well established. The real question: Can the guy actually sing? Said 21-year- old Corinne Carson, "I thought he sort of sounded like Jon Bon Jovi." Next stop, New Jersey?
______________________________________________________________________________
Actor Russell Crowe's band makes a pit stop in Austin
Daily Texan
By Matt Dentler
8/07/00
© Copyright 2000 Daily Texan
Russell Crowe isn't a rock star, but he plays one onstage. The Australian actor (The Insider, L.A. Confidential) is one of the biggest movie stars in the world today. But of all the roles he can play swinging the versatility rope between Roman slave (Gladiator) to virtual villain (Virtuosity) to violent Nazi (Romper Stomper) he has reached his most skeptical audience. This comes with his role as songwriter, singer and guitarist for the Aussie rock band, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts.
The band has become almost legendary, keeping a minimal profile and making albums available primarily through their official Web site (www.gruntland.com), rather than record stores. The band has picked Austin as the place to record its next opus. And, as is standard practice in the music industry, they decided to schedule a few small shows to test out their new material. The band will play two more shows in Austin, both at Stubb's Bar-B-Q. There will be one Friday, Aug. 11, and then another on Friday, Aug. 18.
At Stubb's Friday night, crowds flocked in high numbers, coming in from all over the world (it was reported that an overwhelming majority of the tickets were purchased from outside Texas). Relocated from the indoor stage, Friday's outdoor show swelled with anticipation, excitement and an underlying curiosity: Was this band actually any good?
It's obvious that many in attendance were there simply for the novelty of seeing an A-list movie star. Crowe and his band must have expected this, which meant the music was forced to stand up on its own. Once that starstruck feeling wears off, you're gonna need to recapture the crowd's attention. And Crowe's rugged mug can only hold it for so long.
To solve this potential problem, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts tried to keep spectators enticed and, fortunately, succeeded. With a sound best described as an Australian Bruce Springsteen, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts managed to exceed expectations and give the loyal fans a show well-worth the price of admission (well, maybe not for those who paid nearly $100 a ticket on eBay).
The band's set was full of new material and old, spanning their four recordings (three EPs and one LP) and the album currently in the works. The six members of the band all appeared to have their act together, each taking away their own moment in the spotlight.
On tunes like "What You Want Me To Forget," "All The White Circles" and "Circus," drummer Dave Kelly, bassist Garth Adam and multi-instrumentalist Dave Wilkins all managed to anchor the Grunts in proper rhythms. Their country/blues/folk material was well-suited for the warm summer air and the very Texan atmosphere at Stubb's.
The group could run across the spectrum, from edgy alt-rock to polished folk-rock. There were moments of repetition and little variation between individual styles. Dismissing early criticism, Crowe can sing and there's a definite sense of range in his style. He seemed nervous at first, but after a glowing reception from the predominantly female audience as well as a wealth of Shiner Bock on hand he started to open up and cut loose. In between songs, Crowe offered stories about his songwriting and his inspiration. He only addressed one of his films, Romper Stomper, and that was due to its relevance to a song.
Guitarist "Reverend Billy" Dean Cochran ebbed and flowed with Crowe and the two shared a bond with their six-strings that helped the group remain driving through the night. But no part of the band was as welcomed as the inclusion of trumpeter Stewart Kirwan. Kirwan's use of the horn added textures and layers to some of the otherwise plain song structures. Without Kirwan's horn, a good deal of the night would have been lost and forgotten. Instead of becoming simple "bar rock" or "frat rock," the horn opened 30 Odd Foot of Grunts up to more dimensions and blew the audience away during solos or accompaniments.
After the first set, the band returned to the stage with Crowe donning one of the band's signature basketball jerseys. During the first encore, Crowe gave up a bit on guitar and stuck to filling out the stage with a mic and his rock 'n' roll vibes. This reached its zenith with a stirring and emotionally draining performance of "Oblique Is My Love," originally released on the What's Her Name? EP. "Oblique Is My Love" provided a study of the right moves this band can make. They hit the rock when it was needed, and the pop when it felt right.
A second encore followed, which seemed unnecessary and overwrought. The immediate feeling was that they should have left well enough alone. What followed was worth the stay as 30 Odd Foot of Grunts finished their first Austin show with a rousing cover of Johnny Cash's country-western classic "Folsom Prison Blues." The Land Down Under seems to be one of the few non-American regions where country music actually translates well, proven with a Cash retelling that was part-country swagger and part-Aussie fun.
The band and its leader will be Austin residents for the next month. Their gig at Stubb's verifies that they'll have no trouble fitting into their new surroundings. Dave Matthews needn't worry just yet, but if 30 Odd Foot of Grunts continue to improve, there may be good reason. His acting talents are growing, and so is his appeal, so it would be safe to assume that it's all uphill from here for Russell Crowe. He comes across as a charismatic performer and a wistful songwriter with pride in his work. He may not be a rock star yet, but he sure knows how to act like one.
______________________________________________________________________________
August 4, 2000 Fans wait in line at Stubbs
Flock descends to hear Crowe sing
Aug. 14, 2000, 11:06AM
By MICHAEL D. CLARK
© Copyright 2000 Houston Chronicle
AUSTIN -- One hundred sixty-five miles is a long way to go to catch a virtually unknown country-rock band playing a barbecue joint. Compared to some of the others queued at Stubb's Bar-B-Q on Friday night, however, the drive from Houston was a relatively light sacrifice.
In a line that began in front of Stubb's on Red River Street and stretched around the corner for nearly two blocks to Interstate 35 was a 2,000-plus throng of mostly women. It looked like the biggest bachelorette brisket party ever thrown.
Some had been waiting more than 12 hours to grab a spot close to the outdoor stage. Others paid $100 to $300 and more per ticket on eBay. Many were University of Texas students and a few flew in from Toronto or London. All came dressed for hot weather clubbing and a chance to grunt. Or at the very least a chance to get cozy with the band called Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts.
TOFOG -- the acronym the group is known by -- has no hit singles, no major label record deal and sells its albums primarily over the Internet. How can an indie country-rock band inspire such a crowd?
"I passed up a trip to St. Tropez with my boyfriend to come to this show," said Elizabeth Strapp of Long Beach, Fla., who waited in line with her sisters, Laura Strapp and Jennifer Grace. "It will be worth it if he takes his shirt off."
Don't know who the "he" doffing his shirt is? Been to the movies this summer?
TOFOG's lead singer and guitarist is the crystal-eyed lead actor from Gladiator. The exceedingly handsome guy with brawny arms that protruded from his tunic to kill men twice his size in the movie's Roman Colosseum.
The new beau of Meg Ryan.
The Oscar-nominated star of The Insider who's among Hollywood's most-coveted commodities now that Gladiator has earned more than $180 million domestically and $409 million worldwide.
Russell Crowe, actor and New Zealand native, could have sat on stage making noise with his armpits and still drawn a cluster at this show.
The plan was to come to Austin for a couple of months, record a new TOFOG album and play a few local gigs on Friday nights just to stay loose.
Nice and quiet. No big deal.
Not a chance.
"Move out of the way," a female voice shouted at the one male standing near the front of the line as the gates opened. "There are women who want to get in."
She wasn't kidding. Crowe's quiet summer vacation was no longer on the QT.
Melanie Carmichael, a 37-year-old mother of three from Des Monies, Iowa, readied herself to go in after holding the line since 5:45 a.m. with a friend.
"I've never done anything like this, but my 8-year-old daughter thinks its pretty cool," says Carmichael, who ordered her tickets for the second of three Friday shows off eBay for $100.
Standing next to her wearing matching handmade "Grunt Girls" kerchiefs were J. Jaffe of Los Angeles and Sara Baird of Carthage, Mo. The two women, both 26, met online while buying their tickets and decided to meet in Austin and see TOFOG together.
"I've downloaded some of the songs off the Internet," said Danette Radisson, a Houston middle school teacher who drove to the show with her sister Linda. "The Insider got me very curious to see him."
It all had to be very validating, if not a little frustrating, for Crowe and his band of Grunts. Yes, all the money raised was going to benefit the People's Community Clinic, an Austin nonprofit community medical center, making it a huge crowd for a good cause.
But the two-hour-plus set of 20 songs seemed lost amid talk of Crowe's earlier ride around town on a motorcycle (true) and rumors that Ryan and Jodie Foster would be in attendance (untrue, according to the band's public relations reps). Many fans got so caught up in the spectacle that they missed the music.
Too bad, because it wasn't too bad.
On the amphitheater's half-shell stage adorned with the flags of Australia, New Zealand and Texas, Crowe demonstrated that he's a spectacular storyteller with not a half-bad Shiner Bock-enhanced growl. In Texas that's high praise.
The Legend of Barry Kable was a meandering Bruce Springsteen-style yarn that substituted the outback for the back roads of New Jersey. What's Her Name was a great example of the measured spare guitar-strummed beginnings to full bass drum bashing, amp-smashing climax that TOFOG does best.
Alternating between guitar playing and hip-wiggling dances, Crowe came off as the clear leader in the ever-growing "actors with side careers as rock stars" genre. His ability to negotiate chord changes certainly could rival Keanu Reeves' bass licks with Dogstar and his harmony leaves Bruce "Bruno" Willis dying hard.
All of this says as much about Crowe as it does the rest of TOFOG. The rhythmic dexterity of guitarists Dean Cochran and drummer Dave Kelly should not be questioned. And the falsetto backing vocals of new guitarist Dave Wilkins were marvelous. All would be quality additions to a Texas rock band booked by the Continental Club.
If Crowe, with his bed-head tangle of wavy hair and devilish smile, ever did lose his way in a song these guys righted him so quick no one noticed.
And it didn't matter if he was stripping to a tank top, mimicking a Texas accent or offering a beer bottle cap up for auction on eBay, he pleased. It will be interesting to see if, with time, TOFOG can bring people out as much for the music as they do for the between-song theatrics by the band's leading man.
______________________________________________________________________________
Please ya'll, take this one with a grain of salt! ;o)~Tofogsworld
30 Odd Foot of Grunts
August 18, 2000:
Stubb's, August 11
Before we begin, let me be frank: I went to this show to see Russell Crowe cuss, sweat, and peel off his shirt. I don't get the 30 Odd Foot of Grunts brand of earnest, big-sky rock & roll, and I know nothing of their work. Hence, I'm incapable of writing an objective review. However, if I don't try, one of those black-hearted, cynical pricks from the staff will, and since my Crowe crush is so debilitating and delusional, I'm risking the actor's Romper Stomper-like wrath to shield him. Besides, in this libidinous and partial way, I embody the duality of the show's insanely female crowd, half of whom were breasty, backless, and lustily curious, while the other half foamed rabid, protective, and musically empathetic. The former were merely voyeurs, while the latter proved themselves the real fans, born and bonded on the Internet (www.gruntland.com). They're the reason the band was playing; they crocheted the pillows, they made the signs, they knew the words. So they got his full attention. The most entertaining aspect of the show, in fact, was Crowe's good-natured and playful interaction with these folks. At one point, he even took a fan's cell phone and chatted with the obviously ecstatic girl on the other end. At another point, he took a rag from a fan, mopped the sweat from his brow and chest, and as an amusing afterthought, stuck it down the front of his trousers, laughing and tossing it back. He was funny and gave the fans what they want, delivering his songs (co-written with the dodgy-haired guitarist to his left) with a dramatic sincerity the music intelligentsia outlawed years ago. In this regard, he provoked some people, especially those who believe in the integrity of Rock. Overheard: "This is like Rick Springfield," "This crap should stay in a pub," "Sure he's a babe, but can he rock? No." On the other hand, the emotional candor of the music sent the majority of the crowd into a rapturous state. In truth, if TOFOG is merely a glorified bar band, they superceded their limits with strong harmonies, non-wanking guitars, interesting trumpet lines, and a more-than-competent lead singer, who, incidentally, sings just like he talks and swivels his hips whilst playing guitar. The pre-show mix tape suggested Crowe admires both Tom Waits and Crowded House, and in a way the music falls somewhere on that continuum, aspiring to both the broken-down romanticism of Waits and the craftmanship of Neil Finn. It was neither poetic nor seamlessly melodic enough to meet those goals, of course, but some of the songs worked, especially the one about wanting to be inside "her" eyes -- mine! mine! -- and another about his overqualified father applying for a job ("What Do You Want Me to Forget"). Okay, there were some clichés about gypsies and rivers, and some overstatement -- apparently politicians and critics are bad, and the common man is good, as is beer -- but the show was no more riddled with hyperbolic rock bollocks than -- and I'm taking a bullet for you here, Russell -- Springsteen's show at the Erwin Center a few months back. I understand that it's fine for Bruce to sprout clichés and clench his fist with rock ardor, because he can rest on his poetic laurels and proven integrity, and Crowe can't since, as far as we know, he only acts like he has integrity, but I believe in him. Then again, I believed in Eddie and the Cruisers too, so don't look to me for answers.
______________________________________________________________________________
Crowe kicks out jams at Texas BBQ joint
By Michael Corcoran
USA TODAY 8/06/00
© Copyright USA TODAY 2000
AUSTIN, Texas — He had them at "Hello, Austin," but actor Russell Crowe and his Australia-based band, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts, seemed on a mission to prove they're not just another musical vanity project Friday night at Stubb's BBQ in the Texas capital.
The predominantly female crowd of 2,000 came to drool over a movie star in the role of musician and ended up catching a sweat-soaked, two-hour rock concert that found the star attraction ranging from sensitive to raucous, like some Aussie John Mellencamp. Chugging beer throughout the set, the muscular singer/songwriter stripped down to a sleeveless tank top by encore time.
Man I need to get me one of these!!!
Taking his private life public for a rare moment, the 36-year-old Gladiator star acknowledged onstage that much of his introspective material, such as the new Sail the Same Oceans, came out of a four-year relationship with Aussie singer/actress Danielle Spencer. "She's got an album coming out soon, but I'll bet there aren't any songs about me," he joked.
Current girlfriend Meg Ryan wasn't on hand for the Grunts' first U.S. show in 18 months, but Crowe's Flora Plum director, Jodie Foster, was there in spirit on the concert's opening number, Other Ways of Speaking. Crowe credits Foster with inspiring the ballad, which will be on the album the 5-year-old band is recording in Austin.
______________________________________________________________________________
Crowe brings band, not acting, to Austin hotspot
The Dallas Morning News 8/4/00
By Chris Vognar
© Copyright The Dallas Morning News, 2000
They'll descend on Austin from all over the world to see a band few have even heard of. Ground zero: Stubb's BBQ, tonight, Aug. 11 and 18, where a hunky hero will take a little break from his day job.
Don't even think about ordering tickets to see 30 Odd Foot of Grunts; they sold out 90 minutes after they went on sale. At one point, brokers were asking as much as $2,000 for tonight's show. Press and public have been turned away in droves.
Gruntmania is running high in these parts, and it's all because of an Australian heartthrob named Russell Crowe. You know him from his recent sword-swinging turn in Gladiator or perhaps his Oscar-nominated whistle-blower role in last year's The Insider. Now, a few thousand frenzied fans will get to see Mr. Crowe wail away as lead singer/guitarist for the Grunts, in town to record their new album and test the waters of Texas' live music capital.
"I've never seen anything like this before," says Stubb's co-owner Charles Atall. "I knew it was going to be a hot show, but I didn't think we'd sell 4,500 tickets in an hour and a half."
Mr. Crowe and his gruntmates were to play the first concert at Stubb's' indoor venue, which holds only 300 people. But this week, the gig was moved to the club's larger outdoor stage, where the other two shows will be held. Additional tickets for the first show, which were put on sale Thursday afternoon, were expected to be snapped up immediately.
Prior to the stage change, a ticket for the first show could have been yours for $2,000, according to Kent Taylor of Showtime Tickets in Austin. The other two showsare going for the bargain price of $200.
"I don't get the concept of why people are freaking out over this group," Mr. Taylor says. "Everybody's like, 'Russell Crowe, Russell Crowe, Russell Crowe.' I'm like, 'Oh, he sings?' "
Perhaps Mr. Taylor is just the wrong gender. One woman sent Stubb's' managing partner/director of operations Mike Hall a dozen roses in hopes of landing a ticket. Mr. Atall scored some live lobsters. Phone calls and faxes have come in from Australia, England, Japan, Ireland, India, Taiwan, Italy, Germany, Brazil. Mr. Atall estimates that 80 percent of ticket buyers have been women and that 10 percent have been from Austin.
Mr. Crowe is hardly the first movie personality to dabble in rock; Bruce Willis, Keanu Reeves and camp icon David Hasselhoff have all tried their hand. They just didn't seem to generate as much . . . devotion.
"These are just die-hard Russell Crowe fans," Mr. Hall says. "If you can imagine women who are just infatuated with this guy . . . they're concerned with how close they can get to the stage, if they can see him, if they can come to sound check."
All of this for a band that has released one full-length CD (1998's Gaslight) that isn't exactly a hot seller in these parts. "30 what?" asked an employee at a Dallas record store.
The band consists of Mr. Crowe on guitar and vocals, Garth Adams on bass, Dean Cochran on guitar and Dave Kelly on drums. They played the notorious Viper Room in Los Angeles last year, and according to the frighteningly thorough Web site, maximumcrowe.com, they performed for a packed house at the Borderline in London, on July 23. The Grunts' music is generally described as pubbish folk rock. The band's CDs and merchandise are available at www.gruntland.com.
Meanwhile, Stubb's' profile is going through the roof. Mr. Atall has been interviewed for Entertainment Weekly and People; the Crowe Web site features an eight-photo spread of the club, from all angles, in all of its glory. ("Stubb's is on a hillside, with two levels indoors and a river out back.") Suddenly, the venerable dinner spot/sauce manufacturer/music venue has an international rep.
"It's been great for the venue, because people from all over the world know our name now," Mr. Atall says. "It helps us sell the barbecue sauce, too."
______________________________________________________________________________
Russell Crowe's Rock Career Heats Up Texas
US Weekly August 21, 2000
By Lillian Vecchiarelli
© Copyright US Weekly, 2000.
AUSTIN TEXAS, IS ALREADY A SIZZLING CITY IN August, but when you add one of the sexiest movie stars of 2000 wearing a sweaty jersey and wailing away on his Gibson guitar, you've got a situation thats thermally ridiculous. No doubt the 2,000 people at the outdoor venue behind Stubbs BBQ thought they were at the molten core of America August 4 when Russell Crowe took the stage to punch out two hours' worth of raucous, unadorned folk-rock with his long-standing group of Aussie bandmates, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts.
Crowe, 36, who helps write most of the group's material, greeted the crowd by saying "How the f--are you, Austin?," then launched into his opening number, "Other Ways of Speaking." Between songs he spoke affectionately of his former girlfriend of four years, Danielle Spencer, who he said served as an inspiration for some of his music. Significantly, he made no mention of Meg Ryan, his sometime companion during her breakup with her husband, Dennis Quaid, while she and Crowe were shooting Proof of Life in England. But in truth, the mostly female crowd at Stubbs (despite a lack of advertising, Crowe's August 4 show, as well as two more shows, on August 11 and 18, sold out in 90 minutes, forcing the organizers to move them to a larger venue) didn’t seem to care about the other women in his life as the Gladiator star belted out songs of lost love and the perils of success; the audience just screamed for more.
The Austin dates mark a turning point of sorts for the Grunts, as their fans call them, who have been playing together - and hanging with Crowe at his 560-acre farm north of Sydney, Australia - for 12 years. Until fairly recently, they were working mostly in Australian pubs, playing to a small group of fans," says bassist Garth Adam. "We all have day jobs. We are simply a group of friends who love music and enjoy playing. Years ago we made a promise to each other that we will get together at least once a year to play. What has happened in the meantime is that Russell has become very famous."
The Grunts' first full-length album, Gaslight, released in 1998, is sold only through their Web site (gruntlandcom). But in January 1999, the Grunts played a gig at the Viper Room, the Los Angeles club owned by Johnny Depp, before an enthusiastic crowd that included Danny DeVito, Salma Hayek and Kim Basinger. That success inspired the band to get more serious about its music.
The Grunts came to Austin -- a center of roots music and a mecca for celebrities such as Sandra Bullock and Matthew McConaughey, who have homes on the outskirts of town -- to record a new album. The shows were meant to be low-key dates that would allow the band to polish material before a live audience. But after Stubbs put tickets on sale May 26, phone lines were tied up for days with requests as far away as India, Brazil and Japan. Local ticket agencies reportedly sold singe admissions, originally $15 for as high as $2,000. (All proceeds from ticket sales and merchandise will benefit the People’s community Clinic, a local charity that provides health care to low-income families.)
Crowe was also hoping to slide into Austin under the media radar (the band prohibited photographers and refused to offer press passes). The actor has always been notoriously press-shy (in his song "The Photograph Kills," he sings "And they'll feed while you lie bleeding on the ground/The photograph kills and your fame will destroy you") but he has become even more reclusive in the months since being linked with Ryan. In July, referring to his frequent appearances in the British tabloids, Crowe told the crowd at a London show that he was coming off "the worst eight weeks of my life."
At Stubbs, though, Crowe was playful in the role of frontman -- tossing around the f-word, swiveling his hips like an Elvis impersonator and teasing the adoring hordes with offers of his cigarette butts and empty beer cans, while laughingly exhorting them to "get a life." When fans begged for his refuse, he lobbed some cigarette butts into the crowd.
Crowe has said that music is his therapy. Describing the band, he told Revolver magazine in December 1998, "I think regardless of how rambunctious our sound gets at times, we are a folk band.... We are just telling stories." Bass player Adam says that Crowe is a natural musician who kind of fell into acting. What happened is that Russell realized he was quite good at acting. And as time went by, we all had to make a living. I turned to finance, while [drummer and vocalist] David [Kelly] did video editing and [guitarist] Dean [Cochran] dedicated himself to social work for the homeless." The inspiration for one of the Grunts' best-known songs, "The Legend of Barry Kable" (from Gaslight), was a homeless man Dean looked after for five years.
The Grunts all make a point of saying that fame hasn't changed Crowe, who still tides with them on motorcycle trips and is generally a stand-up guy, even in bar brawls. "For Russell," says Adam, "family and friends really do come first."
But if Crowe is still the same, his lot in life isn't, and that, says Adam, makes every one of the Grunt's performances an occasion for regret. "For us, mingling with people after performing, having close contact with fans, has been very important," he says. "David, Dean and I hope we will be able to maintain this rapport. But for Russell, it is lost forever. And that saddens us and him."
_____________________________________________________________________________
Russell and security guard Tony Williams
Not ready for his close-up
American-Statesman Staff
August 6, 2000
By Chris Riemenschneider
The teeming hordes that came to see Russell Crowe on Friday night at Stubb's were a lot like the masses who turned "Gladiator" into box-office gold. They would have been happy to see the actor kick some serious tail or wind up lying in the dirt, so long as it was a spectacle.
Unfortunately, Crowe and his band Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts didn't tear it up or deserve to be torn apart; the show was as blasé as Aussie cooking. Crowe and his five cronies played their folky rock for two-plus hours but were compelling for maybe 20 minutes. A cross between Crash Test Dummies and Eddie & the Cruisers, they weren't bad, just plain.
Titles such as "Circus," "Nowhere" and "Charlie's Song" were as undistinguished as the songs themselves. As for Crowe's voice, it kept trying to rise above the din but never could. Imagine Spacehog's frontman with an extra-large frog in his throat.
Many fans weren't afraid to admit, though, that singing was the last thing they wanted.
"Let's just use the term `eye candy,' " said Austinite Molly Hodges, who knew nothing about TOFOG's five-year history as a band. Tammy Porterfield of Houston, who wore a Roman toga to the show, had similar thoughts. "I'm here to see Russell," she said. "I know that won't be disappointing."
One of the biggest cheers from the female-dominated crowd came when Crowe took off his long-sleeve shirt during the pumped-up rocker "Somebody Else's Princess." Underneath was a tight muscle T and a clear view of that Maximus heinie in Levi's.
Opening comic Nicholas Penn -- an Aussie mate of Crowe's -- joked that the band's shows usually draw a couple of thousand women "and 300 gay guys."
One thing for certain about the makeup of the crowd: It was mostly Austinites. Star Tickets originally reported that almost 90 percent of the tickets for TOFOG's three gigs (he will play at Stubb's the next two Fridays) were sold to out-of-towners and even foreigners (the band's gigs are rare). That changed Thursday when some 1,500 more went on sale for the first show. They didn't sell out, either, scalping scalpers who had heard (true) stories about tickets going for $200-plus on the Internet.
Some Crowe fans did go to great lengths to be there, including Chris and Penny Rogers of London. "There are a lot of places to see stars, but they aren't all like Austin," said Penny, whose son lives here -- though she says Russell is why she flew in (sorry, Junior).
On stage, Crowe shed some light on why he decided to spend three weeks in Austin recording an album and playing these gigs. "I came here a few years ago," he said, referring to an appearance at the Austin Heart of Film Festival to plug "L.A. Confidential" in 1997, "and I thought, 'What a fantastic place!' "
Crowe was quite personable and looked as if he was having the time of his life. He talked about his love of Shiner Bock and local filmmaker Robert Rodriguez (both widely seen near the stage) and occasionally took as long to introduce a song as he did to play it.
"Anybody want my empty beer can?" he joked with fans at one point, knowing that they would. When they screamed yes, he told them to "get a life" -- though he included an adjective that would have drawn an R rating.
Most of Friday's show, though, wasn't nearly as fanatical as that. Had it been, things might have been more interesting.
______________________________________________________________________________
EATING UP CROWE
AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Thursday, August 10th 2000
Russell Crowe mania is getting a reprise Friday with the second of three sold-out shows by his band, Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts. Look for many more out-of-towners at this one, as more tickets were sold online and over the phone. There were still plenty of fans dying to see Russell at the first show, lining up outside Stubb's early and staying glued to the front of the stage late (the show went past midnight). Others weren't so impressed: the crowd nearer the back started thinning out about halfway through. One thing that hasn't been widely reported is that the band is donating all profits to the People's Community Clinic, a local heath care provider for the needy. In a statement last week, Crowe said, "Austinites have given us a big warm Texas welcome, and this is our big-hearted Australian thank you." ______________________________________________________________________________
Russell Crowe arrived in Austin, Texas during the hottest time of our summer and at the hottest point in his career. With an Academy Award nomination for The Insider plus a huge summer hit with Gladiator, as well as tabloid frenzy over his personal life, Russell was in great demand for interviews. We were told that of the hundreds of interview requests, he would do only two: one with the weekly newspaper The Austin Chronicle, and one with us. We had a very enjoyable visit with him a few years back when he was promoting the film Breaking Up, and Russell showed to us a real sense of appreciation and loyalty with a return visit to our show on the morning before the first 30 Odd Foot Of Grunts show at Stubbs.
- Kevin Connor KGSR 107.1 Austin Texas
KC: Academy Award Nominee, Russell Crowe, joins us.
RC: Good morning. How you doing?
KC: Great! Good to see you again.
RC: Thanks, mate. Good to see you.
KC: You know, the official slogan of the City of Austin is "Live Music Capital of the World." But for some of us who have lived here for a while, we have never seen such international frenzy over a show at a club!
RC: How about that?
KC: It’s 30-Odd Foot of Grunts tomorrow night and for the next three Fridays.
RC: Yeah. Well, actually, we’re recording an album. That’s the point of us being in Austin., because when I was down here last time talking to you, which was about ’97 or something like that, I got to have a good little poke around and had a look at a number of venues and stuff like that. And I thought, next time we get into the studio, Austin would be a perfect place to do it, so -- it took a little while because of the schedule of the day job. But here were are.
KC: And the "day job’s" going pretty well, isn’t it?
RC: Yeah, yeah. I’m picking up the odd gig.
KC: An Oscar nomination for The Insider, congratulations on that.
RC: Thanks, mate.
KC: And the big hit of this summer Gladiator. You play, obviously, very different kinds of characters in these films, different worlds, different millenia. But at the core I thought these two guys shared a few common traits. They both, you know, put themselves out on the line and stand up for what’s right.
RC: Yeah, possibly. But they both have completely different ways of solving a problem. You know, Maximus is obviously much more proactive physically --
KC: Yeah.
RC: But you know, both men are men of principles, I suppose.
KC: Absolutely. And let’s see, Richard Harris says that you should be up for an Oscar again this year for Gladiator.
RC: Yeah, well, Richard drinks! Really, really well, too! Man, he’s 73 years. We sat in the trailer one night and he did 12 Guinness, right? And he gets to No. 12 and he finishes it and looks at me and he says, "I think it’s time for a scotch." 73, mate! If you could bat that well at 73, you’d be doin’ alright.
KC: I’ll say! Well, we’ve got a little bit of music from 30-Odd Foot of Grunts to play here. We had a little debate going earlier this morning. I thought I had read that there was an actual meaning to the name of the band and somebody else said no.
RC: Well, there’s many things that I’ve said in interview situations like this.
KC: Does it have anything to do with sound editing and sound effects and grunts on film?
RC: Yeah, it does, actually. It comes from an ADR session for a movie called Virtuosity. There was a fight sequence on the rooftop with Denzel Washington. And ADR means Analog Dialog Replacement. Now, let me just put this in an historical context. I started playing with the guitarist, Dean Cochran, in 1984. Our first record together was with a band called Roman Antics. And that came out in ’85. We kind of, after about ’87, played sporadically. But about ’92, we kind of got back together and started writing songs again. And we played for a number of years without a name. But it’s sort of one of those things where once you stick a handle on it, you know, it’s supposed to mean something. And we kind of got to the thing where we wanted to have a name that didn’t actually mean anything, but just rolled trippingly off the tongue.
And I was doing this ADR session. And it was kind of like one of those "Eureka" moments, you know. "Eureka" for me, "ugh" for everybody else. But, you know, film is measured in feet and it said between five, five-eight and five-eight-eight, you know, what they required for the replacement dialog was 30 odd foot of grunts. So that’s what I did. And I kind of just kept that statement in my head. So when we toured that year, we decided to actually finally put a name on the posters instead of leaving them blank.
KC: So this band has been -- they’ve been your friends since before all the movie stuff really came along?
RC: Yeah, long time before.
KC: What’s more fun, making a movie or playing with the band? RC: Well, with the movies I’ve been doing lately, the actually making of them isn’t that much fun anymore. They take so long. I just finished one the other day that was 28 weeks of work. So it’s kind of hard -- the level of concentration over a long period of time gets sort of strange. And there’s all this other stuff that comes with it and all this baggage now, you know.
KC: Gladiator must have been tough because it --
RC: It was tough.
KC: Emotionally it seemed as challenging as The Insider, but then you had all the physical stuff, too.
RC: Well, quite frankly, the toughest thing about Gladiator was starting at $103 million motion picture without a script!
KC: Really?
RC: That was the tough one. The rest of it was easy, the wrestling, the tigers, the -- you know…"Okay, Wesley, what are we doing to do today?"
KC: "See that guy? Cut his arm off!"
RC: "Okay!"
KC: One thing about that movie, though. You asked -- your character, Maximus, asks a little boy, "They let you watch the Gladiators?"
RC: Yeah.
KC: And he says, "Oh, yeah, my uncle says it will make me tough." I walk out of the movie, there’s a little boy about five or six years old, with his parents, coming out of this thing with kind of a glazed look. And I just want to stop and say, "Why are you taking such a little boy to this kind of movie?" It’s a great movie, but it’s -- I don’t think it’s appropriate for little kids -- my son is eight…
RC: Not for a five or six-year-old, no. No, I think it’s appropriate for a little younger than they allowed here because I don’t think it really deserves an R certificate. I think the violence is very fantasy based. I mean, it’s not often one sees chariots down the main streets of American towns these days. There’s no sex, obviously, because Maximus probably had it lopped off at an earlier battle, which is why he spends so much time away from his wife and child. (laughter) And there’s no swearing, obviously, because they couldn’t work out how to say those words in that time period.
KC: It’s amazing, though, that in all these period epics all the Ancient Romans had English accents. I wonder how that works out?
RC: I asked that question over and over, because my character keeps getting called "Spaniard, Spaniard," right? So I said at the beginning, "Look, I want to play this with an accent, kind of Antonio Bandares, but with better elocution. And they just didn’t go with it. So that accent that I do in the movie, I call that "Royal Shakespeare Company, two pints after lunch."
KC: Russell Crowe is with us. Tomorrow night at Stubb’s, 30-Odd Foot of Grunts. Let’s play -- you said this is a demo you’re working on?
RC: This is just from Christmas, which was the beginning of the tracks for the new album. You know, Track 3 on that one is -- it’s a nice and soft, sort of kind of sweet song. It’s about masculine/feminine communication, I suppose.
KC: All right. 30-Odd Foot of Grunts, 107.1 KGSR. (Song: "Other Ways of Speaking")
KC: "Other Ways of Speaking," 30-Odd Foot of Grunts. 107.1 KGSR. And that will be on the next album?
RC: Yeah, that’s going to be on the next album.
KC: Very good. ( to the camera crew) Did you guys get the meters? Video guys love to show the meters whenever they’re at a radio station.
RC: We’ve got a couple of cameras in here this morning.
KC: We can run this ol’ reel-to-reel for a while. That’ll look good.
RC: Just run around and look like your job is actually -- you know, needs concentration. (laughter)
KC: Russell Crowe is with us. You’ve got this video crew going all over the place with you, too?
RC: We’re doing a sort of a companion, a sort of documentation of the band. You know, we had to actually end up rehearsing in London, that film that I was doing went over so long. We were supposed to be here at the end of June. So we ended up having to go to London. So we’re just -- you know, just filming it all as we go.
KC: So what about the other guys in the band when you’re traveling the world making movies and then promoting movies? What are they --
RC: Oh, they usually sit in corners and cry. I send them Kleenex. They send me little notes how much they love me and miss me.
KC: Or the drummer’s in four other bands. That’s how it works around here sometimes.
RC: Everybody’s got a day job. You know, the drummer’s actually -- was a cameraman. Now he owns his own editing studio. The bass player’s a stock broker. He’s really excited to talk to folks after the show. Dean, the guitarist, works for charity in Sydney. Stuart, the trumpet player, he’s the slut. He goes around playing for anybody. And that’s why we don’t pay him very well when he plays with us, just to teach him. Being a mercenary is not the way to do it. And Dave Wilkins, we actually glommed him off another band. They supported us for a tour a couple of years ago. And we’re like, "Yeah, mate, yeah. You know, your songs are great, your band sucks. Come this way, son." So we’ve been playing with him for a few years now.
KC: And people are flocking to your shows.
RC: Well Stubb’s is finding out now that they have to keep replacing their phones because they wear out.
KC: It’s amazing. As soon as the tickets went out, all of the sudden, phone orders come in from Europe --
RC: China.
KC: New Zealand...
RC: Switzerland, Canada. We did a show just recently in London at the Borderline Club. And it was amazing. Just about every country in Europe was represented.
KC: Now, was this going on before Gladiator or has that kind of kicked it up a notch?
RC: Well, it’s definitely kicked it up. But every time a movie comes out it kind of kicks it up because a few more people read the -- you know, there’s a website that they can go and explore.
KC: There’s lots of websites.
RC: Yeah, but they all kind of funnel down to the band website.
KC: Gruntland.com.
RC: Yes. The audience itself has built over a period of time. We put enough stuff, I think, on the website for people to make their own decisions, as well. And you can’t just go to a shop and buy this stuff at the moment. You have to buy it through the website. So what tends to happen is -- which I think is a really healthy thing, you know, and I’m not in any means decrying radio or anything like that, but it’s not a forced situation. They don’t get to hear it ten times a day or whatever. You know, they surf, they download a few things. And if they’re interested, then they pursue it. And it’s sort of like a completely individual decision.
KC: Very cool. And if you make the decision to buy tickets for this, people are already lining up now at 8:30. And they don’t go on sale until 1:00. You can get them at Stubb’s, because you’ve moved from the inside stage out to the big stage outside.
RC: Uh-huh.
KC: We’ll give you the chance to win some tickets in just a minute.
RC: Where’s Junior Brown at the moment? What’s going on with him?
KC: Junior’s probably on the road. He hits the road extensively now. And I think he’s kind of based in Tulsa more than anything. Oklahoma. We don’t see him around very much. But if you need some extra guitar help, we’ve got a few other guys around town who can pick.
RC: All right. And if anybody listening knows Harry Knowles, tell him to get in touch with me, will you?
KC: Ain’t-It-Cool-News Harry Knowles?
RC: Yeah. I want to have a little chat with the old mate, have another beer, some Shiner Bock. Me and Shiner Bock have just reestablished a great old friendship.
KC: We have Harry’s number somewhere around here. We’ll find that for you.
RC: Cool.
KC: Let’s play something off Gaslight. This is your last release.
RC: This song "David" is -- basically, I was in Guatemala one day and a bloke came up to me with Life Magazine. You know how they do that one day in the world sort of photoplay? And the photograph from Australia -- from Sydney, Australia, was this Russell Crowe, age 13, ballroom dancer. And this bloke said to me, "Is that you?" "No, that’s not me." And then I was on a plane and a bloke came up to me with a copy of USA Today and it said, "Russell Crowe, age 42 from Pensacola, Florida, snake trainer, was today arrested and charged with abusing his snake." And the bloke said to me, "Is that you?" And I had to think about that one. (laughter) It ended up it wasn’t me. And this got sort of thinking about the fact that, you know, you’ve got all these people and what really does a name mean? I mean, there’s two blokes called David in the band. And I’ve got an uncle called David and all that sort of stuff. So it’s sort of -- it’s funny how much emphasis we put on a name and in reality it’s a far more internal process whether you like somebody or whether you connect with them and all that sort of stuff.
KC: All right. Let’s check it out, David. 107.1 KGSR, with -30-Odd Foot of Grunts.(Song: "David".)
KC: 107.1 KGSR, 30-Odd Foot of Grunts. The last studio album, Gaslight and "David." There’s a little country thing going on there.
RC: Yeah, just sort of seemed to suit the mood of the song. I know when we do that live, it gets kind of pretty wild.
KC: Oh yeah?
RC: We’ve got a specific line dance we teach people as they come in the door. It’s on the back of the tickets, you’ll see. It’s all written out.
KC: And people are calling about the tickets. There are some available only in person, 1:00 today, in front of Stubb’s, 8th and Red River. And there are actually people lining up already for this. Not over the phone for these, sorry. I want to mention that all the money raised for the ticket sales will be going to a charity here in Austin, The People’s Community Clinic, so thank you very much for that.
RC: Cool. Well, we -- you know, the costs of us being down here, were already sort of covered, you know.
KC: By whom?
RC: By me, actually! (laughter) So it was already sort of put in place and it was already a done deal, you know, that we were going to be here. The show is like a secondary thing. We didn’t realize people were going to go so crazy. So that leaves us with a whole bunch of money that, you know, we thought we’d just leave in the community, rather than hang it in the saddlebags.
KC: When was the last time you played with the band?
RC: The last official sort of gig -- I mean, the last year and a half, the time that we’ve had together, we’ve spent writing. And also sort of reconfiguring what we do, because we tend to -- when we tour in Australia we play in pubs in front of 1,000 or 2,000 people. And they’ve all been on the sauce. All been on the joy juice. So you tend to sort of play to that audience at a certain point in the tour. And that simplifies a lot of the songs. What we’ve done for the last year and a half is sort of, you know, just write in the grooves that we want to move towards. And what’s tended to happen is the songs are a little softer at the moment, not as cranked as they used to be. But we still venture into that area, when we too have been on the joy juice. So the last gig was actually -- apart from playing in London last week, was at the Viper Room, I think, in ’99. We finished a tour in Los Angeles.
KC: So you must hear the comparisons, people say, "Oh, it’s another movie star with a band." You know, you’ve got Kevin Bacon with this band. Johnny Depp had a band, actually kind of based out of here for a while, P. And there’s Keanu Reeves and a few others.
RC: He plays bass.
KC: So you get lumped in with these other guys even though you’ve been doing this for what, 15, 16 years or something like that?
RC: Well, my first record came out in ‘1982. Because I did three records before I met Dean. Yeah, so, man, there’s no credibility for me in doing this. In fact, it works the other way. But the thing is, I’m not doing it for other people anyway. I write songs for myself. For me, a three-minute pop song is a completely incredible medium for me to be expressive in. I can zero in on things that have happened in my life and stuff like that. This is my version of therapy. I mean, some blokes go and lie on a couch. Other people sit on mountains and go ohm….
KC: You play rock and roll and drink joy juice!
RC: Absolutely!
KC: So how much time are you going to get to devote to this before you have to go back to the movie stuff?
RC: I think we’ve got about six weeks.
KC: Really?
RC: Yeah, sort of being squished in there.
KC: Run down the itinerary again. While one of the records was playing, you told us what you did for Gladiator. Just to promote it. RC: The movie that I’ve just finished is called Proof of Life. And that’s with Meg Ryan.
KC: And how was that, working with her?
RC: She’s great. She’s a gorgeous woman and a great actress. We started off in England. We went to Poland, then we went to Ecuador. Then we went back to England. That was the shooting of that film. But every time that I had a break, when the character wasn’t scheduled to be shooting, I had to go off and do Gladiator promotions. So I was pretty ragged actually. We only just finished last week and I’m just getting to that thing where I’m starting to feel a little bit normal. But one little jaunt there, we left Ecuador. This is over, I think, 11 days. We left and we were back on the 11th day. We went to Ecuador, Miami, Rome, New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, Auckland, New Zealand, Easter Island, back to Ecuador and I was working at 3:00 that day.
KC: You must have frequent flyer miles out the wazoo!
RC: I’m the King of the Frequent Flyers! (laughter)
KC: Russell Crowe is with us this morning. Let’s play another song off the demo you’ve brought.
RC: Yeah, we can do that. Probably Track 1. We’ll do that. It’s pretty groovy.
KC: "Things Have Got to Change."
RC: Yeah.
KC: 30-Odd Foot of Grunts. 107.1 KGSR.(Song: "Things Have Got to Change")
KC: 107.1 KGSR, 30-Odd Foot of Grunts. I like this new stuff.
RC: Cool.
KC: I like the other stuff, but I really like the new stuff.
RC: Cool, thanks.
KC: Nice use of trumpet, and a great guitar.
RC: Yeah. We’ve tried to kind of meld the trumpet to the actual core or what we’re doing, as opposed to just doing solos. And we’re getting deeper and deeper in that. You know, coming to the third year he’s been with us now. So it’s kind of cool. But we use flugel horn as well.
KC: Oh, very cool. Russell Crowe, 30-Odd Foot of Grunts tomorrow night, Stubb’s. And again, tickets go on sale at 1:00. And we’ve got to figure out a way to give away a pair or two right now, because some people are stuck at work. They can’t go down and line up for tickets at Stubbs.
RC: Well, we’ve got ten doubles to give away, right?
KC: Yeah. We’ll spread them out a little bit. Let’s see. We said what the name of the last record was.
RC: Yeah, we did.
KC: If you were paying attention there when we played a song off the album, or you may have been on gruntland.com, the official Grunts’ page – and you know it’s just amazing how many different websites there are about you. There’s some people that have websites that are coming to these Austin shows, right?
RC: Yeah. The principle website is one called Maximum Russell Crowe. And the two girls that run that have never met each other. They’ve been doing that website for three years. One of them lives in San Francisco, the other one lives in Tasmania. And they’re about to meet. It could be a beautiful thing.
KC: Could be a cat fight. I mean, we don’t know.
RC: We don’t know. They could really hate each other’s guts. That will be funny as hell. The thing is, we’re going to have it on video, right?
KC: Yeah, right, because you’ve got these guys everywhere with the cameras. Okay. So what was the last Grunts’ album? We’ll take Caller 7 right now at 390-KGSR. And let’s play another song off that album. Should we play No. 4?
RC: No. 4, "What’s Her Name?"
KC: All right. Here we go.(Song: "What’s Her Name?)
Q 107.1 KGSR, 30-Odd Foot of Grunts. Live. KC:Where were you live that time?
RC: That was Melbourne, Australia., the Esplanade Hotel. Very famous hotel right on the waterfront down there in Melbourne. It’s a really stinky, skanky rock and roll venue that’s called the Gershwin Room.
KC: Russell Crowe, thank you again for coming in. We really appreciate it. You’re going to be here for a couple of weeks? RC: Yeah, we’re here right through this month, anyway, and then it just depends. I’m going to try and eke a little time in September, but I’ve got another job I’ve got to get onto where I’m playing a beast in a freak show, which I think is incredibly appropriate. In a move being directed by Jodie Foster, actually.
KC: You’re a beast in a freak show?
RC: Yeah, so I’m covered in hair. I’ve got sort of 12 weeks of putting a hair suit on, which is just going to be fabulous.
KC: Filming in some nice, warm climate?
RC: Orlando, Florida. It was going to film here, but they moved things around and we’re in Orlando now. And I’ve got to try and get some time at home and sleep in my own bed and see my dogs and kiss my cows and do all that sort of stuff in between.
KC: No time for the Olympics in Sydney?
RC: Well, I’ve got tickets, but I may get maybe one day. It just depends on when I can get down there, which is a bit of a bummer, because that’s the time you really want to be at home, when it’s in your own backyard.
KC: Absolutely. Well, thanks for coming into our backyard.
RC: Cheers, mate.
KC: And we will be looking forward to seeing you tomorrow night at Stubb’s. Again, if you want to line up for tickets, people are already doing it. 1:00 today at Stubb’s, 8th and Red River, some more tickets will be sold. Four per person is the limit. No phone-ins for these. And they will go quick. Thanks for coming in. Appreciate it.
RC: Cheers, mate.
______________________________________________________________________________
If you have any articles that you would like to see posted here for others to read, please email me:
