A little bit of related Sundance music news rolling in this afternoon. Two well-known modern musicians—one an indie-rocker, the other a now-seminal hip-hop artist—are plying their trades to some new films making their debut in Utah later this January. First up is Death Cab For Cutie frontman and ex-Mr. Zooey Deschanel, Ben Gibbard. The singer/songwriter’s first foray into solo film scoring was for the 2006 documentary “Kurt Cobain About A Son,” and now he’s dipping his toe in the waters once more for Lynn Shelton‘s “Laggies.”
Starring Keira Knightley, Sam Rockwell, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ellie Kemper, Jeff Garlin and Mark Webber, “Laggies” is a coming of age story about a 28-year-old woman (Knightley) stuck in permanent adolescence. It’ll be interesting to see the arrested development genre coming from a female perspective and to hear what Gibbard does with it.
Following that film we have the doc, “No No: A Dockumentary,” the story of the pitcher Dock Ellis who threw a no-hitter while tripping on acid. Known by fans and nonfans alike—perhaps you’ve seen the hilarious animated version of the story “Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No“—Ellis has become emblematic of professional baseball’s excess in the 1970s. Directed by Jeffrey Radice (doc shorts “The King,” “Dick” and “LSD A Go Go“), “No No: A Dockumentary” has been scored by Adam Horovitz aka Ad-Rock from the now defunct Beastie Boys (R.I.P. Yauch). Horowitz has been quietly doing a bit of score work since the early aughts like fellow Beastie Adam Yauch‘s concert doc “Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That!.” “The Thing That Happened” and later this year the Odette Annable-starring “The Truth About Lies” which he wrote another full original score for.
More Sundance score news is surely right around the corner as the festival itself runs January 16-26. Photos from “No No: A Dockumentary” below, but first, the animated tale.
