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Exclusive: Evan Mirzai, who has made The Black List four times and founded the House of M production banner, has signed on to executive produce and write on the indie pilot Bound For Glory, from producing and acting duo Michael Naizu and Derik Young. Mirzai is looking to take the original pilot to series.

Bound For Glory is set in present-day Los Angeles and follows a young, idealistic Asian-American actor (Naizu) who refuses to compromise with the industry’s subjugation of him based on existing prejudices and judgmental tropes. Struggling financially, he is faced with a decision to conform or stay true to his convictions.

The pilot is a passion project for Naizu and Young and marks their first project which was funded by sweat equity and out of their own pockets. The initial version of the pilot has already received acclaim and awards at various festivals including the Independent...

Cathy Smith, the onetime girlfriend of singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot who might have been best remembered for inspiring the hit song “Sundown” had she not met up with John Belushi at the Chateau Marmont on March 5, 1982, died Aug. 18 at the age of 73.

Her death was reported by Canada’s The Globe and Mail. The longtime resident of Maple Ridge, British Columbia, had been on oxygen and in failing health the past few years, the newspaper said.

Smith, who had been a back-up singer (and occasional drug supplier) to the Canadian rockers who would later become The Band (she claimed “The Weight” was inspired by her), admitted to injecting Belushi with the heroin and cocaine that led to his death at age 33. In a 1986 plea bargain, she pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter and several drug charges and served a 15-month prison sentence at California Institution for Women. Upon release, she was deported to her native Canada,...

Moments before he began filming his reaction to Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” Tim Williams had the same thought that he has before he records every video for Twins the New Trend, the YouTube channel he runs with his brother, Fred.

“I always think, when we do a video, that it could be that person’s favorite song that we’re reacting to,” Tim Williams, 22, says. “You know, if you have a favorite song and you’re seeing somebody reacting to it, you’re going to watch it.” Tim...

The Last Waltz is one of the greatest concert movies of all time. It’s also one of the most over-tributed. But Marcus King and a cast of Nashville’s finest breathed new life into the Band’s storied farewell show on Monday night with fresh arrangements and, in some cases, even new lyrics.

The leader of the Marcus King Band wrapped up his Four of Kind: Live From Nashville virtual concert series by playing 15 songs from the landmark 1976 gig, along with a group of friendly musicians. Opening with a slowed-down,...

Bill & Ted Face the Music

Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) aren’t exactly on track to fulfill their duty of writing the song that will unite the world. For starters, they each have marriages that need fixing, and their idea of joint couples therapy doesn’t seem very promising. Plus, their band, Wyld Stallyns, receives more grimaces than applause. With no world-uniting material on their hands, they resort back to time travel to steal the song from their future selves. This time, they aren’t the only ones...

Probably the last time most “American Idol” fans saw Laine Hardy, the Louisiana lad who won Season 17, was when he performed the Rascal Flatts tune “Life is a Highway” that was featured in the Pixar animated film “Cars” on May 10 for Disney night on Season 18, a few shows before Just Sam was proclaimed the winner. The show went to great lengths to maintain social distancing since the pandemic by allowing the performers to shelter in place and yet still compete.

Hardy himself did a virtual tour to promote his new single inspired by his Cajun roots, “The Ground I Grew Up On” and other new tunes by doing more than 15 online stops in April and May. But the 19-year-old country singer shared his diagnosis on his Facebook page and Instagram story on Sunday, June 21. He wrote, “This wasn’t what I expected on the first day of summer. My doctor confirmed I have coronavirus,...

“The High Note” began life as a screenplay titled “Covers,” and at times the music-themed drama turns into a tribute to the power of a cover song performed by someone other than the person who originated it: Aretha Franklin with Bobby “Blue” Bland’s “Share Your Love,” the Staples Singers with the Band’s “The Weight,” P.P Arnold with Cat Stevens’ “The First Cut Is the Deepest,” the Dixie Chicks with Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” …

And the movie, which was directed by Nisha Ganatra (“Late Night”) and written by Flora Greeson, would like to take some familiar material and put a fresh spin on it, too. How well is succeeds depends on one’s tolerance level for understatement and for unabashed corn, both of which are found in the film, though obviously not at the same time.

Instead, it bounces around like a musical artist determined to show off...

Last year, Robbie Robertson played “The Weight” with musicians around the world, including Ringo Starr, Japanese guitar virtuoso Char, Congo soul singer Mermens Mosengo, and others. It’s been streamed more than 8 million times on YouTube. Many of those streams happened in the past month; Mark Johnson, co-founder of Playing for Change, who made the video, suspects it became “a tool for people in isolation.”

For their first video since “The Weight,” Johnson and his team chose the Cuban classic “Chan Chan,” popularized by Buena Vista Social Club in 1997. Johnson...

In 1968, the Band recorded “The Weight,” a song full of images and characters that Robbie Robertson said he had been storing in his imagination for years. Robertson admits in his autobiography, Testimony, that he struggled to articulate to producer John Simon what the song was even about, but it’s become the Band’s most well-known classic, and it still echoes loudly today. Playing for Change, a group dedicated to “opening up how people see the world through the lens of music and art,” recently spent two years filming artists around the world,...

A 2019 video of Robbie Robertson playing “The Weight” with Ringo Starr and musicians from all over the world went viral again this week for reasons that aren’t quite clear, but maybe people isolated in their homes just needed something uplifting to watch. “This started circulating on Twitter again a couple days ago,” Robertson wrote on Facebook on Monday. “Hopefully it can bring the Fb community a bit of joy in these difficult times. Blessings to all.”

It wasn’t the first time that Ringo had performed a Band classic...

Few artists have been present at as many turning points in rock & roll as Robbie Robertson. Long before he was a member of the Band, writing modern-day standards like “The Weight” and “Up on Cripple Creek,” he was writing songs, playing guitar, and touring with Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks in the late Fifties. The Hawks later became the Band, placing Robertson at the forefront of Bob Dylan’s first electric tour, jamming at Big Pink, playing Woodstock, and the Martin Scorsese–directed concert film The Last Waltz.

Robertson’s...

Robbie Robertson walks through the inspiration behind “The Weight” in a clip from the upcoming documentary, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band, in theaters February 21st.

The clip, shared via Paste Magazine, features Robertson tracing the initial inspiration behind their 1968 classic to his Martin D-28. “On Martin guitars, it talks about where they’re made,” he states. “And they’re made in Nazareth, Pennsylvania.”

He starts singing the opening line (“I pulled into Nazareth…”) before recalling how he traveled from Canada to the Mississippi Delta at age 16. “Characters...

Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band plays with the hits and rolls the punches.

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Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band is a loving look at the memories of the founding guitarist and main songwriter of his band. Robertson is a storyteller, in verse or narration, and he has almost purely fond memories of the group, its music and the other guys in it: Drummer Levon Helm, who sang lead on some of their most signature songs, bassist Rick Danko and keyboardist Richard Manuel, whose vocals also led classic songs, and Garth Hudson who created soulful sounds from almost any instrument. The purity is put to the test, but who's telling the story? The guy who looked inside the acoustic guitar he was fingering and pulled into Nazareth with a heavy load but friends to help him bear "The Weight."

Early in his career,...

The 19th annual Sidewalk Film Festival kicked off last night in Birmingham, Alabama. It's an annual celebration of independent cinema, and we have an exclusive clip from an upcoming screening that provides an example of that spirit. The Weight will enjoy its world premiere on Saturday, August 26 at 9:50 p.m. at Asfa: Dorothy Jemison Day. What's it about? "A divorcee's love for her missing ex-husband pulls her into a small town crime ring when the sheriff refuses to search for him," according to the official verbiage. The film is loosely based on life events of director/producer Thomas Rennier. Clayne Crawford (TV's Lethal Weapon), M.J. Brackin and Heather Roop star. We have a small, noir-ish taste of what's to come in our exclusive clip, which...

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