Heartbreakers Beach Party

A documentary about Tom Petty and his band. The footage was shot in 1982 and 1983. The band was on an album tour at the time; the camera goes into the rehearsal room, the bus, backstage and the studio. The content is interviews, concert footage and the ordinary moments in between. Petty is guarded when he speaks; the relationships inside the band show mostly through joking. The strange part is the film's history. It was broadcast once on MTV in February 1983, then the channel found it too experimental, pulled it, and it vanished for forty years. In that time it became a story told among fans. In 2024 it was restored in 4K and shown in cinemas. The new version has an introduction by the director and twenty minutes of previously unused footage. The person who shot it was a music writer at the time and this was his first work as a director; Cameron Crowe moved into film afterwards. Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench, Stan Lynch and Howie Epstein, then newly in the band, appear. Who it is for: anyone who listens to Tom Petty and is curious about the music documentary of the 1980s. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a tidy portrait; the film is loose, jokey and does not try to tell the story of a life.