Rolling Stone 1.1 - Pilot

Rolling Stone - Pilot

Genre: Drama

Director: Oliver Stone

Writer: D.R. Cobb

Based on the Rolling Stone magazine

Cast: Josh Hartnett, Karl Glusman, Aimee Teegarden, James Urbaniak, Ross Butler, Alicia Witt John C. McGinley, George MacKay, Lucas Pittaway, Rhys Coiro, Jeremy Davies, Grey Damon, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Gethin Anthony

Plot: December 1969. Brady Conroy (Josh Hartnett) is a professor of journalism at University of California - Berkeley, ground zero of the Bay Area subculture movement. Brady is a popular teacher around campus due to his laid back style and relative young age. He is especially popular with the female students.

Brady is secretly dating one of his students, Celeste (Aimee Teegarden), since the beginning of the semester. Together they go to a King Crimson concert at the Fillmore West. They drink and smoke weed with other concert-goers in the crowd. Things slow down when the band begins playing "Moonchild", Brady and Celeste passionately embrace as they dance together, the rest of the crowd seemingly fading away.

Brady drives Celeste back to her campus dorm building. She invites him inside and they have sex before falling asleep. They awake in the morning to pounding at the door, Celeste opens it up to see campus security, who then escort Brady out of the building and into the office of Dean Alan Smalling (John C. McGinley). Smalling berates Brady for having relations with his students before firing him and telling him to pack up his office immediately.

Unsure of what to do with his career next, Brady heads to a bar near campus to drink away his sorrows. As he drinks, he starts flipping through the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine, which somebody has left behind at the bar. As he flips through the pages, something stops him in his tracks. He recognizes the name of the publisher Jann Wenner as a former student of his.

Brady heads straight to the Rolling Stone magazine offices on Brannan Street in San Francisco. He walks in like he knows where he's going until he is stopped by Kylee Hargrove (Alicia Witt), the office manager. He tells her that he is there to see Jann Wenner, but doesn't have an appointment. He gives her his name and asks her if she'll tell Jann that he's there. A few moments later, co-founder and publisher of Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner (Karl Glusman), walks out of his office, surprised to see Brady there.

Brady and Jann catch up in his office with standard chit-chat for a few moments before Brady finally gets up his nerve and asks Jann for a job. Jann is caught off guard by this development. Jann tells him that he has a job that Brady can prove himself with, covering the Altamont Free Concert that Saturday at the Altamont Speedway and featuring Santana; Jefferson Airplane; The Flying Burrito Brothers; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; the Grateful Dead and most importantly The Rolling Stones. Brady comments that it's a pretty short-notice assignment. Jann tells him that Lester Bangs was supposed to cover the event, but had to drop out to head out to Detroit for undisclosed reasons. Jann tells him that if Brady can write an article that will impress he may have a regular gig on the staff for him. Jann tells Brady to grab his press credentials from Kylee.

Mick Jagger (George MacKay) and Keith Richards (Lucas Pittaway) leave the stage after a concert of their band, the Rolling Stones, and they are ushered into a car to the airport by their road manager Sam Cutler (Jeremy Davies). He tells them that they are on their way to San Francisco to play a free concert. Jagger is confused about why the concert is going to be free, and Cutler tells them that there has been a great deal of media criticism regarding the ticket prices for their American tour, so they're going to end it all with a big free performance.

On the day of the show, Brady invites Celeste to tag along, but she declines since she has some final reports to finish up that weekend. When Brady gets to the Altamont Speedway, the place is already packed with around 300,000 raucous fans. Brady takes his place next to the stage and notices the presence of dozens of intimidating bikers from the Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels, led by Sonny Barger (Rhys Coiro). They sit at the edge of the stage double-fisting beers, their payment for protecting the stage.

When the show begins, Santana gives a smooth opening performance. By the end of their set, Brady notices that the Hells Angels running security are beginning to get loud and are clearly all drunk. The next band up is Jefferson Airplane led by their lead singer Marty Balin (Gethin Anthony). The crowd gets into the performance and, in an effort to get closer to the stage, topple over one of the Angels' motorcycles. Balin hops off the stage to try to sort things out during a guitar solo, and is hit in the head by one of the bikers with a beer bottle, knocking him unconscious. The band gets up and leaves, while some roadies help Balin up off the ground and bring him back stage. When the Grateful Dead's road manager, Rock Scully (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), hears about what happened to Marty Balin, he announces that his band will not go out and perform for such a violent crowd and begins having people pack up the band's gear.

The crowd begins to calm down as the next band, The Flying Burrito Brothers, led by Gram Parsons (Grey Damon), lay their country-rock stylings on the crowd. The women soon over Parsons, but many in the crowd are more mellow, and the whole set goes down without any violent acts from the crowd or the Angels. Brady, notepad, in hand takes notes on the audience response to the band, a personal favorite of his.

There is a lengthy break between the end of The Flying Burrito Brothers' set before the Rolling Stones are due to hit the stage. Brady observes back stage, as the other bands are already having trucks loaded up with their gear, eager to leave the premises as soon as possible. Parsons offers Brady half a joint before he hops in a van that takes him away from the venue.

The Rolling Stones finally take the stage as Brady finishes off Parsons' joint. They open with "Jumpin' Jack Flash" to rabid applause. Brady finds a spot at the front of the stage near the Hells Angels to get a better view of the band as they begin to play "Sympathy for the Devil". One of the Angels begins shoving up toward the crowd as he struggles to the behemoth biker his press pass. Sonny Barger pulls the other biker off of Brady when he notices the credentials. Suddenly a fight breaks out in the crowd at the foot of the stage. Brady watches as the Angels descend upon the chaos with fists of fury, dispatching and dragging off the fighting fans.

The show continues without incident until during "Under My Thumb" when a group of fans try to storm the stage. One of the fans makes it pretty close to the stage, clearly drugged out of his mind. One of the Angels grabs the fan by the head, punches him, and throws him back into the crowd. Undeterred, the same fan tries charging the stage again with a crazed look in his eyes. He draws a revolver from his jacket. Barger, seeing him draw the gun, pulls out a knife and stabs the fan several times until he drops the gun and collapses. Other Angels converge around the fan and begin stomping on him. Mick Jagger stops mid-song after noticing the scuffle and the stomping. Into the mic, Jagger asks if there's a doctor nearby. They take a short break.

Brady listens in as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards debate whether or not to continue the show. Richards suggests that the crowd may get even more unruly if they cut the show short and may degenerate into a full-scale riot. Brady watches as the lifeless body of the fan is dragged away from the crowd by medical staff. The Rolling Stones resume their set, and the crowd having been scared into submission for the most part, behaves themselves until a naked woman attempts to climb onto the stage past the drunken Hells Angels. The absurdity makes Jagger start laughing during "Gimme Shelter". Brady follows the medical staff to the side of the stage where the attempt to take the vitals of the dead fan. After the show, Brady heads straight to Celeste's dorm to see her. She asks how the concert was, but Brady doesn't want to talk about it.

Brady turns in his write-up of the concert to Jann at the Rolling Stone offices. Jann reads it aloud in the conference room to co-founder and consulting editor Ralph J. Gleason (James Urbaniak) and writer and senior editor Ben Fong-Torres (Ross Butler) while Brady waits out in the reception area. Jann finally comes out of the office and tells Brady they all loved the article and offers him a staff writer position with the magazine, which Brady accepts.

A brilliant return to form for the underrated Josh Hartnett. He's able to act with the huge cast of diverse characters around him with ease and it makes for a pleasant viewing.

Legendary director Oliver Stone's gift to the television world is an eclectic look at the raucous 70's music world and I can't think of a better director for this series. He nails the climate down to a tee. It offers a world of possibilities that I'm sure Stone will be able to exploit.

D.R. Cobb impresses in his TV debut, being able to balance so many characters with remarkable talent. It remains to be seen how he's going to be able to keep the bar so high, but I'm very excited for the future of Rolling Stone