Jared Leto lives in Los Angeles, but at the Toronto Film Festival premiere of his documentary Artifact, about his band 30 Seconds to Mars’s legal battle with their record label, EMI, last week, he was definitely on home field. Nearly everyone in attendance seemed to be a megafan; we spotted several women with pyramid tattoos symbolizing their devotion to an elite “family” of 30 Seconds to Mars fans known as the Echelon. When the frontman and sometimes-actor (Jordan Catelano!) told the crowd he would take questions from those who’d come from furthest afield, a woman next to us shouted, “I’m from Portugal!” Leto didn’t hear. Then he said he’d take questions from people from Toronto. “What about from Buffalo?!” shouted the same woman. By the end of the Q&A, after having not gotten picked, she had run to the stage and was throwing a scarf (a gift, presumably) at Leto and holding her hand over her heart telling him he didn’t know what he means to people. After that display, he probably does. And after Leto led the audience in a “Yes, we can” chant about voting for the film, it won the People’s Choice Award for best documentary, despite having debuted just three days before the end of the festival.
But the film, which Leto directed under his pseudonym Bartholomew Cubbins, has a lot for non-fans, too, using EMI’s $30 million suit against the band for breach of contract as a launching point for talking about the fucked-up state of the music industry. Despite selling 3 million copies of their second album, A Beautiful Lie, the band — Leto on vocals and rhythm guitar, his brother Shannon on drums, and Tomo Milicevic on lead guitar and keys — found themselves more than a million dollars in debt to EMI having, they claim, never made a dime off any of the sales of their album, and they wanted out. Then, just as they were starting to make a documentary chronicling the making of their third album, EMI sued them, turning it into a documentary about them making an album in the face of a massive legal battle that might prevent the album from getting released. They eventually renegotiated with EMI, deciding that it was the only option. Jada Yuan spoke to Leto at the Shangri-La Hotel in Toronto just before he flew back to L.A. [SPOILERS ahead, though this is a documentary, so if you know the band’s history, you probably know what happens in the movie.]
But the film, which Leto directed under his pseudonym Bartholomew Cubbins, has a lot for non-fans, too, using EMI’s $30 million suit against the band for breach of contract as a launching point for talking about the fucked-up state of the music industry. Despite selling 3 million copies of their second album, A Beautiful Lie, the band — Leto on vocals and rhythm guitar, his brother Shannon on drums, and Tomo Milicevic on lead guitar and keys — found themselves more than a million dollars in debt to EMI having, they claim, never made a dime off any of the sales of their album, and they wanted out. Then, just as they were starting to make a documentary chronicling the making of their third album, EMI sued them, turning it into a documentary about them making an album in the face of a massive legal battle that might prevent the album from getting released. They eventually renegotiated with EMI, deciding that it was the only option. Jada Yuan spoke to Leto at the Shangri-La Hotel in Toronto just before he flew back to L.A. [SPOILERS ahead, though this is a documentary, so if you know the band’s history, you probably know what happens in the movie.]
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SOURCE: vulture.com
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