I have been wanting to talk to Jared Leto ever since I saw Mr. Nobody in 2011. It didn’t happen for his subsequent film Dallas Buyers Club either, although Leto has begun receiving nominations from the Independent Spirit Awards and other critics groups for his performance in that film as Rayon. He even won The Hollywood Film Festival’s award for Breakthrough Actor already, so now is a good time to talk to Leto. His new film about his band Thirty Seconds to Mars is the film that connected us.
Artifact follows the band through a legal battle with their record label EMI, who sued them for $30 million, even though they had yet to be paid for any of their albums. The band tried to terminate their contract with EMI in 2008, citing a seven year statute of limitations on any contracted service, which they had fulfilled to EMI. EMI’s response, under the leadership of Guy Hands, was to sue the band for $30 million, effectively holding the band and their future album hostage, not to mention even a successful rock band doesn’t have $30 million to pay off their own record label (see above, creative accounting kept them from receiving any money for their previous work).
The film documents the band – Leto, his brother Shannon and Tomo Milicevic – struggling to combat the corporation and still create music, which would become their album This Is War. Artifact is now on iTunes and VOD.
Crave Online: I discovered Mr. Nobody two and a half years ago at a film festival and it blew my mind. I’ve been in love with it and I’m glad it finally got released this year in the states.
Jared Leto: Yeah, it was a very special film and I’m glad that people will finally get a chance to see it. I know it’s on iTunes finally here in the States and that’s nice.
You do so few movies, was that frustrating that a monumental movie like that took so long to come out?
Yeah, it was frustrating. It was disappointing, heartbreaking. It was a really special film and sometimes everything doesn’t work out the way that you had hoped it would. I think people will discover the film and it’s nice that it’s finally out now.
Does doing a movie like that with concepts about choices and outcome make it easier to go through things like we see in Artifact? I hate to say anything makes it easier, but does a film like Mr. Nobody stay with you and help give you the confidence to make the choices you need to make when going through a battle with the record label?
I think so. I think it can help put you in a more philosophical state of mine, because really the film is about philosophy, right? It’s about ideas and choices. So yeah, I think it can be a good thing.
We know the music business is struggling, but if the best plan a label can come up with is to sue the artist, does that bode poorly for the future of the music business?
I think the music business is in a difficult state right now. That’s one of the reasons I made this film was to look for answers. Artifact examines this industry that’s under siege right now and has been for a number of years. I think it will shock a lot of people and surprise a lot of people. I’m excited for artists and creative people to see the film. Hopefully it sheds some light on that uneasy relationship between art and commerce.
As fans, we do want you to be paid for your work. Is there anything we can do, like buy things directly from you?
I mean, that always helps and it’s not necessarily about getting paid. It’s just about not getting ripped off. It’s about not getting treated unfairly. It’s a challenging time right now. It’s a challenging industry but I think that ultimately this battle and going to war helped make us stronger and it was well worth the fight.
Does the film become both an intimate look at the business as well as your songwriting and recording process?
I think it’s a look at the record industry, the death of one era, the beginning of another. It examines art and commerce and technology. It’s a film that will probably be of interest to people who love documentaries. You don’t even really have to know about Thirty Seconds to Mars or be a fan of the band to enjoy the film. You see a group of artists that are in the middle of a creative process but also fighting a giant corporation. There’s a bit of a David and Goliath story there as well.
Are the parts where we see you playing on the piano and recording accurate to how Thirty Seconds to Mars usually creates music?
You know, we were making an album under duress with a lot of stress, with a $30 million lawsuit hanging over our heads and the potential for everything we worked for to be taken away from us. So it was a bit more stressful than maybe other times.
How did you get your fellow artists to talk about their labels and contract issues?
It was pretty easy to get other artists to talk about. I think anybody that’s been signed for a significant period of time had stories to tell. That goes for artists and for people who worked at labels, and I interviewed both people from the record label and artists who had been a part of the label system.
