A long-lost Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers documentary will be screened with new restoration

14 September, 2024

tom petty documentary

A long-lost documentary starring Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers titled Heartbreakers Beach Party is set to finally be screened in cinemas with a new restoration. Watch its trailer below.

The film is notably the debut of director Cameron Crowe, who filmed and completed the project in 1983. Heartbreakers Beach Party depicts the band recording and promoting their fifth album ‘Long After Dark’, which will be reissued next month.

Heartbreakers Beach Party never made it to cinemas in the 1980s, as Crowe reveals in a press statement. “The fact that it was yanked from MTV after only one airing at 2:00 A.M. just shows that it was indeed an outlandish feast for fans in all the best ways,” he says. The film will be released in cinemas worldwide on two days only: October 17 and 20.

Earlier this year, Crowe was reunited with the 16mm reels of the film, which were long thought to be lost for decades.

“Heartbreakers Beach Party occupies a special place in my heart,” says Crowe. “Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers leaned into the making of the film with a kind of hilarious music-filled honesty that still feels fresh forty years later. It was also my first experience as a director.”

tom petty documentary
Cameron Crowe, as seen in the film with Tom Petty. CREDIT: Press

“Thanks to Adria Petty and the Petty Estate, along with our co-filmmakers Danny Bramson, Phil Savenick, Doug Dowdle and Greg Mariotti, I’m so happy we’re bringing it back in all its reckless glory.” See showtimes for Heartbreakers Beach Party here.

Heartbreakers Beach Party features behind the scenes footage of the apocalyptic western music video for ‘Long After Dark’ single ‘You Got Lucky’. It also shows Petty and the band on the road to promote the album – one scene that showed the group getting lost backstage at a venue purportedly inspired a similar scene in 1984 film This Is Spinal Tap.

‘Long After Dark’ will be reissued in October as a double disc and contains seven recordings that remained unreleased up until now. These include Petty’s ‘Never Be You’, which became a chart-topping hit for Rosanne Cash in 1984, as well as ‘Don’t Make Me Walk the Line’ and ‘Ways To Be Wicked’. The latter was released as a single by Lone Justice in 1985.

In other Tom Petty news, earlier this year Dolly Parton shared a new rousing cover of his 1985 classic, ‘Southern Accents’, Post Malone and Eddie Vedder came together in Tennessee to perform some of his tracks, and the long-awaited ‘Grand Theft Auto VI’ trailer was soundtracked by his song ‘Love Is A Long Road’.

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