Cusack and Robbins star as Ivan and Josh, friends since childhood now working as nighttime security guards until they figure out their future. Cusack\u2019s Ivan has ambition and drive while Robbins\u2019 Josh is sensitive and creative. Together they launch a music video business and take it upon themselves to revive the careers of their favorite soul singers, the fictional Swanky Modes (played by real-life soul legends Sam Moore<\/a> and Junior Walker). Josh and Ivan soon find themselves accidentally wrapped up in a blackmail scheme involving a sex tape and a conservative politician, complicating everything.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a hustler and an artist and the merging of the two, trying to get some sort of balance with your creative side and what you needed to do to make a living,\u201d explains Fishman, now 68, during a recent video interview from Venice, Calif. \u201cWe came up with the credo \u2018You do what you gotta till you can do what you wanna.\u2019 And that was really where it came from.\u201d<\/p>\n Before making his feature debut with \u201cTapeheads,\u201d the native New Yorker had already found success in his 20s as a music video director himself, creating clips for songs such as Suicidal Tendencies\u2019 \u201cInstitutionalized\u201d and the Georgia Satellites\u2019 No. 2 hit \u201cKeep Your Hands to Yourself.\u201d Straddling the music scene and Hollywood, Fishman found that a satire of conservative politics came to him naturally.<\/p>\n \u201cMusic videos seemed to be an easy thing for me to do because I knew that world,\u201d he says. \u201cEven though the story was what we thought would be completely ludicrous, it ended up being much more realistic than we believed.\u201d<\/p>\n John Cusack, left, and Tim Robbins in the movie \u201cTapeheads.\u201d<\/p>\n (American Cinematheque)<\/p>\n James Branscome, who programs the Cinematic Void series for the American Cinematheque, calls the rare chance to show the film a bucket-list experience.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a weird movie that felt lost, especially when it stars John Cusack and Tim Robbins being zany in a way they don\u2019t often get to be,\u201d he says by phone. \u201cIt felt like this very organic, perfect movie, like: This checks so many boxes for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the producers on the film is Michael Nesmith, a former member of the Monkees, and through him the project fell under the production umbrella of NBC. Fishman remembers being invited to the home of Brandon Tartikoff<\/a>, president of NBC Entertainment and a green-lighter of titles including \u201cMiami Vice\u201d and \u201cSeinfeld.\u201d What he thought was going to be a relatively brief meeting was instead hours of Tartikoff patiently going through the script page by page.<\/p>\n \u201cI did not know anything,\u201d remembers Fishman, whose most recent credit is the 2024 film \u201cWaltzing With Brando,\u201d starring Billy Zane. \u201cI thought Hollywood was always going to be like this. But I didn\u2019t realize that my best experience was my first and then we were going to have to fight and claw for the rest of it.\u201d<\/p>\n It was young casting director Victoria Thomas (lately of \u201cOnce Upon a Time \u2026 in Hollywood\u201d<\/a> and \u201cMichael\u201d) who brought in Cusack and Robbins. Cusack, a Chicagoan, was in Los Angeles to appear onstage with Robbins\u2019 theater group the Actors\u2019 Gang and the two of them came in to audition together.<\/p>\n \u201cThey had really prepared,\u201d says Fishman. \u201cAnd after an hour or more of the interview, which went great, I said, \u2018I want you guys to switch roles.\u2019 And that freaked them out. They were like, \u2018We can\u2019t do that. We rehearsed. We can\u2019t just throw this together for you.\u2019 I said, \u2018I really think you should.\u2019 And they said, \u2018OK, give us 15 minutes.\u2019 And they walked out onto the street in Venice and they came back in as the other characters, redid the audition and that\u2019s how they were cast.\u201d<\/p>\n Mary Crosby and John Cusack in the movie \u201cTapeheads.\u201d<\/p>\n (American Cinematheque)<\/p>\n Fishman made sure to show Cusack the 1957 film \u201cSweet Smell of Success,\u201d with Tony Curtis\u2019 smarmy press agent an influence on his character. Fishman also says Cusack\u2019s greased-back hair and pencil mustache were partly inspired by Eric Roberts in \u201cStar 80.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTapeheads\u201d captures a specific moment in Los Angeles history, sure to be nostalgic for some, from a desolate downtown to a percolating music scene. Legendary local party band Fishbone provided music for the score and appears briefly as a country-and-western bar combo. Devo <\/a>rerecorded a version of their song \u201cBaby Doll\u201d in Swedish to stand in for an international boy band\u2019s hit. The film is also full of cameo appearances by real-life music figures, including \u201cSoul Train\u201d host Don Cornelius<\/a>, MTV\u2019s Martha Quinn, comedian Bobcat Goldthwait, rapper Doug E. Fresh and musicians \u201cWeird Al\u201d Yankovic, Ted Nugent and Stiv Bators. (A then-largely unknown Courtney Love has an uncredited appearance as a dominatrix on a sex tape.)<\/p>\n \u201cThe soundtrack and the people we used in the film were reflective of the wide spectrum of what was unifying, I thought, for the counterculture in specifically L.A.,\u201d says Fishman. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a film about punk rock, it wasn\u2019t a film about rhythm and blues or hip-hop. It was a film about young people expressing themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you would go out in Los Angeles at that time, you would go to nightclubs and all these bands would be playing in the same club,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you were part of the counterculture you could play anything or dress any way and you were sort of accepted. It was a creative scene and that\u2019s what the film was about.\u201d<\/p>\n One highlight of the movie is a commercial Ivan and Josh make for local L.A. eatery Roscoe\u2019s House of Chicken \u2018N Waffles (still going strong), featuring a memorable rap by blues singer King Cotton and done with a bold yellow and black look.<\/p>\n \u201cI grew up in New York City and chicken and waffles was not a thing,\u201d says Fishman. \u201cPeople here would go get it late night in Hollywood and when I was looking for some business that they could do a video for, it just struck me as an absurd combination, which was all about what the film was about: absurd combinations. And it happens to be delicious.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat Roscoe\u2019s Chicken and Waffle commercial is incredible,\u201d says programmer Branscome. \u201cWhich is the most California thing because outside of L.A. no one knows what a Roscoe\u2019s is unless you\u2019ve been here. It\u2019s full of very niche stuff that is elevated. It works on one level, but if you know exactly what it is, it gives it a different dynamic.\u201d<\/p>\n Tim Robbins in the movie \u201cTapeheads.\u201d<\/p>\n (American Cinematheque)<\/p>\n When \u201cTapeheads\u201d was released in October 1988 (after a berth at the film festival that would be later renamed Sundance), it struggled to find theaters. Moore and Walker performed on \u201cLate Night With David Letterman\u201d as the Swanky Modes. According to Fishman, Cusack and Robbins were both reluctant to do press for the film at the time \u201cbecause they thought it was uncool.\u201d <\/p>\n It was not until it hit the VHS market that the movie truly began to find its audience. That said, it has never been on Blu-ray and is available to stream from only a few scattered sites. Perhaps this sold-out L.A. screening, with the support of some of the key behind-scenes-team, will help spur the film toward a broader renaissance. It deserves to be seen as more than just a cult curio.<\/p>\n \u201cAs soon as people saw the film, they said, \u2018Oh, this is a cult film\u2019 and I always hated that,\u201d says Fishman. \u201cI was like, \u2018No, it\u2019s not a cult film \u2014 it\u2019s a pop movie.\u2019 We wrote it to play to everybody.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ongoing explosion of revival screenings in Los Angeles is an opportunity not just to revisit accepted classics,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":984880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[395141,1582,276,1020,395137,14107,388935,158324,25231,2961,224,5337,7605,3196,1013,395138,395139,395140,395142,6620],"class_list":["post-984879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-brandon-tartikoff","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-film","tag-fishman","tag-hollywood","tag-ivan","tag-john-cusack","tag-josh","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-most-people","tag-movie","tag-music-video","tag-now-gone-los-angeles","tag-robbins-star","tag-tapehead","tag-theater-group","tag-time"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117049515566264324","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=984879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/984880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=984879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=984879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=984879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786033757_691_.jpeg\")
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