When will Guns N Roses get the Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocketman treatment? Slash, the band’s iconic lead guitarist, says the answer is simple: never.
Slash, born Saul Hudson, spoke with MovieMaker recently about the horror film The Breach, which he executive produced and scored. He said Guns N Roses has been approached about a movie, and that he was also approached about telling his own story after he published his 2007 memoir Slash: The Autobiography. But the answer has always been no thanks.
“Yeah. That’s, that’s a that’s a funny one. People come to make the Guns N Roses movie. And then I have people coming to me about doing a movie — I think it was after I wrote my book. It’s just not something that — collectively we’re sort of just not interested. And I can’t imagine trying to find some actors that can portray the band properly. I mean, rock’n’roll movies suffer from being just super, super corny and unrealistic anyway, as a whole. There’s very few really good rock ‘n’ roll movies. So I would hate to sell us out ourselves out with some sort of script that’s supposed to depict our history. I don’t see it happening.”
Same goes for a solo Slash movie? “No, I definitely don’t want to do that,” he says.
You can listen to our full conversation with Slash in the latest episode of the MovieMaker podcast, which you can hear on Apple or Spotify or here:
In the episode, he tells us about his work on The Breach, directed by his longtime friend Rodrigo Gudiño. The film, which just had its world premiere at the 2022 Fantasia Film Festival, follows a small-town chief of police (played by Allan Hawco) who is about to move on when a physicist’s very mutilated body turns up on the Porcupine River. That sends him on a quest, alongside his ex-girlfriend Meg Fulbright (Emily Alatalo,) to search for secrets within a physicist’s home, which is haunted by a sinister presence. Based on the book by Nick Cutter and adapted by Ian Weir, it also stars Natalie Brown and Mary Antonini.
The film has a Lovecraftian vibe, which brings things full circle for Slash: He tells us in the interview that his love of horror began in part with H.P. Lovecraft books, as well as the works of Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. Because he spent his early childhood in England, he also grew up with the Hammer horror films of Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Another early influence was his dad’s recording of Orson Welles’ 1938 radio drama War of the Worlds, which was so realistic that it tricked listeners into believing an alien invasion was underway.
Slash’s love of movies comes across in his music — not only in the majestic, cinematic sweep of his playing in songs like “November Rain” and “Estranged,” but also in Guns N Roses’ longtime association with Hollywood. The group’s breakthrough single, “Welcome to the Jungle,” was the main theme of Clint Eastwood’s final Dirty Harry film, The Dead Pool, and the video for “You Could Be Mine,” featured in Terminator 2 and guest starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, helped drive anticipation for the sequel to impossible highs. This summer, Guns N Roses again owns multiplexes, thanks to the wall-to-wall G’N’R soundtrack for Thor: Love and Thunder. Slash explains in the interview how that came to be.
He also talks the future of rock ‘n’ roll — and movies, discussing how the advent of streaming has hurt the music business, and could similarly harm films.
“I’m sort of scared to see where that’s going, you know?” he says. “And then we had the pandemic, which took everybody out of theaters and into their homes. I don’t know if they’re ever going to really properly fix that, you know?”
But he adds: “I never get to be too forlorn about it, and go, ‘Oh, it’s so sad what’s happening,’ because things come and go and change, and things turn around and whatnot. You just sort of have to just ride the wave.”
Main image: Slash in the video for Guns N Roses “Sweet Child O’ Mine”
Share:
