Music managers don’t get the same pop culture attention as the rock stars they handle, but Richie Lanz makes a pretty good argument that they should. He discovered Madonna. He inspired Steven van Zandt to wear a bandana. He got Jimi Hendrix to perform “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock just by asking. The guy is a legend.
He’s also, as you might have guessed from the video above, fictional, a character played by Bill Murray in this fall’s Rock the Kasbah. Directed by Rain Man’s Barry Levinson and written by Magic City creator Mitch Glazer, it’s a comedy about a music manager o who winds up reviving his career by shepherding a young woman through Afghanistan’s version of American Idol. In addition to having worked with Murray on the modern Christmas classic Scrooged, Glazer is a veteran of the classic music magazine Crawdaddy—yes, that’s him playing himself in this mockumentary. So you can guarantee he knows what he’s talking about when mining comedy out of the music industry.
Rock the Kasbah, which also stars Zooey Deschanel, Bruce Willis, and Kate Hudson, opens October 23.
