LOS ANGELES (Dream Entertainment/ www.motley.com) - As the eagerly anticipated
Motley Crue "Red White & Crue Tour 2005 ... Better Live than Dead," presented by VH1 and VH1 Classics, launches in cities across the U.S. and around the world, it is advised that fans get to their seats in time for the start.
Each show on what Pollstar has called the year's #1 tour, which has already sold out major venues in Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles, among others, will begin with the specially created clay-animated short featuring members of the Crue saving the world from imminent destruction, taken from Dream Entertainment's upcoming clay-animated feature film "Disaster! The Movie." Additionally, highlights of Dream's full-length theatrical feature, in which the band appears in a cameo role, will be shown during intermission at each concert. The film is scheduled for worldwide release later this year, with several distributors in the U.S. and Europe currently bidding on the finished production.
Dream Entertainment, the L.A. based production company helmed by film veterans Ehud Bleiberg and Yitzhak Ginsberg, created the customized excerpt with the Crue especially for the tour. Roy Wood, who had a short stint at MTV's popular "Celebrity Death Match" series and as an animator at "MAD-TV," directed the movie. Ginsberg and Bleiberg produced the film along with John Glen, Travis Wright and Even Astrowski, while Paul Benson and Matt Sullivan wrote the screenplay.
The outrageously hilarious introductory short, which was voiced by the band members themselves, will be followed at intermission by "coming attractions" for the full-length feature about a group of unlikely heroes, led by vulcanoligist Harold Bottoms, who aim to save the world from a runaway "planetoid" in a raunchy, no-holds-barred parody of such action movies as "Armageddon," "Twister," "Star Wars" and "Apollo 13."
The unusual pairing was cemented when Motley Crue member Nikki Sixx viewed the movie and invited the filmmakers to contribute footage to show at the start of the concert and during intermission, where coming attractions from the full-length feature will set the stage for the second half of the band's performance.
"These guys are f***ing brilliant," said Sixx. "With their help, the Crue is out to save the world from imminent disaster. 'Disaster! The Movie' just adds to the circus atmosphere surrounding this tour."
A series of radio and Internet promotions and contests to promote the film will take place as the "Red, White & Crue" tour winds its way around the U.S. and the world, with a concentration on viral and grass-roots online marketing. Trade magazine Pollstar dubbed it the #1 tour when tickets when on sale last year.
The Crue is currently working with MTV Films/Paramount on a film based on their N.Y. Times best-selling biography, Dirt, whose screenplay was written by Rich Wilkes. Several top directors in Hollywood have already expressed interest in the project.
For more information on "Disaster! The Movie" go to www.disasterthemovie.com or to stream the Crue footage, go to https://www.motley.com.
