too. So when we got done with the last song, we decided, “We’re gonna kick their ass.” We took all our suits off and got into some dirty clothes, and we got eggs and everything, and we made them quite uncomfortable. We wouldn’t do it while the show was going on, ’cause we figured we would’ve got fired, but the minute the show was over, it was on. We got all of them. We didn’t discriminate.

BLINN Shortly after meeting Prince, I went to Minneapolis. We went to a couple of clubs, and I kinda picked up what I could on that scene. We were certainly an odd couple: I’m a fairly large human being, about six-three and 190 pounds. It was hard for me to just blend into the background. We found a way to work. He respected what I was doing, and I respected what he was doing. I did a couple of series with Wilford Brimley, whom I genuinely liked, and you could not pay me enough to ever work with him again. Prince was never a diva. He was there to do the work, and he worked his ass off.

With Blinn’s first draft in hand, Cavallo set out to
find a director. He was eventually steered toward
Albert Magnoli, a film editor and recent USC grad
with a jazz docudrama as his sole directorial credit.

ALBERT MAGNOLI (director) I had problems with the script. It just didn’t have any truth. If a film like this works, it works because it’s speaking to the kids and it’s coming from the heart. C AVAL LO We meet for breakfast, and [Magnoli] is jumping up and down and kneeling on the floor, telling me how he was gonna take the last scene of The Godfather—the famous montage of the christening while the guys are getting rid of all of Michael’s enemies. He said, “That’s how we’ll open the film. Prince will be performing, but we’ll introduce all the characters as we cut back and forth between Prince getting ready to go for the gig.”

BLI N N I think we had a better first draft—more
mysterious and offbeat. The character of the
father was a suicide, not an attempted suicide,

and he was gone. The overall thrust of the picture was the Kid being torn between the dark allure of death—what it does to a kid when a parent commits suicide—and music and sexuality. MAGNOLI I was told, “You’re gonna sit in a hotel room for a couple hours, and then we’re gonna meet Prince at midnight. We’re gonna go have a meal, and then you’ll talk about the script.” They picked me up at 11, and I sat myself down in the lobby near the elevator. At midnight, the doors parted and Prince walked out. That put the last 30 pages of the screenplay in my mind—I was able to discern a tremendous amount of vulnerability in him, which the material I’d studied hadn’t given me. Because when Prince is performing, he’s extremely assured. But what I saw walking across the lobby was a very vulnerable kid. CAVALLO You know how he’s called the Kid in the movie? Well, that’s all I ever called him: Kid. MAGNOLI We got to the restaurant—it was just a Denny’s or something like that—and sat

SPIN.COM: IT’S A WEBSI TE! / JULY 2009 55