/ jasonhook_5fdp - Jason Hook, rock music guitarist of Five Finger Death Punch started his music career at the age of 6 in Oakville, Ontario with private guitar lessons.
Hired Gun includes interviews with ex-Metallica bassist Jason Newsted, former Billy Joel drummer Liberty DeVitto, Rudy Sarzo (Ozzy, Dio, Quiet Riot) and Five Finger Death Punch guitarist Jason Hook, who was not only a sideman for Alice Cooper and Hillary Duff but is also an investor in the film as well.
Hired Gun is the brainchild of Fran Strine, who was a videographer for many years. It was while he was on the road with Five Finger Death Punch that he came up with the idea of making a documentary.
On a bus traveling through Singapore, Hook and Strine batted ideas back and forth. “We were talking about how much we loved documentaries,” Hook says. “We loved Grizzly Man, we had a lot of favorite films in common, and Fran was jonesing to make a new one. I said, ‘What if I pay for it? What if we get together and do it as a team?’”
The filmmakers behind Hired Gun hope to do for backing musicians what 20 Feet From Stardom did for backup singers. Vision Films
The idea of doing a documentary on hired guns “immediately struck a nerve with me,” Strine says. “I had seen documentaries like The Wrecking Crew and 20 Feet From Stardom, so I was kinda familiar with the concept, but I wanted to take it a step further.”
Both Hook and Strine wanted to make a movie with emotional impact, one that went much deeper than the usual Behind the Music-style format. “For me, the music is just the background,” Strine says. “I love stories, and I love to be moved by them. I really wanted to expose a nerve and show what these guys go through.”
In making Hired Gun, Hook and Strine conducted more than 300 hours of interviews with 55 musicians. The first musician interviewed for the project was drummer DeVitto, and it was just the first of many dark closets that the filmmakers opened. Any musician who’s been around long enough has heard their share of horror stories, but Hook says, “Holy shit, did we ever get blindsided with a lot of stuff with this movie.”
In fact, DeVitto was interviewed twice for the film, because the first interview was so volatile, and he unloaded so much baggage from the past, “He probably would have had a lawsuit on his hands if I’d put it out,” Strine says. “I told him, ‘I want to save you and interview you again,’ so we went back up to Brooklyn, narrowed it down, and got his story the way he wanted to tell it, where it wasn’t so over-the-top.”
For his part, Hook is among the countless musicians who initially didn’t want to be a sideman but fell into it anyway. He came to L.A. from Canada with $200 in his pockets, hoping to make it, and lived in a beat-up car by the beach.
“The A dream is to be an artist that sells millions of albums and everybody loves you,” Hook says. “But if you can’t connect to the A dream, the B dream is, ‘Well, I still love to play and I want to get paid a bunch of money to do it. Nobody likes what I create on my own, but I can lend my talent to another artist.' I think a lot of these players are grateful to still be in the arts, and if you can make a great living, or a decent living, just playing your instrument, you’re already ahead of 95 percent of musicians out there.”
While Hook has played with bubble-gum artists such as Hilary Duff and Mandy Moore, he didn’t feel he was selling his soul. And even when you’re backing up a pop artist, you never know who’s in the audience watching. It was playing with Duff that brought Hook to the attention of Alice Cooper, who then hired him for his touring band without an audition.
Hook also learned the hard way how disposable a hired gun can be when Duff fired the entire band via email. “That’s when I realized the gig can get yanked out beneath your feet,” Hook says. “Between Hilary Duff and Alice Cooper, I was scrambling to find another job.”