The Beastie Boys introduce themselves in a teaser for the upcoming Spike Jonze-directed documentary. Titled Beastie Boys Story, the live documentary will hit IMAX on April 3rd for a limited time, before streaming on Apple+ on April 24th.
The clip opens with Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz rapping the opening lines to their 1986 song “Paul Revere” (“Now here’s a little story I’ve got to tell/About three bad brothers you know so well”) as Adam “MCA” Yauch and Michael “Mike D” Diamond sit next to him on the couch. Vintage clips of the hip-hop trio flash across the screen.
The documentary is a live extension of 2018’s Beastie Boys Book, a memoir that paid tribute to Yauch, who died of cancer in 2012. “Looking back, it’s like, oh shit, that was crazy — how did we live through that?” Horovitz told Rolling Stone of the memoir. “And look at us now. We’re grown-ups. We have to think about mortgages. I gotta get dog food.”
Live portions of the documentary were taken from Horovitz and Diamond’s recent show at Kings Theatre in Brooklyn; it was all part of a live tour directed by Jonze that consisted of Q&A segments, readings, and guest moderators.
“There are some friends you have lunch with so many times over the years, you know their order,” Diamond and Horovitz recently said in a statement. “Spike is one of those friends. And even when you don’t recognize anything on the menu, he comes up with something good for the whole table. Like when we wondered what to do when our book comes out … then Spike placed his order: ‘You will put on a show for the children.’ “