After the one-two punch of a short-lived but funny HBO series and a platinum-selling 2002 debut album, it looked like Tenacious D might be destined to live up to its self-proclaimed title, "The Greatest Band On Earth." But after an epilogue-like 2003 DVD compilation, Tenacious D: The Complete Masterworks, three years went by with no new releases. Tenacious D's two members went their separate ways: Kyle Gass began appearing with his solo project, Trainwreck, and Jack Black's film career exploded into starring roles in The School Of Rock, King Kong, and Nacho Libre. But they were hard at work the whole time, creating Tenacious D In The Pick Of Destiny, which follows The D from its inception through its quest for a magical guitar pick formed from the devil's tooth, culminating with a musical showdown with the beast himself. The A.V. Club sat down with Black and Gass to discuss the movie, their costars from Meat Loaf to Satan (Dave Grohl), their upcoming tour, and their future projects for the silver screen.
The A.V. Club: The last time you spoke with us, you talked about this movie, and Jack said, "There will be no D wine until it's D time." Apparently you weren't kidding.
Jack Black: When was that?
AVC: 2001. And now it's almost 2007. Can you take us through the genesis of this project?
JB: Yeah, it's been percolating. Well, we did the Tenacious D show. Things didn't work out over there at HBO. We had to stop doing that show. But it worked out well, because we realized we were going to blow our wad after a season or two; we wouldn't have any more D stories to tell, probably. And this way, we could focus on one big D explosion movie.
Kyle Gass: Yeah, it seemed to be the best way…
JB: But then we sat down in earnest and tried to write it with a friend of ours. And came up dry. Nothing seemed to sound right. We didn't really have the confidence. We started like 32 different beginnings and just fucking threw them all out. To jump from like sketch to full-length feature is a fucking… It's like the difference between…
KG: A guy with a short story and an encyclopedia, I would say. Probably not that much.
JB: Not an encyclopedia.
KG: So we abandoned ship on that, and we said, "Well, all right. Let's maybe take some pitches from writers. Maybe somebody's got a great idea." And some friends of ours had a pretty good pitch, we thought.
JB: Yeah, it was a good idea. It was basically, "The sunken city of Atlantis is being crushed by Satan." And we're trying to bring it back to life.
KG: Unbeknownst to us.
JB: And there's a hot ninja lady who befriends us, and we both want to have sex with her.
KG: But she's only there to try to… It was a bit…
JB: So they wrote it and we read it. And we were like, "Yeah, it's funny, but it's just not our sense of humor. This is not what's happening." And around that time we started collaborating with this guy, Liam Lynch, who's known for his sick puppet show…
KG: Sifl & Olly.
JB: Sifl & Olly. And then later for his hit single, "United States Of Whatever." And he kind of gave us a boost of confidence. And he was like, "Why are you letting other people take a crack at a D movie? They don't know what The D is. You guys are the only ones that know. Come on! You can write it! I'll help ya." And sure enough, he did. He was a fucking incredible collaborator, and a shot in the arm.
KG: I'd say he was a great facilitator and collaborator.
JB: Yeah. "Fa-sala-tator."
KG: Yeah. He was a fasalatator. Liam's great, because he is a buddy and also a fan. But a fan in a good way, like, "Listen, I know why I like you guys. Make sure you guys do what you need to do." Like for instance, he did the "Tribute" video, which, uh… I think he really hit it out of the park. I thought it was really well done.
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