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If you missed this story, a quick recap: One of the giant bobblehead masks from Arcade Fire’s Reflektor shows was stolen. It belonged to Richy Parry, and was nabbed in Bridgeport, Conn., after a live show. The band released the following statement:

“Richy’s bobblehead mask was taken from our show in Bridgeport, CT. This mask is a one of a kind piece that is an essential component to our live show. We have photos of the theft but rather than press charges we would prefer if the person who took it would get in touch with us to return it. Perhaps this is all an innocent mistake and you meant to leave the venue with your own oversized paper mache rendition of Richard Parry’s head?”

The truth is, a crime like this will likely go unsolved forever if we simply ask the thief to repent. Counting on the better angels of our nature is a classic Canadian mistake that just won’t work on the mean streets of Bridgeport. Even traditional law enforcement methods won’t work in the tight-knit community of concert-goers; no common police investigation will overcome the omerta code of silence. No, we need something deeper here. We need a psychological profile examining exactly who would have the greatest incentive to steal the bobblehead.

To get the process started, we’ve pored through the News databases and narrowed down our list to 10 suspects. Here they are. Please take us seriously, Arcade Fire.

1. Shia LaBeouf

Motive: The guy is very clearly desperate for attention, and will try to seek it by any means necessary. Now that Nymphomaniac has faded from public view and people no longer care about his penis, he’s basically out of stunts. Only a serious crime caper against one of the world’s most popular bands could get his name back in the public eye. That’s just narcissistic personality disorder personified.

Argument for Innocence: Nobody has stolen an Arcade Fire mask before. If LaBeouf conceived of the crime, it means he had an original idea. Highly unlikely.

2. Jon Heder

Motive: An accidental crime. Heder saw the mask, thought it was a depiction of himself from Napoleon Dynamite (see the resemblance), and took it home.

Argument for Innocence: Heder has not been seen or heard from since 2005. Presumed dead.

3. Winona Ryder

Motive: Am I the only one who finds it really interesting that she spoke withInterview Magazine in this month’s issue about how her 2001 arrest for shoplifting served as a wakeup call that turned her life around? Curious timing, right? Nice try, Winona. It was almost the perfect cover. But life gets a bit dull on the straight and narrow, doesn’t it? We think you’ve got that thieving 13-year itch.

Argument for Innocence: Win Butler specifically bans Ryder and Natalie Portman from Arcade Fire shows because he found Black Swan disturbing.

4. Mitt Romney

Motive: Mitt Romney has never been cool, and he’s always seemed pretty okay with that. But wouldn’t it start to wear on you after a while? Maybe he saw Obamamaking his NCAA picks, and just decided, enough is enough. He knew he could never be cool in public—that ship has sailed—but in the privacy of his own home, what’s cooler than blasting Arcade Fire, wearing Richy Parry’s mask, and pretending you’re in the band? NOTHING.

Argument for Innocence: Likely has no idea what “Arcade Fire” is.

5. Lena Dunham

Motive: None. But any post that includes the words “Lena Dunham” automatically lights up the Google rankings super-computer, maximizes SEO and guarantees 100,000 hits. So Lena Dunham Lena Dunham Lena Dunham.

Argument for Innocence: Lena Dunham Girls HBO think piece Lena Dunham’s body Lena Dunham feet.

6. Washington Post music critic Chris Richards

Motive: In our backlash report, featuring the top 10 negative reviews of Reflektor, Richards easily secured the top spot with his incredibly vitriolic take. I mean, he started the thing by calling them “gigantic dorks with boring sex lives.” And it gets worse from there. Is this objective criticism, or something more sinister? Could there be a deep resentment at play, something so insidious that it warps his brain and makes him try to sabotage the band? This could be a gateway crime for Richards, and while I’m usually not in favor of presuming guilt, he should probably be locked up for the band’s safety.

Argument for Innocence: Reflektor was pretty meh…

7. Win Butler’s Evil Twin Brother Flynn Butler

Motive: If Win can’t control his own band, it undermines him as a leader, and leads to insecurities that reach into all corners of his life. The first thing to go? His marriage. If he can’t keep a mask safe, Regine Chassagne asks, how can I ever count on him for something more important? So she leaves, but she still loves him, so where does she turn? The closest replacement: Flynn Butler.

Argument for Innocence: A quick Google search for ”’Flynn Butler’ twin Arcade Fire” reveals that his identity has been carefully concealed online. He’s careful, which means he probably had commissioned the robbery through a third party, and that third party has probably already been killed to cover his tracks. Also, he’s probably burned the mask to tie up loose ends. This will be a tough catch.

8. The Photographer

Motive: Think about it—the band claims they have photographs of the thief. If you’re the photographer, and you want to steal Richard Perry’s mask, how do you go about it? Easy. You get a fan to come backstage, you tell them you’ll photograph them with the mask if they just pick up the mask and take it out to the hallway where the lighting’s better. As they’re doing it, you surreptitiously snap photos of the act, and voila, you’ve got the “culprit” red-handed. Then you simply take the mask back, steal it, and show the “evidence” to the band after. The perfect crime.

Argument for Innocence: The whole “photograph” claim is almost definitely false. That’s a tactic that’s been used by elementary school teachers for years. “We know who stole the chalk, so admit it now or you’ll get in more trouble for lying.” There is no photograph. Nobody knows who stole the chalk.

9. Me

Motive: I’d really love that mask, and wouldn’t hesitate to steal it if I ever had the slightest chance. Also, if that happened, wouldn’t this post be the perfect cover? Nobody would ever suspect me. I’m just the guy trying to help!

Argument for Innocence: If I actually stole the mask, I’d never point the finger at myself.

Argument for Guilt: Or would I? Maybe that would be an even better cover-up, because it would prove that I’m an honest investigator out to uncover the truth at all costs, even if it meant accusing myself. Double reverse psychology!

Argument for Innocence: I swear I was in North Carolina when this went down.

Or Was I?

10. Arcade Fire Staged the Theft

Motive: Maybe they were looking for an easy way to transition away from the current Reflektor stage show without having to admit that the masks were creepy. Maybe it’s a con that will culminate in framing St. Vincent, who is currently threatening to steal their place as the mega-darling of the indie world. Maybe there are too many negative PR stories about Win Butler’s behavior on the basketball court, and the publicists are trying to deflect attention. It’s all in play.

Paste is at SXSW this week, and we just completed two days of interviews in our Paste Interactive Studio & Lounge, where Paste‘s founding editor-in-chief Josh Jackson and movies editor Michael Dunaway talked to filmmakers, actors, musicians and comedians. One of our favorite conversations was with Juliette Lewis, who was in Austin, Texas, for a pair of films she’s in—Hellion and Kelly and Cal. The full interview will appear in an episode of the soon-to-be-launched Paste podcast.

Josh Jackson: Everybody welcome back to the Paste 2014 interview lounge with Blue Sound. Thank you for joining us live in the audience here. Thank you for joining us through your iPod or computer at home through the podcast. We’re here with the very powerful, microphone-wielding Juliette Lewis.

Juliette Lewis: Woooo! Hi. I can hear people behind their computers like “Yeah!”

Michael Dunaway: The applause is overloading the inter webs as we speak. So Juliette is here at SXSW with two films that we really enjoyed, Hellion and Kelly and Cal.

Jackson: Music is a huge part of what we do, as is, of course, movies, so it’s great to have you here to talk about both.

Lewis: Yeah, because for the longest time I was a closeted songwriter. I was in the closet, for real, because music is so personal. It’s guttural. Even if it’s a song about sexual frustration, it’s just a fun rah-rah-rah song, it’s still all me. So I kept it really close to my chest and guarded for a long time and I ended up coming out. It was actually at my 30th birthday party—I had my first band and played. Yeah, it was funny. And then my first official gig was a gay night in Silver Lake, a little groovy party in Los Angeles. It was sweltering heat, and I remember it well.

Jackson: And there is a little bit of a stigma when actors and actresses decide to do music, and you overcame that straight out of the gate.

Lewis: Here’s the thing: I am so dialed in. This business is so cuckoo and not that friendly, although superficially it could appear to be. “You’re plain! You’re fat! She’s weird! She’s ugly. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever.” I’m so used to naysayers. So for example, when I came out and did Cape Fear, everyone’s like—where did Scorsese find this girl, this ingénue? She must just be just like this girl. I was nothing like that girl. Then Natural Born Killer was all over. It’s like, “Can you play a killer? It’s not possible.” So I had to brainwash him that I could strangle you with my bare hands. Which I didn’t say to him. But, no I mean he made me do like pull-ups.

Jackson: Wait, this is at the casting hour?

Lewis: He’d make me come in weekly and he’d put up a bar where I had to do chin ups. He’s like—if you can do 14 chin-ups, you can have the part. I don’t know. I never made it to 14, but I think he honored my spirit.

Dunaway: He saw that you were willing to actually…

Lewis: I was willing to go the distance! But so my point is now people are like, of course she’s Mallory. She lives in primal energies. Whatever. So it just goes on and on. So I’m used to people doubting you. And so with the music, all the things that are your weirdness, your pain, your weakness—it’s now my banner; it’s like my strength. So for instance, I used to get panic attacks in crowds because when you lose your anonymity at 19 and you’re an introvert, it might fuck up your head, which it did, and so I used to not go in crowded places. And then my rock band became this, this thing to face all my fears. But that was the least of my fears—judgment—I don’t give a shit. Here’s my whole point was like, I’m going to find the 40 people in any room and I’m going to take you with me. And we’re going to go on this journey together. And it started multiplying. And I also knew because music is so personal—there are a lot of shitty bands that are successful, and there are a lot of brilliant bands that not enough people know of. So I know music is just that personal relationship with your audience. And it also wasn’t gonna—there’s no future in it if it’s just for that curiosity factor. My first tour I did was the Warped tour, and I was likening myself to the bearded lady at the circus, because not only was I an actor touring, doing rock ’n’ roll, but I was also a female front person making really muscular male dominated rock music.

Jackson: And on that tour, there weren’t many women.

Lewis: There were 60 bands and three had females in them. So I worked for that, and I worked over every crowd. Now I’m slightly cocky about my live show. What I’m saying is that you may not like the music, but you’ll never be bored at one of my shows.

Jackson: Which is rare in music today. And it’s been five years now since Terra Incognito, but you did music for this movie. What are you doing musically right now?

Lewis: Yeah, I went through this whole soul-searching thing and had the Licks and my main partner in that, we split up. And then I did my solo endeavor and what that meant was getting all—I wanted to break the structure of what the Licks were—it was pretty much guitar-driven rock music and high energy and big choruses. And so I wanted to do more meandering songs—songs that break the verse-chorus-bridge structure and so it’s a weird record. It’s an acquired taste. But for me, I grew as a songwriter. So that was the last thing I did. And then I’m not done yet with cinema. So I was like, “Let me return to this pool and see what I can find, what I can contribute to it.” And it causes a little bit of split personality. It drives me crazy. I did August: Osage County—which was huge for me. It’s a Tracy Letts play. Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor—a beautiful cast. I did that a year and a half ago. And then, so this movie is the first time I’m actually writing music for a movie. So I’m cross-mating the two together. Now, it’s not my music. I’m writing in character, through my character—what she played in her high-school years. Which is all that ’90s kind of riot-grrrl style music that was so incredible at that time. So it’s sort of a niche sound, and I wrote this song. I had to use the lyrics that the screenwriter wrote, and also I wanted to write a decent sounding song. So the director, she gave me a Sleater Kinney song and PJ Harvey To Bring Me My Love. And I called up my first guitar player, Clint Walsh, and he beautifully translated it into this like bluesy, sludgy, seductive rift. And then we wrote the triply song that’s in there, that’s in the scene.

Dunaway: All you’ve gotta do is write a song as good as Sleater and PJ Harvey. That’s all.

Lewis: Well, let me go on record and say it is not. But you can be inspired by your heroes.

Jackson: But that’s really an interesting intersection between music and what you do as an actress, because you’re getting in the head of your character—which songwriters do when they’re writing a third person song. They’re getting in the head of their character. But you’ve now made a career of doing that on both ends of the spectrum.

Dunaway: And you also do it in Mark Ruffalo’s amazing film Sympathy for Delicious which I never pass up a chance to plug. Everyone on the podcast should go rent.

Lewis: Yeah, I want to do that more and more. All my musician friends—we all want to have our songs in film and television. It’s a great medium. It also gives you a chance, like I said, to write in different styles and stretch yourself. So in Kelly & Cal, the character, she was a bass player and they unearth a first cassette of hers. So we wrote that first song and then there’s the last song that closes out the movie was just inspired by how much feeling I had toward the film. The film, the girl goes through and she says there’s an existential crisis, and I felt like I had just passed through such a thing in my own life. I think I’m still kind of—now I say I’m on the other side of an existential crisis, so hopefully smooth weather up ahead.

Dunaway: An existential calm, maybe?

Lewis: It’s never gonna happen. I finally, I was laying in bed the other night and I said, “Juliette, you like suffering. Just enjoy it. You love suffering. You never like anything easy.” Because you’re like, “Why can’t life be easier!”

Dunaway: Sounds like a song to me. Sounds like you need to get writing.

Lewis: Well, I wrote a song that will be on my new EP! “I Know Trouble.” This one song is called “I know Trouble” and I wrote it with Cage The Elephant. I sort of kidnapped that and got the drummer, Brad Schultz, who is the cofounder of Cage, produced it. And we recorded it in Nashville, where I got this hat. You all at home who can’t see.

Dunaway: That’s great.

Lewis: I don’t drink Pabst, but it’s a new trucker hat. I’m wearing it.

Jackson: It’s a great hat.

Lewis: Thanks.

Dunaway: When is that EP dropping?

Lewis: In the next couple of months, but you’ve gotta understand, I miss it so much. When I don’t play live—because I’ll go through these real stages of melancholia, I mean ever since I was a kid, so I try to embrace it. But and then I go, “Oh my God, oh right, because you’re not singing. You’re not playing with people. You have to do that.” So this year, I decided not to do a full length because I’ve been gone for awhile. It’s a new sound. We were inspired a lot by The Kinks, The Zombies, the kind of early garage-y ’60s psychedelic music and the sounds in that. It’s just groovy. It’s cool. And Brad was instrumental in producing the sound, so that will come out in the next couple of months, I’ll put it all on social media and let people know about it. But I do have a few shows I’m opening for Page, just on the West Coast in April.

Dunaway: I pray you open the album saying, “Don’t call it a comeback.” Give LL a little shout-out. All right, so we could sit here and talk music all day long but we really need to talk about a little bit of movie stuff. Let’s briefly hit Kelly & Cal and then we’re going to bring in another special guest onstage to talk about Hellion. A little unannounced surprise for those of you here. So Kelly & Cal I really enjoyed. It’s a movie that when I heard the set up and heard the premise of, I was like, “Well okay, we’ll see. I love Juliette’s work.” I think you’re one of the most naturalistic actors around. You never see the strings. You never see you acting, so I’ll see pretty much anything that you’ve got a big part in. But I saw the film and it was so well executed. It didn’t fall into the many pitfalls it could have fallen into.

Lewis: Yeah, because for you all at home, I love saying that. We’re all together in this. But the story, it could have clichés about it, but it’s, but that’s life. Do you know what I mean? The clichéd older guy getting with a younger girl. Whatever. But what drives that story, that’s what’s behind it. So this one—she’s a new mother and she’s riddled with like, insomnia, but also with kind of not knowing where she’s going and how did she get here? And I related to that feeling, because the things that drove you when you were 25 don’t drive you when you’re 40. It starts changing, and you kind of miss it. You’re like, “But wait, remember that punk, that rebel spirit?” It’s a good thing to have. It changes. And she’s trying to navigate poorly this new stage in her life. She creates this unlikely friendship with a boy across the street, and it was a challenging thing on many levels. One—the most important thing was finding the kid. And so, I needed an of-age actor, first of all. And it’s played incredibly by Jonny Weston. He was 24 at the time, and he’s playing 17. Cal dominates these scenes. He has an angsty punk-rock spirit, and that’s really real and beautiful. And I was in love with Cal on the page, and then it was quite easy to be in love as Kelly and with John playing it. We had an incredible chemistry, and that was from the second we were in the room across from each other. So I needed a young actor that, because the director looked and guys and he sent in their great tapes, but what is it when they’re sitting across from me? I need them to really dominate the energy and not to give myself “Agh, ahhh!” Not many can. No I’m just kidding. Totally kidding, guys. Sorry I have low self-esteem that matches his cockiness, too.

Dunaway: It’s just the microphone! It’s giving you power.

Lewis: It is! Alright, but this was the first time I was in every single scene. We shot 16-hour days. And then, I went on to another labor of love. I mean, these independent films are so beautiful because it reminds you: This is why we make movies. We make them for the experience. We make them because we’re crazy. We want to create fantasy and real life so people can transcend and learn or just escape. So you’re doing it for all of the right reasons, and it was a really special experience. We shot in New York. We had wild Saturday nights and then worked real hard the rest of the week. My wild Saturday nights now are just dancing.

Dunaway: In your living room, or out in the world?

Lewis: No, out in the world!

Dunaway: Well, speaking of wild experiences, I think now it’s about time to bring to the stage the great and wonderful Kat Candler.

Lewis: Kat Candler! My director from Hellions!

Jackson: So Hellions was one of my favorite films from Sundance this year, and you’re here at SXSW as well and more people get to see this movie with Juliette Lewis and Aaron Paul and a couple of kids who just did phenomenal jobs in that movie.

Kat Candler: Yeah, I was so proud of those kids.

Jackson: So Juliette, in this one, you play the concerned sister-in-law of Aaron Paul, and your sister is deceased and these kids are in kind of a tough situation. But it’s this weird combination of the concern and being there for these children but also being alone as the antagonist in the film.

Lewis: You’re hitting the nail on the head. It’s such a trip because she’s such a good soul, but we have that confrontation scene with me and Aaron, and I’m like, “Oh, she’s fucking him over. It’s all for the right reasons, but then I love the complexity.” And Kat helped with all of this. A: She wrote the film. Also the layers, there’s a little selfish streak, and there’s a selfish streak in all of us—our own agenda. But there’s also what’s best for the kids, so I hope that all those colors came off.

Jackson: They did. And the audience goes back and forth, you know, as events sort of unfold in this movie—not knowing what to pull for. And Kat, that’s a feat in itself to pull off, to be honest.

Candler: Thank you. Yeah. With any kind of story that you’re writing—and I love, love, love the writing process—it’s about, I know I talked about this, it’s about, going in. South West Texas, referring to my town, and that’s not a world that I know, and I was going down there spending long kind of weekends exploring and investigating and knowing people and interviewing people and just trying to get the honesty and the authenticity of these characters and this world. Down to the just, it’s such a complicated dynamic between these two adults, again just to do right by this kid and trying to protect and take care of this kid ultimately, when they’re all sort of messing up in beautiful messed-up ways left and right.

Jackson: And how you see that there’s no bad guy either. There’s no pure sort of villain. And that’s what I love about this movie—this complex situation that you’re brought into. And you immediately feel for this character, including the sort of antagonist that you play.

Lewis: Well, I’m glad. It was fun for me, because it’s followed Kelly & Cal in that I’m doing my new kick. This is what I’ve been saying. I’m on a minimalism streak. You know, meaning, these aren’t extreme characters. They’re relatively normal people. That’s what I love. I love the layers and nuances. But they’re grounded. So you’re always reaching into your own bag of experience and things about yourself and finding those elements that create a character. And Kat was instrumental in that. She’s grounded, she’s grounded. And my big thing is always in my head that I say to myself is, “Do less, do less.” So it’s this whole trip on how to do nothing but there’s an energy there. You’re still moving people. It’s a real wild thing.

Candler: To your point of villainous characters, I hope that there are no—villian is not to be human. They need to have, you know some sort of hurt, even if it’s small or whatnot, but yeah, characters for me that I love and just kind of die for are the ones that are just making beautiful mistakes, and they’re fallible. Because I think that’s what’s interesting and at the heart of who we are and why we do what we do. We’re human.

Jackson: That is a great description of those characters. There are a lot of beautiful mistakes in that movie.

Lewis: I just wanted to say one thing about Kat that was so interesting. She’s the writer as much as the director. I mean, is the writer and director. And—this was your second film, right?

Candler: It’s actually my third. But I will say—the first two I kind of feel like were like my film school, because I didn’t go to film school. So this is the one I’m like, I want as many people to see this as possible because I really am proud of all of the work of everybody that was on the film. Regardless if it was on the soundtrack or the PA. All of our hearts were in this like 150 percent, and I couldn’t be more proud.

Lewis: Now I have to finish. So it’s her third film. But my point is what I’m looking for in a filmmaker is I don’t want someone—It’s like. I worked with another writer/director, and you’re more of a writer. Because filmmaking is a visual medium, so I want to know that you’re technically proficient. I want to know that you have a vision. And so what she did that blew my mind was how she describes the environment, because it was so much a part of the script. When you read it, you visualize where they are, and you can feel the dust, the mud, the desolation, and it’s, that’s a character in the movie. And that was the first thing, she pulls out this book and was like, “here’s this.” This is what it’s going to be, and I loved that we got to shoot in that part of town.

Jackson: It shocked me to hear that it was not familiar territory to you.

Candler: No, I had never been down to Southeast Texas before. So we had shot the short film in 2011, and someone said I think the expansion of this world is in Texas. And so I said, “let’s go!” So we went down and started taking these long trips and yeah, it’s that’s the logic of what we do as filmmakers and writers, is to being able to explore and discover.

Lewis: We have to say Aaron Paul, I mean! Rules this movie. He’s going to get out of bitch on this one! He’s this tortured beautiful soul, and he’s an epic actor. And so I was really happy to see him do this part.

Jackson: And a great role. There’s some, there’s this likable—I mean, evenBreaking Bad at his worst, there’s this likable quality about him that you can’t ever go. Even when he’s making his beautiful mistakes, like he does in the series and then in this movie, there’s something about that guy. You just want to give him a hug. And in this movie, he needs one.

Candler: Yeah, it’s great because you guys had Mary Elizabeth Winstead here right before us, and I had seen Smashed, and that’s what drove me to Aaron. I walked out of the theater thinking, “oh my God, the performance director was incredible with the actors.” And I was like, “oh my God, this kid Aaron Paul.” I had only seen two episodes of Breaking Bad at that point, because the box top episode is sort of the defining either you can stomach this or you can’t. And so I saw Smashedand I thought, “he’s so special.” There’s something wonderful about this guy, and that’s what, that’s when I went after him.

It turns out that Brian Wilson—leader of the Beach Boys, notorious recluse during the early 1970s—didn’t just lie in bed and let his beard grow long. In a recent cover story for the L.A. Weekly, I posited that Wilson had quietly amassed a body of songs from 1968-74 that fed Beach Boys albums, side projects and his own solo career for many years to come. The individual tracks that comprise the “Bedroom Tapes,” an umbrella moniker for the period entirely of this chronicler’s own making, are superfluous. The more important question remains the extent of Wilson’s lost catalog and how it came to matter.

The story goes that Wilson reached an artistic peak with his production of the Beach Boys landmark 1966 album, Pet Sounds, which was succeeded in every way by the infamous Smile sessions that followed in ‘67 and which ended in disaster. That is to say, the album was abandoned and left on the shelf until 2011, when it received a Grammy Award for Best Historical Album. Back in the summer of 1967, Wilson pulled out of his competitive production race with the Beatles. The Beach Boys then had a studio built in the living room of Wilson’s Bel Air mansion, where they’d work on a series of lo-fi albums in the wake the chief Beach Boy’s tumble.

To be certain, the home studio did not remain in the home until 1974, but was dismantled in ‘72. Albums recorded from summer 1967 to spring ‘68—Smiley Smile,Wild Honey and Friends—were indeed homemade and lo-fi Wilson productions, though they were tracked at Wally Heider Studio and ID Sound, as well as Wilson’s home. His full retreat as leader of the Beach Boys seems to have begun in the summer of ‘68, following a brief stint in a mental institution, and lasted until 1975, when the band appointed an experimental psychologist to coax Wilson back into official Beach Boys activity. However, as the “Bedroom Tapes” label represents the whole era and not a specific project conceived of by Wilson himself, it is important to acknowledge that cut-off lines of delineation can easily blur.

For starters, an alternate version of the Wild Honey track “I’d Love Just Once to See You” boasts an extended tag, whose quirk could mark the onset of the “Bedroom” sound. Alternately, spirited takes of “Whistle In,” from summer ‘67, are also characteristic of the way Wilson attached himself to a basic riff and noodled with it endlessly during the “Bedroom” years. By spring 1968, a number of unrealized outtakes from the Beach Boys’ Friends album were tracked, which too foreshadow the intimacy of Wilson’s early ‘70s stockpile.

“Our Happy Home” is a short, bouncy riff that maintains the gentle air of theFriends sessions. A tape labeled “New Song” features a slowed-down melody of what later becomes the Friends rocker “Transcendental Meditation”; the bridge to “New Song” is what has long been described by collectors as “Spanish Guitar Song.” Another, titled “Even Stephen,” is an early version of the Friends cut “Busy Doin’ Nothin’,” its casual lyrics presenting a visitor step-by-step directions up to Wilson’s pad. “You’re As Cool As Can Be” is an additional instrumental from the Friendssessions, this time an upbeat, driving melody pounded out by Wilson at the piano.

Wilson also cut an early version of the gorgeous Sunflower ballad, “All I Wanna Do,” which in ‘68 featured a sitar but no lyrics. A song titled “Walkin’,” as well as Wilson’s solo piano version of Burt Bacharach’s “My Little Red Book,” were also tracked during the Friends sessions, both long known to bootleg collectors. “Sail Plane Song” and “We’re Together Again” were recorded in the aftermath of Friends, and both have been comped on Beach Boys reissues since the 1990s.

Of particular note regarding the Friends album is the pair of tracks written by middle Wilson brother, Dennis—“Little Bird” and “Be Still.” According to Stephen Kalinich, who wrote lyrics to both songs, “Little Bird” was based around a riff that Brian had already worked on as “Child Is Father of the Man” during the Smilesessions. “It was his gift to Dennis and I,” remembers Kalinich. Brian was also the organist on “Be Still,” long thought to be a solo Dennis Wilson outing on vocals and keys. Brian, in fact, cut a longer organ version of “Be Still,” as well, with Kalinich reading it as an extended poem.

By 1969, Wilson—whose retreat from the Beach Boys had turned into a rout—commenced work on a full spoken-word album with Kalinich. “America, I Know You,” the album’s centerpiece, was, in fact, possibly the truest “Bedroom” tape in Wilson’s oeuvre. The backing track—a gorgeous string arrangement of ascending and descending chords—was tracked at the Wally Heider Studio on Aug. 22, 1969; according to Kalinich, however, the heartfelt reading of the poem was delivered in Wilson’s bedroom, where microphones were set up to capture the ambience.

Sadly, that same year, Wilson’s father, Murry, sold the rights to his son’s publishing to Irving-Almo at the absurdly low price of $700,000. (The catalog today is valued at around $100 million.) Wilson’s first wife, Marilyn, says the sale sent the fragile songwriter into even deeper depression.

The Beach Boys situation, sans Wilson, became desperate. A forged signature apparently put Wilson’s mansion up for collateral in order for the band to acquire additional recording funds needed to complete their last Capitol Records album, 1969’s 20-20. They signed with Warner Bros. in 1970. Mo Ostin, head of Warner Bros. at the time, said of the chance to sign the Beach Boys away from Capitol: “The only signature I care about getting on that contract is Brian Wilson’s.” Wilson, as the goose that laid the golden egg, was marched into a conference room in white undershirt and tossled hair, where photographs show him scribbling his John Hancock with pronounced disdain.

1970’s Sunflower, the Beach Boys’ Warner Bros. debut, was, in many respects, theirAbbey Road—a lush production that signaled an end to the 1960s, the decade that gave them creative flight. Sunflower was, in fact, largely produced by the youngest Wilson brother, Carl. Dennis Wilson contributed four stellar new compositions as well. Brian Wilson also wrote a number of new tracks at the time, many of which embody the “Bedroom” aesthetic at its most pure—sweet melodies set to intimate lyrics and tender falsetto vocals.

A session for Wilson’s “Good Time,” in fact, was tracked in early ‘70 with either Wilson himself or Beach Boy Bruce Johnston segueing into a brief rendition of the Beatles’ “You Never Give Me Your Money.” It seems that every Beach Boy tried in some way to keep Wilson engaged during the Sunflower sessions. (Johnston co-wrote the album’s “Diedre” with him.) Wilson’s early version of “Our Sweet Love” features his own solo vocals over a basic piano and drum track, which Carl Wilson later augmented with strings and harmony vocals. Beach Boy Al Jardine wrestled “At My Window” from Wilson, which started out as a simple cover of the Kingston Trio’s “Raspberries, Strawberries.” Wilson and Jardine also co-wrote an outtake titled “Back Home” together.

A piano demo of the Wilson masterpiece “’Til I Die” exists, as does a full production with the more optimistic lyric “I’ll find my way” alternating for what eventually became “I lost my way” on the Beach Boys’ 1971 Surf’s Up album. According to the band’s engineer Stephen Desper, a version of Brian’s eco-conscious ballad, “A Day in the Life of a Tree,” was first recorded with brother Dennis Wilson on lead vocals before being replaced by manager Jack Rieley on the final track. This version has yet to surface.

Outtakes from the period include: “Where Is She?,” a sweet Wilson ballad from 1970 which saw release on last year’s Made in California box; “H.E.L.P. Is on the Way,” “Games Two Can Play” and “I Just Got My Pay,” all of which were released on the 1993 Capitol box set, Good Vibrations; “Soulful Old Man Sunshine,” co-written by Wilson and Rick Henn of the Sunrays, of which a demo version and a full Beach Boys recording were released on the soundtrack to VH1’s 1998 documentaryEndless Harmony; and “My Solution,” a 1970 Halloween novelty by Wilson, often bootlegged, never officially released. A song titled “What Can the Matter Be?” was tracked in 1969; its title has been thrown around as one written by BW, though according to session logs, every Beach Boy is present on the track except Brian. A few additional BW songs from the era have been recently discovered, but not heard by this author.

In 1971, Wilson—assisted by songwriter David Sandler—produced an album by American Spring, featuring Wilson’s wife Marilyn and sister-in-law, Diane Rovell, on vocals. Wilson recorded a pitch-perfect piano demo of “Awake,” hitting catastrophically high falsetto notes; the song later appeared in a Spring version on the album. An unheard Spring outtake titled “Funky Fever” was recorded at Ike Turner’s Bolic Studio on Feb. 28, 1972; a cover of Jimmy Rodger’s “Honeycomb” was cut in October ‘74 with Marilyn on vocals. The latter featured Roy Wood of ELO and Wizzard on the backing track. (Wood also played on the Beach Boys’ “It’s OK” from the same session.) The former Mrs. Wilson retains the masters to the American Spring album, as well as a number of other Brian Wilson tapes from the period.

Wilson also labored in 1971-72 with lyricist Stanley Shaprio and songwriter Tandyn Almer to re-write the Friends album for an unrealized A&M Records project. (A&M’s Irving-Almo owned the aforementioned publishing to Wilson’s ‘60s catalog, as sold by father Murry Wilson, who needed to fund the final renovations of his tacky home in Redondo Beach.) According to Shapiro, four tracks were recorded by the trio—new versions of “Passing By,” “Wake the World,” “Be Still” and title track, “Friends.”

Shapiro also told me the story of the time Dennis Wilson had engineer Stephen Desper queue up a Brian Wilson reel-to-reel labeled “Song to God.” According to Shapiro, as the tape ran and Dennis and Desper sat mesmerized, Brian came barreling down from his bedroom, ripped the tape off the playback and yelled, “Don’t you ever touch that again! That’s between me and God!” No tape for this has ever been found. Nor has anything for Wilson titles like “Is Jack Rieley Superman?” or Wilson/Rieley’s “Burlesque,” the latter an outtake from the Beach Boys’ 1972 album, Carl & the Passions – So Tough.

A 1978 instrumental labeled “Beach Burlesque,” tracked during the band’s MIUalbum sessions, might be the same song, but as of this writing, Rieley, who is currently in a hospital in Berlin, has not been able to confirm it. Beach Boys historian Andrew G. Doe did previously get Rieley to repeat a couplet of the “Burlesque” lyrics, which reads: “Tantalation and hot glowing skin/Sun’s ‘bout to rest.”

Also missing is the tape of Wilson’s early 1972 production of “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin’,” while a tapebox for “Beatrice of Baltimore” is present in the Beach Boys’ vault, though it features no vocals for the song that eventually became “You Need a Mess of Help to Stand Alone” on Carl & the Passions. A tape has been found, however, of the jagged 1972 instrumental “Rooftop Harry.”

According to engineer Barry Rudolph, the Beach Boys vaunted into Larabee Studios in West Hollywood after midnight and began unloading truckloads of equipment whilst Wilson sat lotus position in a corner for two hours. When he awoke, a flurry of action took place on tape, Wilson himself playing piano, electric bass, toy piano and a calliope on “Rooftop Harry,” all of which ran through a then-new device called the Countryman Phaser. The results are manic.

Another instrumental, labeled “Body Talk,” may be a Brian song, but its credit is indefinite. Finally, a demo tape of “Sail on, Sailor,” the Beach Boys’ 1973 hit song, was last heard five years ago. It was then in the possession of a venerated Beatles collector, who has since disappeared with the tape.

In the summer of 1972, the Beach Boys moved their entire entourage (management and family alike) to the Netherlands. There they would record their 19th album,Holland. The studio in Brian’s Bel Air mansion was dismantled and shipped overseas, never to be re-installed in his home again.

From his cottage in Holland—dubbed “Flowers”—Wilson was recorded by an unnamed guest singing the Danny Kaye hit “Daddy Dear” at the piano. He segues into a quirky version of Al Jardine’s “Suzie Cincinnati” for the same guest. “Brian went through a period,” recalls Bruce Johnston, “where he would write songs and play them for a few people in his living room, and that’s the last you’d hear of them. He would disappear back up to his bedroom and the song with him.”

What Wilson worked on most in Holland was Mt. Vernon and Fairway (A Fairy Tale in Five Parts). Session tapes for the mini-work attest to Wilson’s enthusiasm for Mt. Vernon, which was eventually released as a bonus EP with the Hollandalbum. Mount Vernon tells the story of a Pied Piper who brings magical music to a family of young princes and princesses from inside a glowing transistor radio; the Pied Piper disappears forever when they stop believing in him. Wilson saw it as a thinly veiled allegory of his deteriorated relationship with the Beach Boys. “I wrote it about Mike Love,” Wilson confirmed to me in 2003 for a documentary I co-directed for the Carl Wilson Cancer Foundation.

Tracking sessions for the “Mt. Vernon and Fairway – Theme” reveal BW sitting with brother Dennis, reciting some of the fairy tale’s narration over a basic piano; he stops to explain its sense of innocence lost as expressed in the metaphor of the transistor radio. Nostalgia eventually gets the best of Wilson, who jumps headlong into a piano version of “A Casual Look,” a ‘50s doo-wop hit that suggests the magic in the music was as much an outgrowth of the transistor era as it was from within the Pied Piper himself. Indeed, the Brian Wilson of 1972—looking less like a real wizard and more like The Big Lebowski’s Dude in bathrobe and beard—recognized in his disintegrated family relationship a mirror of the larger social disintegration of Nixon-era America.

The Mt. Vernon section known as “I’m the Pied Piper” was recorded in Holland in an exuberant extended version. Another section—the appropriately titled “Better Get Back in Bed”—started out as the stand alone track “Pa, Let Her Go Out,” before being integrated fully into Mt. Vernon. Wilson revised the melody in 1976 for a version titled “Lazy Lizzie.”

On June 4, 1973, Murry Wilson died. The relationship with his three sons was beyond fractured by the end, and Brian himself chose not to attend his father’s funeral. He instead flew to New York City with sister-in-law Diane, where the two visited the Bronx Zoo amongst other sightseeing ventures. Wilson wrote a song about the zoo’s main attraction, a baby gorilla named Patty Cake.

Before Murry died, he gave the Beach Boys’ official photographer, Ed Roach, a stash of cassette tapes to store. Amongst these was a second fairy tale by Brian Wilson. According to Roach, the recording features Wilson reciting a narrative about two young girls who get lost in the woods on their way to school. Wilson’s daughters, Carnie and Wendy, play the roles of the young churls over a cute musical track. Roach says that half a dozen other Brian songs remain in the stash Murry gave him before passing away. Brian also reportedly wrote a song titled “Just an Imitation” about his father in 1974, though no tape for the latter has been found.

By 1974, Wilson finally completed A World of Peace Must Come, the poetry album he’d started with Stephen Kalinich back in 1969; an acetate was cut of the entire platter, though no record deal followed. (The album remained unreleased for three decades.) Kalinich, however, began writing Beach Boys songs again with Wilson once the band moved out to Colorado to record with producer Jim Guercio. The two cut a piano demo to an unreleased rocker titled “Lucy Jones,” on which Wilson shares lead vocals with Kalinich. Wilson also delivered a soaring falsetto vocal of the Kalinich lyrics to “California Feelin’,” a American Gothic number released on last year’sMade in America box. An early version of the Kalinich/Wilson Christmas single, “Child of Winter,” features Dennis Wilson on lead vocals and Carl Wilson singing the bridge. Finally, “Brian’s Jam” boasts the basic 1-to-4-up bassline that seems to have endlessly percolated in Wilson’s head throughout 1974-75 on versions of “Ding Dang” and “Short’nin Bread” too numerous to count.

Mickey Dolenz of the Monkees was another ‘70s L.A. hellraiser who seems to have had a “Short’nin’ Bread” experience with Brian Wilson. Dolenz wrote about a BW/John Lennon/Harry Nilsson meeting in his 1993 autobiography, I’m a Believer, wherein Dolenz has the quartet taking acid at his beach house in Malibu. Accordingly, Wilson plays the same note on the piano over and over; Lennon just stares into the swimming pool. Though no tape exists from this moonlit affair, according to Monkees archivist Andrew Sandoval, Dolenz does have a tape of Wilson and Nilsson jamming together on “Clangin’,” another BW variation on “Short’nin’ Bread.”

“Good Timin’,” later released as the lead single of the Beach Boys’ L.A. (Light Album, was first tracked in Colorado, but not completed. Finally, “Riding High on the Music” and “Grateful Are We for Little Children” (later “Saturday Morning in the City”) were co-written with Kalinich there, but no tapes have surfaced for them.

By 1975, the Beach Boys were back in Los Angeles and Brian Wilson—under the 24-hour supervision of experimental psychologist Eugene Landy—was thrust back into producing an album of oldies titled 15 Big Ones. The album was promoted behind the gimmicky “Brian Is Back” tour of ‘76. Wilson, in fact, never returned to the form that saw him produce groundbreaking works like Pet Sounds and Smile. Yet, in their wake, he soldiered on and, from 1968-74, left a scattered body of strange, often-brilliant, always inimitable music that is now dubbed the “Bedroom Tapes.”

“Ever since the Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding thing in the 1990s, I’ve always loved ice skating,” confesses Alice Eve. It’s a pleasant enough Los Angeles morning, but small talk about the recent Winter Olympics is entirely appropriate given the downright chilly vibe that Eve’s latest film gives off.

A tightly wound, character-rooted crime drama in the vein of A Simple Plan, director Tze Chun’s Cold Comes the Night is one of those crisp, engaging independent films that rather bewilderingly and frustratingly slip through the theatrical cracks every now and again. Eve stars as Chloe, a single mother who lives in a rundown, upstate-New York, pit-stop motel inherited from her father, where she halfheartedly takes part in a kickback scheme contrived with crooked cop Billy (Logan Marshall-Green) to let local hookers utilize her establishment with customers. With social services breathing down her neck, though, Chloe is already looking for a change when an argument at her property one night escalates to murder. The next day, Topo (Bryan Cranston), a nearly blind criminal bagman, takes Chloe and her daughter hostage, forcibly enlisting her assistance in retrieving a valuable package from the impounded vehicle of his murdered associate.

Chess-move head games ensue, and at the heart of it all is Eve’s mesmerizingly rundown performance, a thing of damaged grace. Newsi had a chance to chat with her recently, about the movie, what song shaped the character of Chloe, her career and more.

Newsi: It would be easier for Chloe to be a lot more agitated and animated. Yet there was a weariness to your performance—she seemed to really carry the stings and disappointments of life with her.
Alice Eve: That was a very considered decision and process. I felt that her circumstances would enforce that behavioral restraint on her, because as a single mother if she has any hope of raising a sane child, she can’t display her internal angst, otherwise the child will be massively affected negatively by it. And also I felt that it’s far more interesting to get to know a person. When you have the luxury of 90 minutes to tell the story of a character, you can trust that it will be revealed. And that’s rewarding to watch. I know that in life when someone reveals themselves slowly to me, it’s far more interesting than if I can see everything about them at first glance.

Newsi: What sort of conversations about Chloe did you have with Tze Chun before filming?
Eve: Tze gave me a song by Bob Dylan called “Baby Stop Your Crying,” which is what he wrote Chloe to. And I think that we definitely both agreed on the fact that Chloe’s paramount concern was the fact that she was a mother. So with that information, that Tze and I came to together, from that I could deduce down how she would prioritize her life and what her behavioral reactions would be. If that was her genuine heartfelt priority, it was only logical that she demonstrate restraint in her emotional visibility.

Newsi: That’s interesting that Tze gave you a song. Do you tend to use music as an inspiration or cue a lot on films?
Eve: Music gives me great pleasure in my life, but I do think that it’s my life that it gives me pleasure in. I think it’s dangerous to hinge a character on a song as an actor, because your main currency is spontaneity. So if you’re attached to some emotional nugget like a song you can’t really stray from that. Sometimes they’ll be a song that ends up representing a character, like if it’s played on the radio a lot while you’re doing that job or whatever, but I’m not one to typically restrain myself like that or use music to get into character.

Newsi: There’s an interesting dichotomy to the scenes between Chloe and Topo—he has the power even though he’s sense-limited, and yet as the movie wears on he has to cede some of it back to Chloe, in bits and pieces. Was there any discussion you had with Bryan Cranston prior to filming about the very specific nature of Topo’s diminishing sight capacity?
Eve: Yeah, absolutely, we both have to be on the same page about that. And he had done his research about the particular disease that his character had, and what he could see was blobs—he could see movement. So we were both cognitive of the fact that he could recognize a person crossing a room well enough to shoot them, but he couldn’t necessarily recognize a face.

Newsi: Have you played a blind or deaf character yourself?
Eve: I haven’t, actually. When I was growing up, very young, my dad won an Olivier for playing this character in Children of a Lesser God, who falls in love with a deaf woman. So he learned sign language, and when I was younger he used to talk to us in sign language sometimes, but I’ve never played someone who had that [disability].

Newsi: There are a number of tremendously fraught scenes in Cold Comes the Night. Is there a shorthand that gets you to the place where you’re able to cry, something that is reliable and consistent, or does it vary based on the movie?
Eve: Just that old chestnut: pain. There’s no shortcut, unfortunately. You just have to be in pain.

Newsi: I was a bit heartbroken that this film didn’t receive a bigger theatrical push. As an actress, working for hire, I’m sure you have gradations of experience, and you’re juggling big studio productions that you know are going to receive a theatrical release with independent productions that will go the festival route and you don’t know quite what will become of them. So how much psychological investment do you allow yourself in marketplace reception?
Eve: The pleasure is in the performance, really, and anything that comes after that is a gift—the fact that anybody sees it at all is great. Obviously, it’s incredibly thrilling to be part of a movie the size of Star Trek that has such success, and Some Velvet Morning, another recent movie I did, was pretty well reviewed across the board, and that’s lovely. But it’s definitely a crowded marketplace, so you do it for the love of doing it, really. Entering into some psychological warfare with yourself about a level of success that could be achieved—well, that sort of speculation is dangerous in any realm of existence. It’s experience (that has allowed me to realize) you need to take care of yourself in a way that doesn’t leave you subject to those things, you know?

Newsi: There’s a palpable sense of socioeconomically depressed gloom that hangs over the movie. It has a very strongly defined sense of place. You shot on location in upstate New York, right?
Eve: We did, we lived in a motel and shot in a motel. Tze videoed all the motels they went around and sent them to me and asked me my opinion, so there was a little bit of collaboration even on the location scouting. And then when I went there, I went and cleaned motels with women and asked how they ran it, asked what it was like, and learned about the complications of a female running a motel that is [in many ways] like halfway housing, for addicts and recovering addicts. It was a complete immersion in the environment.

Newsi: You have Chris Evans’ directorial debut, 1:30 Train, on tap next, I believe, which sounds a bit of a piece with Before Sunrise. Is that accurate at all?
Eve: Yeah, that’s the pitch—it’s basically the story of a girl who is stranded in Manhattan after having her purse stolen and missing her train home, and this guy who is busking, a trumpet player, comes up and offers to help her. And through a series of, well, inconveniences really, they end up spending this night together walking around the streets. And you eventually start to realize that this woman has a bigger problem than you thought.

Newsi: A woman in trouble, then?
Eve: I guess. She’s not a fallen woman, but she’s a woman in a situation that is more than you thought it was.

NOTE: Cold Comes the Night is now available on digital and Blu-ray and DVD, the latter two inclusive of deleted scenes.

Brent Simon is a regular contributor to Screen Daily, Newsi, Playboy, Magill’s Cinema Annual and ShockYa, among many other outlets. A former three-term president and current member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Simon has contributed to a wide variety of publications, including New York Magazine’sVulture, IGN, Rotten Tomatoes, H Magazine, FilmStew and Reelz. He has worked with AFI Fest, served on multiple film festival juries, and also served in an advisory capacity on various film programming endeavors. You can follow him on Twitter and on his blog.