Valley of the Bros: How ‘We Are Your Friends’ Takes EDM to the Movies
In the film, Bentley’s character James Reese is an aging, alcoholic DJ who was “once great but now just gives the people what they want,” as the younger man describes the veteran scenester. The older artist encourages his acolyte to listen to the world around him, without knowing that Cole has fallen for Reese’s assistant and girlfriend, Sophie (Emily Ratajkowski). “[EDM] is a very warm community,” the director says of the inspiration for the triangle. “People love collaborating and incubating talent, but it’s not without some inherent jealousy and competition.”
According to Joseph, Ratajkowski — the Instagram-famous model-turned-actress and the only one to get a career boost from Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” video — shined in her audition because of the subtlety she gave to the Stanford dropout. “In a lot of ways, I related to her,” Ratajkowski says. “I related to the idea of wanting to be comfortable even before you’ve really earned it. I think the situation we find her in at the beginning of the film is a really comfortable one, but it isn’t really one that’s about her at all.”
In between love triangles and friendship drama, We Are Your Friends finds time to accurately depict the most popular ways dance music is consumed and experienced today. From flashy Vegas festivals to gritty clubs to house parties and just dancing alone in a room, Cole, Sophie and their cohorts jump through Molly- and beer-fueled scenes of the current dance music community. To promote the film, Efron, Joseph and Ratajkowski have flown to major cities to host post-screening club nights starring artists from the film’s soundtrack.
The climactic final scene in particular involved staging a real block party featuring acts like Nicky Romero performing for free to a crowd of dance music fans. “Zac had only two 20-minute segments to get up in from of the crowd in between these big headliners and perform his final track,” Joseph says of that day.
“I keep thinking about the butterflies I had. I’m having flashbacks right now,” Efron adds. “Luckily, I had put in some time in rehearsals and knew what I was doing up there a little bit, but it gave me the rush and the feeling that I imagine DJs must thrive on. It’s like doing theater or something.”
As for Joseph, the show that catapulted him into stardom — MTV’s Catfish — also motivated the film’s message. “I spend a lot of time hanging out with kids in their early twenties who feel like they’ve messed up and have really screwed up in a lot of ways,” he says of the experience. “We spend a lot of time talking to them and saying ‘You can change that.’ It became such a common theme in everything that we were doing that it seemed profound, and it seemed to really be coming out of this generation to a certain degree.”
