INTERVIEW: Go behind the scenes as Z100 goes from ‘Worst to First’
Photo: Scott Shannon, the legendary radio personality, appears in Worst to First: The True Story of Z100 New York. Photo courtesy of Worst to First / Provided by Emma Griffiths PR with permission.
Worst to First: The True Story of Z100 New York, the new documentary written, directed and produced by Mitchell Stuart, tracks the meteoric rise of the popular radio station Z100. One of the central figures in the movie, which is now available on demand and on cable, is Scott Shannon, the legendary radio personality who helped take the station from the “swamps of New Jersey” to the top, top, top of the radio world. Along the way, viewers hear from so many other important figures in the station’s history and the overall music industry, including Elvis Duran, Jon Bon Jovi, Nile Rodgers, Clive Davis, Debbie Gibson and Joan Jett.
“I had no choice,” Stuart said about his attachment to the project. “I’ll take you back to about 2003. I have a beginning company, and we were doing pretty OK, trending in the right direction. Then, 9/11 happens, and 9/11 struck everyone in so many different personal ways. And if you’re a New Yorker, believe me, everyone has a 9/11 story, but the flip side of it was trying to keep your business going because you’re employing people. And people are counting on you.”
At that time, Stuart received a call from a friend who asked him whether he would be interested in filming some behind-the-scenes footage at Madison Square Garden for Z100’s annual holiday bash, known as Jingle Ball. The financial offer, the director said, didn’t exactly make him a millionaire (he jokingly said he lost money on the deal), but he was able to check something off the bucket list: going backstage at the Garden.
“Every New Yorker wants to do that,” he said. “That’s a big moment in your life, and while I was backstage and encountering the fans that would go to a Z100 Jingle Ball concert, I realized how much the station meant to people. I flashed back on first listening to music on the radio when I was a kid. Wow, it hasn’t changed. This is amazing. It’s a little bit before the internet. So, people love this station and identify with the station. You saw mothers who first listened to the station bring in their daughters to their first concert, so I was blown away.”
After the project, Stuart had many lasting friendships, including Duran, who currently hosts the Z100 morning show. Skip ahead many years, and Stuart received a call from Shannon’s agent with news of a documentary about Z100’s early days. Would he be interested in joining the project?
“I said, ‘Only if I could tell the truth,'” Stuart said. “I’ve done a lot of documentaries. I don’t want to make an infomercial. It’s going to go wherever it’s going to go, right. Once I started thinking about it, the full-circle moment came back to me of, wow, what a great way to return to Z100. I wasn’t going to let anyone else tell this story. … I was a fresh pair of eyes to the story, and the story led me where we went, to the 74 days that Scott Shannon and his group took Z100 literally from worst to first.”
When Stuart and his team started asking people whether they wanted to be interviewed for the film, he was pleasantly surprised that the majority of them said yes. Patty Steele? In. Jim Kerr? In. Cathy Donovan? In. Gary Fisher? In.
“They all wanted to be part of this story because they felt like they formed a band,” Stuart said. “They did something together that probably will never be replicated. … It was really important for me to get the behind-the-scenes people because it’s just as much their story as Scott’s really. And then you reached out to artists, and it was remarkable. I’d say about 75 percent of the artists we reached out to said yes. Others wanted to, but you have to remember COVID struck in the middle of us making the film. So it was very difficult to get people because they were correctly being quarantined and didn’t want to expose themselves to a crew or didn’t want to be filmed just on Zoom or what have you, which is understandable of course. And 35 percent of the movie, roughly, was made with me directing from my house in the Catskills with local crews.”
He added: “People really felt that Z100 was a part of their career that they wanted to revisit and pay full circle to.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Worst to First: The True Story of Z100 New York, written, directed and produced by Mitchell Stuart, is now playing on demand and on cable. Click here for more information.
