Geoff Tate: It's finished. I worked with a professional screenwriter, Mark Shepard, who's written many screenplays. He and I put together a piece of work which I feel is incredibly strong comparing it to other screenplays I've read. It really is a dramatic presentation. I think it's going to make a fine film. It's much more in depth then you can get with records. You can explain the story so much easier with film. We went into great detail giving background on the characters and introducing a couple other supporting characters that help tell the story a little better. We hope to see a Mindcrime movie in the near future.
Has society changed much between George Bush and George W. Bush's presidencies?
I've been reading a little bit about this, and oftentimes when a country or society is at war the society fundamentally mirrors the opponent. In a way that's happening here, too. The United States is at war with a religious cult. They are a fundamentalist group. The Bush administration resembles a fundamentalist religious cult in the sense that they say they are Christians. They support a very constrictive, conservative, right-wing administration and they embrace religious groups. There's a large Christian funding of this government. I find that very interesting, the mirroring effect. They both say sort of the same things. From that perspective that hasn't changed. It was very similar circumstances in the '80s when the first Bush was in power. It was again a very conservative, right wing, religious funded administration.
What have been the biggest changes you've seen in the music industry during your 25 years in the business?
About 1990 there was a huge shakeup in the music industry and the 6 major record companies fired all the music people and hired business graduates to take over the spots. So the music became not as important. What really became important was the bottom line, how much money you could make. The beans were being counted with great efficiency. So the whole industry has changed dramatically because of that. It used to be an industry that people who were in the top positions were into music. They came from music backgrounds and it showed because there was a diversity in what was getting attention and getting money. Now it's so pop culture derivative, and there are a zillion other bands that are there to take your place if your single doesn't hit in the first six weeks. Record companies used to have a way of doing things where they didn't even expect a band or artist to hit really big until their third or fourth album. It took that long for an artist to build up an audience through touring and live exposure. You had to be able to play. You had to actually be able to sing. You had to be musicians. That was part of the deal. Nowadays they bank on and support and finance people that aren't musicians, that don't have musical backgrounds at all, who don't have any real talent in the music business. But what that person represents is a celebrity sort of face or an image and they bank on the image now. They sell that. They train the consumers so well to accept the mediocrity that's everywhere in our culture. We're a mediocrity worshipping culture now.
