famous father

The importance of parental support goes meta in Julia Hart’s “Don’t Say Good Luck.” The YA musical drama, which premieres Friday, pays homage to musical theater, unconditional maternal love and the family-hour TV, er, Netflix movie. In a landscape littered with teenage dysfunction, “Don’t Say Good Luck” is a moving argument for aspirational television.

And with a star whose famous father serves as producer, it‘s an admonition to the term “nepo baby.”

We meet normal kid Sophie Birenbaum (Sunny Sandler) as she anxiously prepares for a day that will include auditioning for her high school’s production of “Waitress.” While her father, Ted (Max Greenfield, marvelously transformed by a beard), wrangles her rambunctious younger twin brothers, her mother, Elizabeth (Melanie Lynskey), assures her that she is talented and beautiful and will do just great. These sentiments are echoed by Sophie’s best friend, Carolyn (Scarlett Estevez), who joins her at the audition where the director is the super-cool Ms. Parker (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s” Stephanie Beatriz) and even theater department queen bee Mallory (Elyse Bell), who everyone knows is going to get the lead, is pretty nice.

It’s a high school experience that’s about as far from “Euphoria” or even “Glee” as one can get while still being situated on Earth. Still, all is not perfect in Sophie’s world. When Elizabeth learns that her cancer has returned, Sophie overhears her parents’ subsequent conversation via a butt-dial from her father’s phone. Her first impulse is to flee the audition; instead her emotional turmoil fuels a powerful performance that (spoiler alert?) lands her the lead role.

Determined to downplay the seriousness of her illness, Elizabeth insists that life continue on as normal — she and Ted own a local deli, which offers some nice bagel versus wrap shade and a Jon Lovitz cameo. Though Sophie is worried, she believes her mother who says she will beat cancer again. So she throws herself into the stomach-churning rigor of being the star of the show, which includes a painful separation from her bestie, a crush on her co-star and a struggle to find the confidence to let her obvious talent shine.

“Don’t Say Good Luck” is, obviously, a showcase for Sandler, whose parents, Adam and Jackie Sandler, serve as producers (which may have had something to do with the extraordinary supporting cast, which also includes Bebe Neuwirth and Steve Buscemi as Elizabeth’s parents). Adam Sandler and his Happy Madison Productions have a long and lucrative partnership with Netflix, which recently debuted “Happy Gilmore 2” and announced “Grown Ups 3” as part of their deal. One could see this as yet another case of nepo-baby triumph — streaming is currently littered with the progeny of famous parents — or simply a living example of the film’s theme. Like the Birenbaum parents, the Sandlers want to help their daughter shine in her chosen career and that she certainly does.

Adam Sandler serves as a producer, which may have had something to do with the extraordinary supporting cast, which also includes Steve Buscemi as Sophie’s grandfather.

(Netflix)

Though Sophie is the only older daughter ever to escape the task of caring for her younger brothers (or doing any chores at all), Sandler makes her completely believable as a nice, self-conscious kid who just needs a push to trust her talent. If the tone of the film is 1970s-family-comedy aspirational (particularly in the mother-daughter scenes), that shouldn’t be construed as a low level of difficulty.

Indeed, it is almost revolutionary to see emotionally resonant teenage characters who aren’t mired in abuse, addiction or some kind of horror; leveraging dysfunction has become shorthand for “drama.” “Don’t Say Good Luck” is based on the real-life experience of co-writer Laura Hankin (collaborating here with Hart and Jordan Horowitz), and though the stakes are emotionally high, portraying a loving family doing their best to get through a devastating situation with minimal meltdowns is its own act of bravery.

It certainly helps that this family is firmly anchored by Lynskey, who proves, yet again, that she can do anything. Her Elizabeth is neither martyr nor saint, just a woman who wants to live as she’s always lived for as long as she can. Lynskey lifts what could have been a sappy (or even worse, guilt-inducing) cancer-mom tale into a quietly transcendent contemplation of motherhood. (A scene in which she flips through the calendar trying to figure out when to let the kids know what’s really going on drove the breath from this mother’s body.)

Does “Don’t Say Good Luck” skirt around the grim realities of cancer as cavalierly as it paints a Pinterest mood-board vision of high school? Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean the message and the feelings (yes, you absolutely will cry) are not just as authentic. Love is the root of much pain, but it’s also what conquers it in the end.

Melanie Lynskey as Elizabeth, Max Greenfield as Ted and Jon Lovitz as Lenny in “Don’t Say Good Luck.”

(Netflix)

The title of Violet Grohl’s debut album, “Be Sweet to Me,” started as an inside joke.

“‘Be Sweet to Me’ is a phrase that my best friend and I say to each other when we’re play-fighting,” says the rising singer. “It’s what we do to put an end to it. Like, ‘Oh, be sweet to me!’”

The phrase might also carry a double meaning, one Grohl is still parsing. At some point in the naming process, someone in her circle asked Grohl if she was making a plea. Remembering that moment, Grohl pauses to consider.

“I guess it can be seen as a pretext for the album. Just … be sweet,” she says. “But at the same time, it’s literally just what my best friend and I say to each other when we’re calling each other idiots.”

Intentional or not, no one could blame the 20-year-old for inserting an earnest request for audiences to proceed with kindness as she readies her debut album, which finally landed Friday.

The reasons are pretty self-explanatory: Grohl is the eldest child of modern rock icon Dave Grohl, the highly decorated founder and centerpiece of Foo Fighters and onetime drummer of Nirvana, and his wife, former model and TV producer Jordyn Blum. In an age of “nepo” accusations and internet dogpiles, it would be completely understandable for Grohl to feel anxious about her album’s reception.

But if she is, it doesn’t show. On a warm day in mid-May, Grohl appears relaxed and self-assured — but not arrogant — as she idles on a sofa in a cozy Studio City ADU owned by her publicist. Encased in a long, black sleeveless dress, she’s giving a mixture of off-duty rock star and summer goth. Her arms host an array of intricate tattoos; I spot a raven, a skull and a vintage lace fan. Next to her is a bulging Balenciaga mini bag, and a pair of oversized sunglasses on her head are perched atop a mop of jet black curls. The high contrast of her pale, makeup-less skin and swept back hair makes her round, gray-blue eyes appear even more pronounced.

“Everyone wants you to be an idealized version of … not even yourself, but of what they want you to be,” she says. “Sorry, that’s just not gonna happen with me.”

(Bella Newman)

Any time spent with her reveals that Grohl is the sort of person who is ultra-sensitive to the energy of places, people and even the long-deceased. In her free time, Grohl is an avid lover of anything paranormal. “The same time I got into horror movies, I started watching ‘Ghost Adventures’ on Travel Channel,” she says. “It totally sent me down this rabbit hole of the supernatural.”

When I ask if she’d ever made contact with any ghosts, Grohl nods emphatically before describing a trip to a hunting estate near the Scottish Highlands. “It is the most haunted place I’ve ever been in my whole life,” she says. “I walked into the house, and it was like a blast of cold air, chills everywhere. It’s this instinctual feeling of, I’m not alone here … I heard footsteps and disembodied voices, I saw shadows, I had crazy f–ing dreams. It’s so eye-opening, but it’s not evil or negative.”

Chilling films and Lynchian surrealism pervade the tracklist of “Be Sweet to Me,” which relies on symbolic lyricism to illustrate coming-of-age stories. From a sonic perspective, listeners will be thrilled to know that her debut does not just make for an entertaining listen — it’s a dedicated towpath to the very squealing heart of alternative rock, built by an artist who understands her music history on a granular level. Across a tight 11 tracks, “Be Sweet to Me” careens across late-’80s and ‘90s experimental genres, from ripping alt-rock on “Bug in the Cake” to hazy dream pop on “Mobile Star” to aggro Clinton-era alt metal on “Often Others,” and even a bit of chugging hardcore on “Cool Buzz.”

As many references as she brought to the recording process, led by producer Justin Raisen (a known collaborator of Charli XCX and Kim Gordon, who made the introduction), Grohl is not attempting to cosplay the grunge era. Instead of simply mirroring influences, she deftly puts her own spin on each arrangement with inventive, grabby arrangements, razor-sharp production and her versatile vocals, which can bellow like Courtney Love, murmur like PJ Harvey or turn ethereal like Elizabeth Fraser.

“Justin has a crew of musicians that he works with, and they’re all close friends of his,” Grohl explains of the album’s backing band, which Raisen assembled to mimic the Wrecking Crew, a loose collective of session players who appeared on some of the most beloved albums of the 1960s and ‘70s. “They’re the coolest, most talented, genuine music lovers, and seriously talented musicians … I’d never been in that kind of recording environment before. Everyone would throw out ideas or I would share a reference, and whatever it was about the song, [we’d ask] how we can build and make it a completely new, different thing.”

Growing up in Tarzana/Woodland Hills, Grohl says she’s been singing ever since she could speak. In a baby book, her mother wrote how Grohl, at 8 or 9 months, was “babbling and singing.” She took piano lessons with a teacher who taught her any Beatles song she wanted to learn. She later picked up the ukulele, and then a guitar. Now, it’s any piece of gear, from bass to drums to a lap dulcimer. “I just love messing around with different instruments and seeing all the different sounds I can make,” she says.

Grohl also had an ideal music-taste mentor in her father, who told his eldest all about Björk and acquiesced to playing Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” on repeat. “I think I was 4 or 5, and I remember sitting in front of his computer, and he was talking about how she was from Iceland,” Grohl says of those days. “And I was like, ‘Oh, she’s the princess of Iceland. That was my idea of Björk from a young age. Björk’s ‘Hunter’ music video was a turning point for me.”

By adolescence, while on the road with the Foo Fighters, Grohl would make herself useful by assisting the band’s tour manager. She remembers: “I had a walkie-talkie, I would hand per diems out to people, I would run the envelopes around, and bring my dad a towel after the show, stuff like that.” The live-music atmosphere may have also sparked Grohl’s curiosity in songwriting, which she says began as a way of journaling. “I have cassette demos that I made with a tiny one-track recorder,” she remembers. “Then I started learning how to use Logic right before I turned 13, and that opened up this whole new world.”

One night in May 2018, on a break from the East Coast leg of the Foos’ Concrete and Gold tour, the elder Grohl headlined a benefit concert for the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, where he encouraged his daughter, then only 12, to join him onstage to sing Adele’s “When We Were Young.” A few weeks later, back on tour, Grohl jumped onstage to help sing backup on a few tracks. “It wasn’t my first time singing on a stage, but it was my first time singing on a stage with that many people in [the audience],” she says of the second experience. “I was really scared, but once it was happening, and once it was over, I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I want to do. This is my purpose.’”

Chilling films and Lynchian surrealism pervade the tracklist of “Be Sweet to Me,” which relies on symbolic lyricism to illustrate coming-of-age stories.

(Bella Newman)

From there, Grohl became something of a live fixture — a beloved Foos adjunct performer. But clearly one with her own trajectory. In pre-pandemic 2020, Grohl joined the surviving members of Nirvana at the Art of Elysium Gala, where she sang “Heart-Shaped Box.” The next year, father and daughter recorded a duet of “Nausea” by L.A. classic punk favorites X. In 2022, Grohl opened the second tribute to late Foos drummer, Taylor Hawkins, with an aching rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

It should definitely be said that Grohl is hardly pulling a Jakob Dylan as it relates to her parentage — a detail that actually makes her appear that much more self-actualized and approachable, simply because she isn’t trying to circumvent reality or engage in a furious round of name-dropping. She freely discusses the long evening car rides around Los Angeles she’d take with her dad and two younger sisters during the pandemic, the car becoming a music-recommendation feedback loop, with older and younger generations trading off DJ duties. “My sister and I introduced him to Jockstrap,” Grohl chuckles when I ask what bands she introduced her dad to during those rides. “I’d play him old jazz standards, hip-hop. It was a constant thing.”

During those evening rides, Grohl also drank up the city’s otherworldly, vaguely haunted visage. “There’s something special about L.A. that I can’t fully describe,” she says. “There’s inspiration everywhere, so many beautiful people and historic buildings. I love art about L.A. — when people reference L.A. in their music, movies, or books. I grew up here, and I’ve lived here my whole life. I just feel that deep connection to it all.”

Like any great artist, Grohl is a product of her surroundings, and that can’t help but include a very specific, unlikely upbringing. In her own matter-of-fact way, Grohl shrugs as she acknowledges the inescapable pressure of her last name. “Everyone wants you to be an idealized version of … not even yourself, but of what they want you to be,” she says. “Sorry, that’s just not gonna happen with me. You’re not gonna convince me to change. I’m doing this because I love music, and that’s all I’ve ever known. Everyone’s gonna want me to be something, and I’m not the person that will give in to that.”