RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
HBO will devote five hours over four nights to the unlikeliest partnership in music...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CALIFORNIA LOVE")
ROGER TROUTMAN: (Singing) California love.
MARTIN: ...Rap producer, entrepreneur Dr. Dre and...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DESIRE")
U2: (Singing) Desire.
MARTIN: ...Rock producer, music executive Jimmy Iovine. The film is called "The Defiant Ones." NPR TV critic Eric Deggans says the program, which debuts this Sunday, shows how they influenced music in the '70s, the '80s, the '90s and beyond.
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: "The Defiant Ones" begins with a $3 billion deal put in danger by a Facebook post as Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine were angling to sell their company, Beats Electronics, to Apple. Iovine told Dre - given name Andre Young - to say nothing as the details were finalized.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "THE DEFIANT ONES")
JIMMY IOVINE: I said, Dre, remember De Niro's character Jimmy in "Goodfellas," where Jimmy told the guys, don't buy cars, don't get showy? I said, don't move this weekend.
DEGGANS: But later that evening, a drunk Dre and actor Tyrese Gibson posted a video on Facebook proclaiming Dre the first hip-hop billionaire.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
TYRESE GIBSON: Billionaire boys club. For real, homie.
DEGGANS: Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am said, in that moment, his friend Iovine was seriously worried.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "THE DEFIANT ONES")
IOVINE: And when he told me when I finally talked to him - it's like, we could potentially lose this. But it's the horse I rode in with.
DEGGANS: But the deal went through. And the unlikeliest partners in music had scored the biggest win of all.
(SOUNDBITE OF ENNIO MORRICONE'S "ON THE ROOFTOPS")
DEGGANS: Director Allen Hughes uses the opening music from Brian De Palma's "The Untouchables" as the theme for "The Defiant Ones," sketching a story of two savvy dealmakers and pop culture renegades who helped redefine rap and rock music. The first episode starts slowly. We see Iovine's early days growing up in New York, where he worked as an engineer with John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen.
Intercut with Dre's early days on the rap scene in South Central LA. But things pick up when Iovine talks about producing Tom Petty's "Hard Promises" record in the early 1980s. He convinced Petty to give a song called "Stop Dragging My Heart Around" to Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks for her first solo record. Petty says Iovine had one winning argument.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "THE DEFIANT ONES")
TOM PETTY: His comeback was like, hey, this is going to buy you a house. I'm like OK (laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF STEVIE NICKS SONG, "STOP DRAGGIN' MY HEART AROUND")
PETTY: It pissed me off because it became a huge hit.
DEGGANS: Iovine failed to mention he was dating Knicks at the time, which left Petty feeling a little used. It was a perfect example of how personalities and relationships helped shape one of rock's biggest hits. Hughes also gets video host Dee Barnes on camera to talk about one of the darkest moments of Dre's career, when he assaulted Barnes at a party over an interview she conducted with Ice Cube, who had just left NWA.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "THE DEFIANT ONES")
DEE BARNES: I called the police on Mr. (expletive) Tha Police. But little by little, the work started drying up. It was as if I had ruined his career by being that disturbing footnote in his legacy.
DEGGANS: Barnes gets space to tell her story, and Dre apologizes. On the one hand, it's an expected bit of remorse. But given how rarely Dre talks publicly about such stuff, it's also evidence of the access that Hughes puts to good use throughout the film. Iovine and Dre became partners when Iovine's company, Interscope Records, began distributing Death Row Records, where Dre was a recording artist. Between them, Interscope and Death Row featured acts like Nine Inch Nails, Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg, No Doubt and Eminem.
Filmed over three years, "The Defiant Ones" does an amazing job tracing this history. The documentary does spend a little too much time telling us how great these men are. But "The Defiant Ones" also shows how two talented producers separated by genre, geography and generations formed a partnership that changed the face of music. I'm Eric Deggans.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CALIFORNIA LOVE")
TROUTMAN: (Singing) California love.
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