Interview by Tom Lanham

“Escape.” “Hurricane.” “Search And Destroy.” “Night Of The Hunter.” It’s not hard to spot the decidedly aggressive pattern coursing through the majestic punk-metal anthems of This Is War, the latest salvo from Jared Leto’s band 30 Seconds To Mars. It was, indeed, war last year when — just as the band was preparing to commence recording with legendary producers Flood and Steve Lillywhite (who'd previously teamed up on U2's Achtung Baby) — 30STM's parent label EMI announced it was suing the group for a heart-stopping $30 million. Which, as you might imagine, effectively shut down the entire creative process.
    “It was weird,” sighs Leto, 37. “We had letters from lawyers asking for our hard drives, dates stamped on all our writing and everything.” 30STM finally extricated itself from its predicament by citing an old Hollywood legal precedent, the De Havilland Law, named for Gone With The Wind actress Olivia de Havilland, who once employed the strategem to exit her deal with Warner Brothers Pictures. In essence, the De Havilland Law prevents any contract between an artist and entertainment company from lasting beyond seven years, if either party is unhappy with contractual conditions.
    Leto and EMI have since resolved their differences, and This Is War has just hit the streets through 30STM's original imprint, Virgin. “We’re glad to be past it,” he says. “There’s a time for war, and a time for peace. And we’re just glad to be putting a record out, rather than sitting in a courtroom fighting about who owns this record.”
    With the hard feelings now dissipated, the band (which features Leto’s brother Shannon on drums) is going all-out to promote its latest record. War music has been added to the soundtrack of the new computer role-playing game Dragon Age: Origins, and the album itself will boast no less than 2,000 different covers, featuring fan-submitted photos from around the globe. 30STM fans were also invited to send in sounds and vocals for the album via their computers and/or mobile devices, as well as several "Summit" concerts where the band performed and recorded the audience's participation. And for the self-directed video of kickoff single “Kings And Queens,” Leto tapped into his native LA's bicycling community, leading a cadre of eccentric cyclists through Hollywood to the Santa Monica pier. Truly, 30STM are pedaling faster and more furiously than ever before.

SHOCKHOUND: So you actually got in touch with Olivia De Havilland herself, at her home in Paris?

JARED LETO: Yeah! It’s incredible, and she’s a pretty amazing person. I reached out to her through people, the people that get in touch with people. And there are people like that, and sometimes you get lucky. I haven’t met her yet, but I’m looking forward to meeting up with her in Paris. But she was a very important part of this, an instrumental part of everything, really. And she gave us the opportunity to take a stand; without her, we wouldn’t have had that chance.

SHOCKHOUND: And she even sent you a handwritten letter! What did it say?

LETO: She said some very kind things, and she was asking after us and wondering how everything was going for us. And she was glad that her case had been helpful. She was glad that her fight — which is obviously still very much alive in her mind — was able to help us in ours. So it was a thrill to communicate with her, a real honor. And it’s a pretty well-known case in California...so we were able to let her stand and her participation in the legal process be helpful for us, as well.

SHOCKHOUND: Maybe she’ll tell you that story when you sit down with her one day.

LETO: God, I’d be so curious to hear her story. But she’s a very classy woman. And — for 93, especially — just really sharp, witty, sweet and kind. And very smart — you can tell.

SHOCKHOUND: But how in holy hell do you find out you’re being sued for $30 million? You must’ve laughed at first. Then slowly realized it wasn’t funny.

LETO: Yeah. There’s a moment where it’s so big, it’s surreal. And there’s that next moment when you realize it’s incredibly real. And it wasn’t for show. This wasn’t about teaching us a lesson. And it was very surprising to us — and to them — that we ended up working things out. That wasn’t where we thought things were headed at all.

SHOCKHOUND: So how long were you in this nail-biting limbo?

LETO: It was about a year and a half. There were days that it completely consumed me and it was very brutal. And other days, you just pushed it away and stayed focused on the work. But I do think it helped us. It helped me as a songwriter, for sure, because it pushed me to a place where I knew I had to…it just pushed me. And it made us all better, stronger, and it was about survival. And it was indeed a war for us.

SHOCKHOUND: This album turned out so over-the-top anthemic, it’s taken you to a whole new level, creatively.

LETO: Well, there’s nothing better to legitimize your experience — or legitimize your perception — than when you find out how much shit actually means to other people. And in this case, it was a strange way to announce the value that 30 Seconds To Mars had specifically for EMI, and the legitimacy that 30 Seconds To Mars has, at least for the business model, the business of selling records. And for us, as well, the support that we had amongst our fan base around the world...we’d sold a few million records around the world, and we were selling out arenas, and this kind of success was a celebration. And to have this giant battle thrown into the middle of it was pretty…pretty phenomenal. And in this case, "phenomenon" doesn’t have to mean a good thing.

SHOCKHOUND: Was there a particular moment where you decided "Fuck it! This is war!"?

LETO: Yeah, of course. I mean, most days we were very clear about what we were doing, why we were doing it. We were very steadfast in our goal, and we were nowhere close to surrendering at all. So this is something that’ll always be a part of our story, ya know? This is a defining part of who we are. We went to war and waged that age-old fight between art and commerce, musician and label, and fought for what we believed in and remained true to that until EMI agreed to address our concerns. And this is a record that we made ourselves, by the way, in a house in the Hollywood Hills. We were holed up in this house with Flood, then Steve Lillywhite, and we financed the record ourselves, paid for every single hard drive, and were committed and passionate about doing so.

SHOCKHOUND: And watched a lot of Robert Mitchum movies. Which is where the song "Night Of The Hunter” came from, right?

LETO: Yeah. It’s an interesting movie. And Flood actually made me aware of it — I’d heard of the book, but he actually talked about the film with me.

SHOCKHOUND: It seem like you came out of this feeling more defiant about art in general. Hence, your cyclist-packed “Kings And Queens” video, which shut down several parts of Hollywood.

LETO: Well, it was a celebration of — I guess at the core of it — freedom. And this world that was the backdrop for this short film we made is really about the reclamation of public space, sharing ownership in our cities. And that sense of entitlement and freedom that you get from those acts is pretty inspiring.

SHOCKHOUND: Plus, there’s some crazy guy on a super-tall bike who somehow never quite tips over.

LETO: He was pretty amazing, and we were very grateful to have him — he’s one of a kind. And all the people who came out to do the video with us are really the people who should be celebrated. I directed the piece, but I couldn’t have done so much without these amazing individuals that make up this [bicycling] community. I definitely have a lot of respect for those guys. And “Kings And Queens” celebrates the potential, I guess, and discusses the failure, as well, of humanity. It’s kind of a big thematic song, but it’s a lotta fun to play live.

SHOCKHOUND: Humanity doesn’t seem to be in such great shape. It’s me, me, me, everywhere. And on every reality TV show, people are cutthroat — even when they're competing with each other for some cheap prize.

LETO: I think the song really covers a lot of that ground. It’s really about the American dream, and the promise of that and the failure of that. And really, it’s no longer the American dream — it’s the Western dream, and the idea that if you’ve got this, that and the other you’re gonna be okay, you’re gonna be happy. And obviously, we’ve found that all to be pretty untrue. But I think it has become a survivalist mentality out there right now, and a very defensive posture. And I guess the big issue with that is, when you’re in defensive posture, it’s really hard to be in a positive, creative or productive place. When you batten down the hatches, it’s hard to see the view out there.

SHOCKHOUND: And you’ve actually had enough spare time to film a new movie, Mr. Nobody?

LETO: Yup. And that comes out soon, next year. We filmed all over the world, and it was pretty amazing — I played 12 different versions of the same exact person, and it was unforgettable, that’s for sure. It’s a really interesting project and a really wonderful director [Jaco Van Dormael], and I was glad to have had the opportunity to make it.

SHOCKHOUND: And you also filmed a documentary on the making of This Is War, correct?

LETO: Yeah. It started off as a "making of this record" [kind of documentary]. But we went to make a record and the world fell apart. So we started to document how our lives were being impacted, the lives of people around us. It was a tough time for everyone, so we started to record these events and how they were affecting our lives. It was an intense time, and certainly the battle with the record company is documented, as well.

SHOCKHOUND: Well, as they say, everything happens for a reason. You seem to have emerged with a renewed sense of purpose.

LETO: It’s taught us a lot about who we are. And it’s nice to have that, because conflict can be an amazing teacher. And it certainly has led us down a path that we’re actually very grateful to have walked down.