<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  Photo: Courtesy of Paul + Williams The guest list at last evening&amp;#039;s party celebrating a screening of The National&amp;#039;s documentary Mistaken For Strangers read like a poster for Coachella. Members of Grizzly Bear and The Head and the Heart chatted with the rock band at Levi&amp;#039;s Haus in Hollywood while former LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy spun an eclectic mix of indie and hip-hop. L.A.&amp;#039;s infamous Kogi food truck parked out front, handing out free Korean BBQ tacos. The shindig was meant as the after party for a special screening of the film at a nearby theater, but ended up feeling like a celebration of a long week in L.A. for the band. Following shows at The Greek and Hollywood Forever Cemetery in L.A. over the weekend, The National stopped by The Mindy Project to film an episode and taped an appearance for Conan O&amp;#039;Brien\u2013all in support of their latest album, Trouble Will Find Me. The five-piece band also hosted last evening&amp;#039;s screening of a documentary, titled Mistaken For Strangers, a film directed by frontman Matt Berninger&amp;#039;s brother Tom Berninger. Mistaken For Strangers, filmed during the band&amp;#039;s tour in support of 2010&amp;#039;s High Violet, recounts Tom&amp;#039;s time on the road. The film starts out revealing what it&amp;#039;s like to be on tour with The National, but transforms into a meta-doc about the creative process and Tom&amp;#039;s struggle to complete the film.  Bryce Dessner, the band&amp;#039;s soft-spoken guitarist, joined ELLE.com in James Murphy&amp;#039;s greenroom for a short conversation during last night&amp;#039;s party. Dessner discussed the band&amp;#039;s recent festival appearances and what it was like being part of an accidental documentary. Plus, the guitarist offered some insight on why putting the name &amp;quot;Rag &amp;amp;amp; Bone&amp;quot; in a song on High Violet was probably a good idea. You guys taped an episode of &amp;#039;The Mindy Project&amp;#039; today. What was that like? It was super fun. Some of the writers are big fans of the band so they wrote us into an episode. I won&amp;#039;t give too much away but we do perform. We did a few [songs], but &amp;quot;This Is The Last Time&amp;quot; will probably be the one. I think it&amp;#039;s the third episode of the season.  How did playing a fake music festival on the show compare to the real ones you&amp;#039;ve been playing this summer? It was much nicer! They did a really good job. It looks like a festival. I was very impressed. And they also invented a ton of band names for the poster. They had to invent like 50 bands for the festival and the only real band playing the festival is The National. Writers out here are some of the most interesting people because they&amp;#039;re there wildly creative types. TV has become the place, with all the network and cable shows, where people are pretty adventurous when writing things. Do you have a favorite music festival you&amp;#039;ve played this year? Roskilde is the largest festival in Europe. It&amp;#039;s in Denmark, and it&amp;#039;s legendary. It&amp;#039;s been going since the &amp;#039;70s and it&amp;#039;s really well run. We&amp;#039;ve done really well in Denmark so we were one of the headliners there. It was the first time we&amp;#039;d played to an audience that large and really pulled it off. It felt like &amp;quot;Yes, we can play to 100,000 people.&amp;quot; Is there a trick to doing that? You have to be more extroverted about your performance and broadcast bigger. We also have a really amazing video and lighting designer, that is really designed for bigger festival. It also helps that in Denmark we&amp;#039;ve had proper commercial radio play. &amp;quot;Bloodbuzz Ohio&amp;quot; was a big hit. We&amp;#039;re the Kings of Leon of Denmark, basically. But Kings of Leon are also the Kings of Leon of Denmark. Do you think &amp;#039;Mistaken For Strangers&amp;#039; is an accurate representation of what it&amp;#039;s like for The National to be on tour? It&amp;#039;s a very accurate representation of what tour&amp;#039;s like. You see the shows are exciting and the daytime is incredibly tedious and boring. The fans are lovely and occasionally you get a moment of &amp;quot;Wow this is my life!&amp;quot; And other times you&amp;#039;re exhausted in an airport at 6 a.m. far from home. When Tom started filming the band on tour was the intention that it would become a documentary? No, he was coming on tour to work on tour and he was going to shoot little outtake vignettes for the website, which he did. We didn&amp;#039;t think there would be a movie. But then it started developing. I&amp;#039;m really proud of him. I never thought I&amp;#039;d like a band movie\u2013a movie about my band is not something I want to watch, but it&amp;#039;s something much more than that. Do you think the film tells fans something about The National that they didn&amp;#039;t know before? It&amp;#039;s not really about us. We&amp;#039;re the setting for this other story that&amp;#039;s about brothers and family and Tom&amp;#039;s self-discovery. And it&amp;#039;s a story about the creative process and how people struggle to make something and find themselves and what that is like. Tom&amp;#039;s character in the movie is like the characters in our songs. People relate to the way we channel insecurity and some of the darker themes in the music. There&amp;#039;s something very human about that and there&amp;#039;s something very human about Tom. In a weird way the movie is an embodiment of some of the qualities people might identify with the band. At one point in the movie someone mentioned how fashionable the band is. Does The National have a signature style?  We&amp;#039;re friendly with Michael Stipe from R.E.M., and I credit him with inventing the style we all wear. T-shirt, a blazer, jeans, and some nice boots. Matt obviously dresses pretty elegantly. Our drummer doesn&amp;#039;t dress up at all. We&amp;#039;re defined by being ourselves, mostly. Somehow that&amp;#039;s worked for us. When we started it was not cool. When we started it was a different time in New York. The Strokes were the epitome of young and sexy New York and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were so fashionable. But we dress how we want to dress and that works now. We have favorite designers, like we&amp;#039;ve been friends with the Rag &amp;amp;amp; Bone designers for several years now. We wear a lot of their clothes. Will &amp;#039;Mistaken For Strangers&amp;#039; come out in theaters? I think it will have a theatrical release. It&amp;#039;s done really well so far. People who don&amp;#039;t know the band seem to really respond to it so there is interest for it to have a life in theaters. It&amp;#039;s a small movie, but I think it will come out in theaters in a limited way and then be available online.  What&amp;#039;s next for the band?  We have three weeks off and then in September it starts again. We have a tour in the U.S. We like getting around to everywhere when we have a new album.       "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/music/news/a23549/the-national-mistaken-for-strangers-documentary-interview/?src=global_footer>