American Hardcore is one of the first documentaries to chronicle a very underappreciated form of music, hardcore punk music. As director Paul Rachman and I discuss, hardcore is a form that is unable to be co-opted by the corporations because once such big money is involved, by definition it is no longer hardcore. Paul Rachman is one of those guys that instead of picking up an instrument while observing seminal music being created, he picked up a film camera. Now it is all paying off with a great documentary that has amazing and rare footage and includes interviews with Henry Rollins, Keith Morris, Jack Grisham and many more.
Check out the official website for American Hardcore
Daniel Robert Epstein: How long have you been working on the movie?
Paul Rachman: Well, we started shooting in December 2001. It took Steven Blush five years before that to write the book. Steven and I have been friends for a long time and we both come out of this hardcore scene. I lived in LA for ten years and when I moved back to my native New York in 1999, I ran into him again and he said he was finally finishing the book. I instantly had this image in my head of this film. It was very clear to me and I had a lot of the footage from back in the day so we talked about it and we set up to start shooting.
DRE: I havent read the book but of course Ive heard about it. Was your intention to translate the book to the documentary or were you looking to add another spin to it?
Paul: I set out to make a movie. The book is a very in-depth series of interviews that were conducted from the mid-90s on and it is incredibly detailed. Steven was able to put into historical context and chronological order this very brief youth sub-culture driven by this loud, hard music. But when I thought of the film I saw the film as something unto itself. The film needed to be the story of the early days of American hardcore and how it started but be in the words of the people who wrote the songs and were in the bands. So we did all new interviews and the film was created out of their words. I really did not want the film to have a narrator or an expert opinion because hardcore didnt have any kind of experts leading others. It was this very spontaneous reaction to the dissatisfaction of suburban youth and I think the film gets its visceral energy from that first person accounting.
DRE: How much did you ask people questions based on what footage you had?
Paul: That came up sometimes. I would say about maybe about 30 percent of the footage in the film, is mine. We found a lot of other footage too. The particularly rare footage is from like 1980 to 1983 because that was the very early dawn of the home video revolution. I actually picked up a Super 8 camera myself and became a filmmaker because I was so inspired after seeing my first hardcore show in Boston, Massachusetts when I was in college. The first show I went to was at a place called Gallery East and I was a college kid who didnt fit into the Boston college kid atmosphere.
DRE: It doesnt seem that hardcore ever got co-opted by big business as much as a lot of other art forms.
Paul: Absolutely, hardcore was an underground movement. It was started by 16 and 17 year old kids who invented the DIY way of doing things. Everything was do it yourself because there was nobody to help you. There were no lawyers, no record companies, no managers, no club owners wanting to book these shows. It had a very small but very intense audience. Hardcore was underground and it remains that way even now. I think this movie finally brings it to the mainstream. In the late 70s and early 80s all these national corporations set out to conquer Americas lifestyle and sell it back to them. Here we are in 2006 and theyve accomplished that. Everything is co-opted. The word hardcore is used to sell cars. Back then it was a true American subculture just like the beats and the hippies.
DRE: What frame of reference could an 18 year old kid, who goes to the Warped Tour, have to the music from this movie?
Paul: For me I was in Boston, Massachusetts at college and New Wave was happening. New Wave was this commercial marriage of punk and disco. I was from the generation that kind of fell through the cracks. We werent baby boomers and we werent Gen-Xers, we were in-between. We came after the Carter years that represented inflation, recession and bad economy and a weakened America. Ronald Reagan came into power in 1980 and he had these phony conservative values which turned the clock back to 1950s America. We found that so phony. Then this music comes along and its just gut-wrenching with anger and it spoke to me and left me with a feeling of wanting more.
DRE: At what point did straight edge hardcore become popular?
Paul: Straight edge is best explained in the film by Ian MacKaye. Ian explains it as there were all these songs written in the 70s and the 80s like Eric Clapton singing about cocaine and lets all get high but there were kids who werent interested in that. They didnt identify with that and Ian actually wrote a song about it called Straight Edge which is about not drinking and staying real. It started with that and kids across the country made it a lifestyle, particularly Boston. There are a lot of very intense straight edge bands in Boston and these are teenagers that are high-strung, amped on Coca-Cola and very intense.
DRE: Whats the next step for hardcore?
Paul: I think today there still is hardcore music. There still is punk music. There still are intense bands out there but I think the environment was different back then. Back then kids invented this new music by listening to punk rock. They couldnt really play it so they imitated it and just turned it into speed and energy. Theres a lot of intense music out there but the environment and the audience is different. Because of the corporate co-opting of everything, you start a band and the first thing you do is have a myspace page, you burn your own CDs, you sell them on the internet. Things are facilitated in a different way. You dont have to fight for everything. Today kids are just more insulated behind their computers and their iPods. Punk rockers today are rock stars with buses and limos and TV shows. It was a very different environment from the 80s.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Check out the official website for American Hardcore
Daniel Robert Epstein: How long have you been working on the movie?
Paul Rachman: Well, we started shooting in December 2001. It took Steven Blush five years before that to write the book. Steven and I have been friends for a long time and we both come out of this hardcore scene. I lived in LA for ten years and when I moved back to my native New York in 1999, I ran into him again and he said he was finally finishing the book. I instantly had this image in my head of this film. It was very clear to me and I had a lot of the footage from back in the day so we talked about it and we set up to start shooting.
DRE: I havent read the book but of course Ive heard about it. Was your intention to translate the book to the documentary or were you looking to add another spin to it?
Paul: I set out to make a movie. The book is a very in-depth series of interviews that were conducted from the mid-90s on and it is incredibly detailed. Steven was able to put into historical context and chronological order this very brief youth sub-culture driven by this loud, hard music. But when I thought of the film I saw the film as something unto itself. The film needed to be the story of the early days of American hardcore and how it started but be in the words of the people who wrote the songs and were in the bands. So we did all new interviews and the film was created out of their words. I really did not want the film to have a narrator or an expert opinion because hardcore didnt have any kind of experts leading others. It was this very spontaneous reaction to the dissatisfaction of suburban youth and I think the film gets its visceral energy from that first person accounting.
DRE: How much did you ask people questions based on what footage you had?
Paul: That came up sometimes. I would say about maybe about 30 percent of the footage in the film, is mine. We found a lot of other footage too. The particularly rare footage is from like 1980 to 1983 because that was the very early dawn of the home video revolution. I actually picked up a Super 8 camera myself and became a filmmaker because I was so inspired after seeing my first hardcore show in Boston, Massachusetts when I was in college. The first show I went to was at a place called Gallery East and I was a college kid who didnt fit into the Boston college kid atmosphere.
DRE: It doesnt seem that hardcore ever got co-opted by big business as much as a lot of other art forms.
Paul: Absolutely, hardcore was an underground movement. It was started by 16 and 17 year old kids who invented the DIY way of doing things. Everything was do it yourself because there was nobody to help you. There were no lawyers, no record companies, no managers, no club owners wanting to book these shows. It had a very small but very intense audience. Hardcore was underground and it remains that way even now. I think this movie finally brings it to the mainstream. In the late 70s and early 80s all these national corporations set out to conquer Americas lifestyle and sell it back to them. Here we are in 2006 and theyve accomplished that. Everything is co-opted. The word hardcore is used to sell cars. Back then it was a true American subculture just like the beats and the hippies.
DRE: What frame of reference could an 18 year old kid, who goes to the Warped Tour, have to the music from this movie?
Paul: For me I was in Boston, Massachusetts at college and New Wave was happening. New Wave was this commercial marriage of punk and disco. I was from the generation that kind of fell through the cracks. We werent baby boomers and we werent Gen-Xers, we were in-between. We came after the Carter years that represented inflation, recession and bad economy and a weakened America. Ronald Reagan came into power in 1980 and he had these phony conservative values which turned the clock back to 1950s America. We found that so phony. Then this music comes along and its just gut-wrenching with anger and it spoke to me and left me with a feeling of wanting more.
DRE: At what point did straight edge hardcore become popular?
Paul: Straight edge is best explained in the film by Ian MacKaye. Ian explains it as there were all these songs written in the 70s and the 80s like Eric Clapton singing about cocaine and lets all get high but there were kids who werent interested in that. They didnt identify with that and Ian actually wrote a song about it called Straight Edge which is about not drinking and staying real. It started with that and kids across the country made it a lifestyle, particularly Boston. There are a lot of very intense straight edge bands in Boston and these are teenagers that are high-strung, amped on Coca-Cola and very intense.
DRE: Whats the next step for hardcore?
Paul: I think today there still is hardcore music. There still is punk music. There still are intense bands out there but I think the environment was different back then. Back then kids invented this new music by listening to punk rock. They couldnt really play it so they imitated it and just turned it into speed and energy. Theres a lot of intense music out there but the environment and the audience is different. Because of the corporate co-opting of everything, you start a band and the first thing you do is have a myspace page, you burn your own CDs, you sell them on the internet. Things are facilitated in a different way. You dont have to fight for everything. Today kids are just more insulated behind their computers and their iPods. Punk rockers today are rock stars with buses and limos and TV shows. It was a very different environment from the 80s.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 8 of 8 COMMENTS
oh and where would i be able to see this documentary. i'm so siked.