Corporate Film STILL Sucks
and so does the situation on most everything -- and that makes me VERY optimistic!
I am kicking my self that I didn’t use this “logo/sticker” on my my post “Why do we need to call it “NonDē”” yesterday. My frustration over something so inconsequential is a stand-in for something much larger though.
SST was/is a great punk label that delivered us both The Minutemen, Black Flag, Hüsker Dü, Meat Puppets, Bad Brains, Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, and Dinosaur Jr.. Wow. If only each of us could contribute to culture at that level, eh?
You can also thank them for Raymond Pettibon (label founder and Black Flag’s Greg Ginn’s brother), and for me it was precisely that — and their muddy sound — their combined music and art — that made SST something to follow. Somehow that combination made it clear that they stood for something. What was it? That corporate rock sucked and some of us wanted something different.
It gave you a sense that everything was not only permitted, but necessary.
SST essentially hit in the mid-80’s. I had dropped out of college and was doing community organizing for Nader-founded PIRGs (Public Interest Research Group). I was on my own, organizing both college campuses and communities. I worked long hours and didn’t really know anyone in the towns, so I went to a lot of movies. They were corporate films. And they sucked. So-called Indie was just sparking. I started dreaming of films that spoke of my life and time in the vein of the French New Wave, but written by Terrence Malick and with a soundtrack by The Minutemen.
That dream carried me back to college, with a scholarship to NYU Film School and I was suddenly in the right place at the right time. Others were arriving with similar dreams. We would team up and get some good shit done. We were all willing and wanting to “jam econo”.
A big driver of that era was that — in addition to the lameness of the corporate culture at that time — there was also a United States government that ostracized people and acted above the law. You could feel the stakes. We all could. And it feels so similar to that now. In fact, now it feels WORSE. The greed culture of the Finance Bros was just getting started back then. We didn’t yet have the model of CEO’s looting the store. Back then we just felt hated or ignored. Now we know they steal from both us and the future.
Does art need a terrible environment to become an urgent cry?
If so, conditions couldn’t be better for great work to blossom now.
I am sickened by the news every day. Every hour and on the half hour too.
I feel I need to do something more than try to make my movies and write about the situation.
