www.xtheband.com
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THE UNHEARD MUSIC
Production Notes
Although it uses elements found in concert films, rock
musicals, sociological studies, documentaries, music videos, silent-era melodramas,
science fiction pictures and comedies, "THE UNHEARD MUSIC" doesn't fit neatly
into any one of these catagories.
Instead, the film is as fluid and resistant
to labels as its subject matter: the vivid Los Angeles underground, where American
music--and American culture--are constantly being reinvented.
"THE UNHEARD
MUSIC" takes long, detailed, and often funny look at this scene, but focuses on
the group which critics have singled out as the leader of the underground pack.
In the late 1970's, a new sound burst upon the Los Angeles music scene--the
music made by a four-person rock band with the enigmatic name of X.
Playing
in clubs like the Whisky and the Starwood, X set a new standard for driving, forceful
songs that both critics and the public felt revolutionized the California sound.
Since then, X has become a cult sound popular across America and Europe:
X's 1984 tour packed halls in London and Paris, and it's albums are top sellers
in England, Italy, and France. Now, X is a movie: "THE UNHEARD MUSIC", a Skouras
Pictures Presentation of an Angel City Production being distributed worldwide
by Skouras Pictures; starring band members John Doe, Exene Cervenka, Billy Zoom
and D.J. Bonebrake, written and directed by W.T. Morgan, produced by Christopher
Blakely, co-produced by Everett Greaton, with Alizabeth Foley and W.T. Morgan
associate producers, Alizabeth Foley production designer and Karem John Monsour
director of photography.
"X emerged from the punk ferment of 1977 with
a fast, careening intensly focused sound that perfectly caught the dark undercurrents
of the "L.A. psyche," says Chris Morris, author of "Beyond And Back: The Story
Of X". "The group's depth and originality won them the praise of local and national
critics-- yet the indifference of radio programmers and record buyers kept them
(to quote their song, "THE UNHEARD MUSIC") "locked out of the public eye."
X is now much closer to the musical mainstream than they were in 1979.
"But",
says Morgan, "it's not because X's music changed. X is still out there doing
what they've always done. If they have gone from outsider to isiders, it's because
the mainstream heard what they were doing and moved to include them, not the other
way around."
"THE UNHEARD MUSIC" was filmed by Angel City Productions
between 1980 and 1985 in around Los Angeles. Post-production was completed almost
five years to the month after shooting began. The filmmakers have a lot of history
together.
Blakely and Morgan had atteneded the same high school; they
met again at Stanford and became friendly with Everett Greaton, and all spent
a year Florence studying film history.
"I was a classics major at the time,"
says Blakely,"but I switched over to film because I was inspired by the history
of the Italian cinema and the history of philosophical film in Europe."
"For
a long time Everett and I had wanted to make a movie about the music business,
about the groups that were on the cutting edge of the new sounds but weren't being
given the chance to be heard." recalls Blakely. "What I got from X was total energy--a
strong beat with driving chords, a band that didn't pull punches in it's lyrics,
a band that wanted to sing about real things, not pretty pop fluff. This was a
band concerned with an urgent message and urgent music."
Morgan recalls
his own initial reaction to the band:
" I saw this perfect dichtomy onstage,
between John and Exene, dark and primeval forces, and Billy Zoom, this ethereal
blond guitarist who was up there grinning all the time. This was when every band
in L.A. was into snarling at the audience, throwing things, and here was Billy
Zoom with the guitar, grinning from ear to ear. I listened to the music and I
looked at them and I knew something new was going on here, something that was
new and exciting.
I felt like I was watching The Beatles performing at The
Cavern Club in the early 60's before anyone knew who they were. Then X's first
album--"Los Angeles"-- came out and I heard it and I said, "I don't care what
happens, I have to do something with these people." "
At the time,
Morgan was 26, living in Hollywood on option money as a screenwriter whose efforts
never made it to the screen. He was also a ghost-writer of novels, an activist
with the Tom Hayden-Jane Fonda Campaign for Economic Democracy, and a student
of Lee Strasberg's course in direction.
The making of "THE UNHEARD MUSIC"
was in many ways an echo of the difficulties X had to overcome in presenting their
music. The filmmmakers worked with begged or borrowed equipment, recruited friends
as production personnel, and called in every favor they could --plus a few extras.
Shooting proceeded in fits and starts, according to the current cash- flow situation.
Angel City had to battle on two fronts to win over potential investors:
first, there was the faction who diidn't believe that a film about new music could
work, and, more subtly, the ones who said it could if it was either a traditional
"rockumentary" or had a neat, upbeat feeling to it--sort of, as someone put it,
"a new-wave Rocky."
Shooting commened in November, 1980; among the first
footage shots were interviews with Los Angeles Times music critic and Slash Records'
Bob Biggs, both early X supporters.
Other music-world figures seen in "THE
UNHEARD MUSIC" are KROQ's Rodney Bingenheimer, and former MCA executive Al Bergamo,
X's producer (and former member of The Doors) Ray Manzarek, punk club impresario
Brendan Mullen and Jello Biafra of Dead Kennedys.
Shooting had begun
with $5000 of Blakely's own money, continued until it ran out, and resumed when
more money was raised. This set the pattern for the next five years.
There
was one period of close to a full year when no footage was shot at all, but the
filmmakers used the time to learn how to do the technical chores themselves, instead
of having to hire outside producers.
"It actually turned out better than
what we would have gotten from a professional," says W.T. Morgan. "It's like you
don't need 24-track overdudded instruments to make meaningful music. You can make
it with whatever instruments you have at hand. The same is true for filmmaking,
and that's what we did."
If anything, the Angel City team used it's technical
naivete as an advantage.
"I liked the notion of reinventing the rules,"
explained Morgan. "I love the early silent movies--George Melies and the others
who really came first--because when they were working nobody knew what the rules
were, so they did anything they thought would work. We were the same way. We didn't
know what we were supposed to do, so we just improvised. We were always running
into movie technicians who'd say 'You can't do it that way', but we did, anyway,
and it usually worked out."
Whenever possible, the filmmakers had to
learn to cut corners.
For instance, they shot most of the film on weekends
and at night because, says Morgan, "Equipment houses would lend us camera equipment
for free for 'tests'. We'd pick up the equipment Friday afternoon, and return
it Monday morning. But we never knew when we were going to have to cut off production
altogether and just edit what we had and make that the film." "THE UNHEARD MUSIC"
utilizes a wild panoply of styles and interpretive images, spliced and splintered
with animation, stock footage, a silent movie pastiche, quick cuts from TV commercials
and news programs, home movies and concert and interview footage.
One of
the most distinctive aspects of "THE UNHEARD MUSIC" is the machine gun pace of
the montages the film uses at several points, to create a densely-packed blizzard
of image, some flickering past for only a fraction of a second.
The
filmmakers avoided all the cliches of the documentary form, including the most
hallowed: the straight-forward question -and answer interview.
Instead they
chose to capture the band members in their musical or home environment.
No
one in the film is ever seen to answer a question; instead of being interrogated,
the band members are allowed to speak for themselves.
Alizabeth Foley
adds: "Documentaries tend to put people under microscopes and examine things that
don't really bear examination--personal stuff that's none of their business.
What we're looking at is how the members of the band dealt with the raw material
of life that's available to everybody and then turned it into their own art."
At the same time, the filmmakers encouraged spontaneity.
"I heard
that Billy Zoom had a father who played jazz clarinet, and that Billy himself
played clarinet, and I used to play clarinet, and I had one sitting around my
house." says Blakely.
"So, the day we were going to film our interview
with Billy, I brought the clarinet along and handed it to him, and asked him to
play it on camera.
I thought he'd just blow a few notes, but instead he launched
into this beautiful rendition of "Stardust", and we caught it all on film. It
was an incredible moment--It's impossible to predict something like that, all
you can do is hope to shoot it when it happens."
Alizabeth Foey appears
in the film as Paulene, described by by Morgan as "the archtypical X fan." Paulene,
the only fictitious character inserted into the film , was an inspiration from
two sources: an anonymous fan letter, which Foley reads at the beginning of the
movie, penned by an emotionally disturbed young woman convinced that X's songs
were written specifically about her; and a real-life tragedy--a hit-and-run accident--witnessed
by Foley and Morgan in Culver City.
The accident crystallized athought in
Foley' mind, that punk was ultimately about outcasts, people thrown out of society;
it made an immediate, intense psychic connection to lyrics from X's song "Johny
Hit & Run Paulene",
"She wasn't what you'd call living really. But she
was still awake..."
The filmmakers enjoyed their first reward at
the 1984 Los Angeles Film Exposition, held that year as part of the Olympic Arts
Festival.
They screened "THE UNHEARD MUSIC" as a work-in-progress, and it
was one of only three Filmex showing to play to standing-room crowds, despite
the fact that the screening started at midnight.
Any lingering doubts the
Angel City team may have had about the merits of their efforts were dispelled
by the audiences wildly enthusiastic reaction.
That experience was duplicated
when "THE UNHEARD MUSIC", by then in near-final form, was screened on the first
night of the 1985 San Diego Film Festival.
And Angel City recieved invitations
to the 1985 Toronto and Telluride Festivals, both of which had to be declined
because "THE UNHEARD MUSIC" was still in the midst of post-production.
Relfecting back upon their original vision, which gave motivation to their joint
struggle to make "THE UNHEARD MUSIC", Alizabeth Foley recalls: "We started "THE
UNHEARD MUSIC" nearly five years ago, just when X was making their second album.
We didn't know at that time what cultural or commercial impact they would make
beyond being the most exciting band happening in burgeoning underground L.A. music
scene. However, it became apparent that X not only spoke to the Punk audience,
but to a new ethic. Something beyond a passing fad--ideas that would influence
the life and times of the broader society.
So we kept filming. And what began
as an underground band became a journey into artistic integrity, 'commercial'
success, socio/political institutions, change, and the values and symbols of our
age."
"The Unheard Music" is available on DVD
