{"id":584104,"date":"2022-04-01T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecreativeindependent.com\/people\/director-tom-stern-and-producer-noa-durban-on-maintaining-creative-control"},"modified":"2022-04-01T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-04-01T07:00:00","slug":"director-tom-stern-and-producer-noa-durban-on-maintaining-creative-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/04\/01\/director-tom-stern-and-producer-noa-durban-on-maintaining-creative-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Director Tom Stern and producer Noa Durban on maintaining creative control"},"content":{"rendered":"
Why did you decide that The Butthole Surfers needed a documentary?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n Tom Stern:<\/b> I think they\u2019re a really important band in rock and roll history. Their story isn\u2019t known widely enough. There\u2019s a cadre of fans that are very passionate, and people who are into music know them. A lot of people have heard of them because they had that hit, \u201cPepper,\u201d but most people just have a vague idea of who they are. They don\u2019t really know.<\/p>\n\n Their history is so interesting and so important in the larger picture of rock and roll history, music history, and even American cultural history at large because they were part of the American underground. They were maybe the biggest or most influential underground band of the \u201980s, and they really had a big influence on Nirvana. Kurt Cobain liked the Buttholes a lot. He went to see their shows all the time. He met Courtney Love at a Butthole Surfers show. [Butthole Sufers frontman] Gibby [Haynes] and Kurt were good friends. Not that this is the focus of our film, but their careers intertwined in dramatic ways. Gibby was in rehab with Kurt just a few days before Kurt killed himself.<\/p>\n\n Back then, there was this real separation between mainstream and underground culture that was interesting historically because it\u2019s not really there anymore. The underground was a reaction to the Reagan era that was so conformist and conservative. The whole ethos of the Reagan era was, \u201cFall into line and don\u2019t be weird,\u201d and The Butthole Surfers were the pure antithesis of that.<\/p>\n\n You filmed the Surfers back in the mid-80s at CBGBs. Was that your first encounter with them?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n TS:<\/b> I first saw them at the Pyramid Club, I believe, when I was a sophomore at NYU. This was 1984, I think. Instantly, I was blown away. I just thought they were so cool. Then I went back and saw them a few days later at CBGBs. The Buttholes were so unique, so different from the other underground punk and post-punk music of the day in that they broke all these rules. Hardcore and punk rock had become this rigid, formulaic music. The Buttholes threw away the formulas and tried mixing things up in such interesting ways.<\/span><\/p>\n\n They were playing to underground crowds of 100 or 150 people at the most back then, but all those clubs were always sold out because the word of mouth about the band spread really fast. Everybody who was into cool underground music was into them. The pop music of the day was okay, but it was that not that dangerous, or interesting, or provocative on an art level. The Cars are good songwriters and everything, but if you\u2019re really into art and music, you want something more interesting. And the Butthole Surfers just were so interesting.<\/span><\/p>\n\n They have a silly, profane name, but they\u2019re also really smart.<\/span> [Guitarist] Paul [Leary] and Gibby are two genius artists who came together and reacted together in this really combustible but exciting way\u2014Paul being the musical genius and Gibby being a conceptual art genius and also a genius frontman in the way he totally rewrote the book and turned the band into this circus in which he was the ringleader. It really was this surrealist or Dada circus\u2014using crazy stagecraft to produce spectacular visual dissonance and spectacle.<\/span> He pushed the idea of what\u2019s psychedelic into strange new realms that were more like what you\u2019d see at an art museum by some artist like Joseph Beuys or Marcel Duchamp, who was an artist that really influenced Gibby. So if you love art and punk rock, these guys just fucking nailed it.<\/span><\/p>\n\n You mentioned the psychedelic aspect, and I think that\u2019s one of the interesting things about the Butthole Surfers. Most of the punk bands of the \u201970s and \u201980s specifically rejected psychedelia as hippie nonsense, but the Butthole Surfers embraced it. Was that part of the attraction for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n TS:<\/b> Well, I loved psychedelic music. I loved the Beatles and Pink Floyd. I loved punk rock, too, but I think a lot of people loved both. Even though Johnny Rotten wore a T-shirt that said, \u201cI Hate Pink Floyd,\u201d I think he was just being provocative. And like you said, the Buttholes embraced that.<\/span> They had monster riffs and this thunderous rhythm section with two drummers playing these tribal beats that just put you in a trance. You felt like you were at some kind of ritual, or \u201cWhat the fuck is going on here?\u201d It didn\u2019t feel like just a rock show. It was a crazy spectacle with crazy juxtapositions. I think the band is all about really intense juxtapositions\u2014the beautiful and the horrific.<\/span><\/p>\n\n It\u2019s fascinating\u2014to me, anyways\u2014that Paul Leary and Gibby Haynes have backgrounds in accounting, which one tends to think of as a straight-laced, conservative profession. What\u2019s your take on that?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n TS:<\/b> I\u2019ve asked them about it, and it\u2019s one of the mysteries of the band that I can hopefully shed some light on. I can\u2019t give you the perfect answer, but I hope by the end of the film we will know why, because that fascinates me as well.<\/p>\n\n The documentary is still in progress. You two are on your way to shoot some interviews as you\u2019re talking to me. Tell me about some of the challenges of making this film so far.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n Noa Durban:<\/b> I think one of the major challenges is trying to show the band to different generations.<\/span> I\u2019m 28, so I got to know them through their later stuff, like, \u201cWho Was In My Room Last Night?\u201d from the early \u201990s, when they were signed to Capitol Records. So a lot of people don\u2019t actually know about their crazy heritage of spectacle live shows that are like art collections.<\/span> Unfortunately, there wasn\u2019t a way to document it that well because it was all done on VHS and crappy stuff that you used to bootleg shows, so it\u2019s hard to capture the full experience. That\u2019s one of the main challenges for this movie, I would say: To recreate that feeling without relying on just using old footage.<\/span><\/p>\n\n