this is the latest

June 11, 2008

we are out of stock on everything, huge thanks to everyone!  dvd's are still available at plexi.

April 24, 2006

It's official.  The DVD set will be released on June 27th.  You Can Pre-order it now to make sure you get it before the stores do.  The film is being distributed by Plexifilm.  Very stoked to be working with them.  I've been a huge fan of their work since I saw "Fruit of the Vine". The DVD has a ton of extras on it, check the index page for details.  Many thanks to everyone who has helped us out, as well as all of the fans who have come out to the screenings. This has been a long and difficult journey, but it has brought us a great deal of joy as well.

Many thanks and much respect to D. Mike and George.

July 27 , 2005

Sheesh.  I'm completely gobsmacked by all the kind things being said about the film in the press.  Recent articles include an op-ed piece in the New York  Times!  Written by Sarah Vowell.  That was an honor as I had been such a huge fan of her work on this american life (radio documentaries on NPR).  Check the Articles page to read that one and others in Thrasher, Magnet, The New Yorker,  and about 20-30 others.  The screening announcements are comming fast.  We've had sold out crowds in San Francisco, and New York, and huge crowds at many other venues, see the screenings page for past and future screenings.  DVD is coming along, still building the extra stuff.  We will be including 3 live shows in their entirety (well we MAY have to cut out creedance covers and the like due to licensing difficulties), The music videos the band did, and tons more spiel.  Working on the book version as well.  Many thanks for everyone who has come out to the screenings.

May 10, 2005

Many apologies for the long delay in updating the site.  The screening announcements are pouring in.  Screenings are locked in for Belgium, Dublin, Houston, San Francisco, two different venues in NYC, Detroit, Arizona, and others.  Many more in the works.  Huge thanks to everyone who has helped us book these.  If you've got a theater in your town that you think would want to screen the film, let us know.  If you haven't seen the article in The Skateboard Mag, be sure to check it out.  It's straight up the best article on the film.  Page 72 of the May issue.  I'll try to get a scan of it up soon.

March 18, 2005

More screenings booked in Portland OR, NYC, and Albuquerque NM.  Come see the film if it's in your neck of the woods.  It's been crazy to see some of the press stuff coming out about the film.  There's been very nice articles by many folks.  It's encouraging to me that people contacting us are interested in remembering the inspiration of the minutemen.  We even had a mention in Entertainment Weekly.  Ha! That one took us by surprise.  Look for articles and mentions comming up in Punk Planet, The Skateboard Mag, Thrasher, and Manifesto Magazine.   More screening announcements soon.

March 7, 2005

As noted on the front page, the premiere went better than we ever imagined.  We were incredibly nervous as folks started filling the theater.  I had no idea we would have so many people there.  But the film seemed to be very well recieved.  We had so much positive feedback that night, it was very overwhelming.  At any rate, we were really happy people liked it.  The main goal for me from the beginning was to help people remember the inspiration and motivation that we all felt when we first heard the music of the minutemen.

After we sent out the press release about the premiere, we instantly started recieving requests to screen the film in various cities around the country.  We told folks we were interested, but we needed to show it in pedro first.  In our minds at least, we wanted to "get the approval" of the hometown crowd before we made any other plans.  Now we are making plans for various screenings across the country.  Check The screenings page for the latest schedule.  Currently we have only announced the Seattle screening, but there will definitely be shows soon in NYC and San Francisco.  More announcements soon.

Feb. 3, 2005

COME TO THE PREMIERE!

Feb 25th, 2005 8pm  doors open at 7pm     

Warner Grand Theatre

478 West 6th Street

San Pedro, CA

Jan. 26, 2005

The film is nearly finished.  The picture is locked and we will go into sound mix and color correction the first week in Feb.  We are very excited about the film and hope you will be too.  Come to the premiere on Feb 25 at the Warner Grand in San Pedro.  Some folks have asked about footage we have used in the film.  We were blown away by some of the stuff that came out of the woodworks.  Most notably a 2 camera recording of a show at the Starwood in November of 1980.  The quality of that one is astounding, and the fact that it is from 1980 was also unbelievable.   We also have a show at the 9:30 Club, a performance at Irvine meadows, the acoustic session from a public access chanel, and various other one offs.   The film has about 21 live performances in it and the dvd will have even more.  We are still working out the distribution, we have spoken with several distributors that are interested and we'll let you know as soon as a deal is worked out.  If you can't wait for that, then come out to the premiere!

Nov. 4, 2004

Ok, here's a bunch of stuff people have been asking about. 

How the project got started.

Going way back, Keith and I went to High School together in San Jose, CA.  Our High School was a Communications magnet, meaning there was a radio station, and video production classes, along with photography and some others.  Keith and I met in the video production class Fall of 89.  Keith was into music, I was into Skateboarding.  I remember one day comming to class and telling keith about  this music I had heard in the new Santa Cruz video "Streets on Fire".  (among the songs were paranoid chant and I felt like a gringo, as well as brave captain and windmilling from firehose.  He was telling me about this band he read about in a spin magazine article, and our love for the Minutemen was born.  We always dreamed in that class about doing a film about the Minutemen. 

After graduating we lost contact for about 10 years.  When we eventually hooked back up, Keith had been working in Radio, I had been doing documentaries and commercials,  Keith said we should do a Minutemen Doc, and I was skeptical, feeling like we were not "on the inside".  We weren't there when it happend and we didn't know any of those people.  But the production company I was working for at the time was undergoing some radical changes and I wanted to do something away from them, So when Watt came to town June 4, 2002 I went early and after sound check I talked to him about our idea.  Here's a scan from my journal.

I was still a bit star struck having just met Watt.  He said he'd be done tourin' by the 16th so we went to LA to talk with him and that was when he gave us the OK.

Technical stuff

We have financed this one all on our own, so unlike a lot of my other films, We didn't shoot any 16mm.  We shot all the interviews on a Sony PD-150, with the exception of one trip where we were using a VX-1000.  We used a wireless lav for sound Except for a few interviews that took place after a cat ripped the head off of our lav during an interview.  We were forced to use a shotgun mic for the remaining interviews on that trip.  We did shoot a few things on super8, notably the titles and a few spots around pedro.  The super8 was transferred using a workprinter xp a wonderful device if you like to shoot super8! The super8 was shot using vision2 200T in a Nizo 801 macro.  We are editing on a Powermac G4 using Final Cut Pro HD. 

As far as all the Archival footage, that has been a bit of a trick because it has come to us in nearly every format imaginable, VHS, 3/4 inch, Beta max, DVD, cd, 16mm neg, Cassete tape, etc.  So we have had to do a lot of renting of decks and dubbing to DVCAM.

When all is tallied, the total footage, including our interviews, and archival footage, but not including audio only recordings, is just over 100 hours.  Then there are the audio recordings and the photos and the flyers.  It's been an absolute joy being able to have access to all of this stuff and it is somewhat painstaking to decide what gets left out.