Punk's Not Dead - it's justgone to bed

Thu 22nd Nov, 2007 in Features

Punk’s Not Dead is a film that offers a refreshingly different approach to the well worn category of music documentaries. Rather than attempting to squeeze a tiresome history of punk music into an hour and a half, it delivers an amazing (and as you can imagine – highly edited) three years worth of interviews with dozens of punk luminaries, from Jello Biafra ( Dead Kennedys) and Ian Mackaye (Fugazi) to pop-punk pinup boys of today such as Good Charlotte.

Susan Dynner, the director and arteries behind the project, took some time out from La La Land recently to have a chat about the inspiration for the film, letting punks sleep on your living room floor and why Sum 41 are actually nice guys.

Dynner spent her teenage years documenting the LA punk scene as fan and photographer and despite encouragement from the bands she snapped to make a book of all the photos, it was an ad in the LA Times that would eventually spark the inspiration within her to finally put something together.

“I have all these photos and all these bands come and stay at my house from the UK…and they have been telling me for years and years I should do something with the photos… I didn’t have time for the book so I scrapped that idea. But then one day I was flipping through the LA times and saw an ad for a gig – œThe Punk Invasion – 25 years of Punk Music.”

And what was so significant about this ad you ask? Its line-up included bands from the Buzzcocks to Blink 182 and was sponsored by Levis and Budweiser – something that as a Gen Y-er doesn’t seem all that out of the ordinary to me, but it triggered something in Susan.

“You had this 80000 seat arena that sold out in under ten minutes and it was really different from when I grew up when were lucky to get 300 people to a show and corporations had nothing to do with it…”

So there you have it – and three years, hundreds of interviews and a helluva lot of editing later, Punk’s Not Dead was very much alive.

The film itself was not what I expected. Dynner interviews everyone from first wave punks like The Buzzcocks, and the UK Subs through to consecutive generations including Black Flag, Rancid, The Offspring and even pop-punkers Good Charlotte and in doing so seeks to find out what punk means to these musicians, uncover the vital underground punk scene that still thrives worldwide today and explore how “punk” has evolved through the rise of labels, corporations, MTV and well – The Vans Warped Tour.

Yet surprisingly, the film does not pass judgement or make any obvious conclusions about the rise of more commercial punk bands, that I expected such a film would deride.

“With the pop-punk bands I went in thinking I was gonna be a lot harder on them, but as I talked to them I found out they were really sincere. I mean in some pieces we edited, you have Benji from Good Charlotte talking about how punk rock saved his life, how he got bullied at school and would run home look at his poster of Social Distortion and think What Would Mike Ness do?..” She says laughing.

It is this non-judgment that makes the film work so well, you have a shot of Henry Rollins asking “Who the hell am I to judge what is punk and what is not right..?” followed by a snippet of Sum 41 playing to 10,000 kids on the warped tour and talking backstage about heroes such as Rollins.

“Sum 41 ended up being really lovely guys, they gave me complete access to them on tour and I thought, who am I to judge, lets just throw it out there..” And it is this approach that makes the film work so well.

Through footage of modern day punks squats and underground gigs to shots of the Warped tour, Punk’s Not Dead, proves that Punk is well and truly still alive, but in true Punk style, doesn’t care whether you agree.