veganjihad

Matt Pizzolo shook up Hollywood with his indie movie "Threat" and the guerrilla tactics he used to produce and distribute it. A defiant and confrontational movie about class war and unbridled youth violence, "Threat" is not exactly the type of film you might expect to earn its writer-director a multi-picture deal with Sony, but that's exactly what Pizzolo managed to accomplish along with his filmmaking partner Katie Nisa and their Kings Mob multimedia militia. With "Threat" tearing it up in theaters and three new Kings Mob movies in the pipeline, I decided to catch up with Pizzolo and figure out what he's so angry about.

"Threat" opens in Portland at the Hollywood Theatre on Friday April 21st.
Pizzolo and his filmmaking partner Katie Nisa will appear for a Q&A on Saturday April 22nd.

hollywoodtheatre
Threat

Vegan Jihad: Where did Threat come from?

Matt Pizzolo: I wanted to make a really hardcore punk movie... mostly because I'm tone deaf so I can't be in a band. My initial idea was to pirate the whole thing: shoot actors talking and reacting, but then lift all the action from other movies, literally going to the video store, renting movies, and cutting shots from like hundreds of different movies and editing it against my own actors. So that was the original idea, to just be totally underground with it. But it didn't work out that way. Somewhere along the line, Katie and I decided to actually make a real movie. Katie goes "independent film exists, I mean, it can't be that hard." Famous last words...

VJ: I mean, where did the source of the movie come from, not how you did it, we'll get to that.

MP: I originally wrote a short script called "I Am A Threat To Everything You Stand For" which was totally experimental. It was sort of inspired by a comic book by J.M. DeMatteis called "Brooklyn Dreams." I was writing these weird scripts at the time... they were meant to be read, you couldn't really shoot them because part of the story is written in the stage direction. I wrote this play called "If There's A Gun Onstage, Shoot Yourself" that was performed in a few cities, but needed a narrator to read the stage direction because it had stuff about how the character died in future and past lives because of circular time theory. All the stuff I was writing was very weird and angry and experimental partly because I was getting kicked out of screenwriting school, so I was just generally annoyed with the way things are "supposed" to be done. "I Am A Threat To Everything You Stand For" was weird like that, but it set up the characters and the world that I expanded in "Threat."

VJ: Can you expand a bit on the world in which "Threat" exists? Are there years? Streets? Locations? Some people look at the streets of New York in a very different way either post 9/11 or post Rudy Giuliani?

MP: "Threat" is definitely of the era when New York City still had balls, before the Lower East Side was consumed by all these neo-yuppies. We started working on it before 9/11, but we finished it after 9/11, so there's this weird time lapse in the movie. There's a shot of the towers that we filmed from a rooftop during a shoot one night, but there's also a voiceover that references the towers being destroyed. We were all there on 9/11, our neighborhood was closed off... I don't want to get too much into 9/11 stories, but the point is that we couldn't ignore 9/11 and be like "oh, but 'Threat' takes place before 9/11." I mean, we were obviously profoundly affected by those events, so they crept into the movie. Technically, the movie takes place before 9/11 in the early days of Giuliani, when we all really hated him, before he gutted the city and made it "safe." But I think the rage and confusion we tried to depict in "Threat" is more relevant to a lot of people after 9/11. I mean, we're in an unpopular and bloody war, and we've got a government that's the most intrusive since the fucking Alien & Sedition Acts, and that's not going to change with the next administration whether they're donkeys or elephants. But it's still business-as-usual with the popcorn entertainment.

VJ: "Threat" has a twinge of an autobiographical narrative. When I have mentioned the plot to people, some ask if it's a documentary. But this is an action film, a drama, and at moments pokes fun at the characters who inhabit it,

MP: I really sensed that there was conflict all around me. Everyone was so angry because they really felt that they had no control over their own lives... all of them for very different reasons, but they shared the same hostility. My idea was to take these real people and see what would happen if they were pushed to the edge. So it's autobiographical to a point. Obviously, I was living out of a backpack when I wrote it and Jim is living out of a backpack, but I never got pulled into a bloody race riot where my friends were killed. So it was basically introducing these people and then showing the disaster I felt we were on the brink of. There's a real clear shift in the movie, it goes from a sort of documentary vibe to all of a sudden this action and mayhem. It freaks out a lot of people when the movie changes gears like that. And yeah it definitely pokes fun at the characters, and I think that's really important. I didn't want to deify anyone or pedestalize any particular group. I was very nervous about bringing together characters from all these different places and groups. I really wanted to make sure I called them all on their shit equally.

VJ: In the film there is a range of different characters with their own motivations. We get a glimmer of each. Where are these people coming from? What does a middle class white kid and a struggling black man have in common?

MP: I think that question summarizes a lot of the movie... what DO a middle class white kid and a struggling black man have in common? They're both living in this world together and hoping that their lives will have some sort of value in making it a better place. Fred, the struggling black man, has enough faith that he's working to make a better life for his son. Jim, the middle class white kid, is totally existential and barely sees his life having any value at all. The tragedy is that Fred tries to show Jim that life can have value, but Jim doesn't understand that until it's too late.

VJ: There is an issue of classism that goes beyond race in the movie

MP: Yeah, I came at it from an angle that class is really the ultimate divider in our culture, beyond even race or gender. And the thing these kids in the movie all share is that they're at the bottom rung of the class system and they're pissed about it. But it's not just about being poor, it's really just about being average in a world where decisions are made by a super wealthy minority. You may be white or black, male or female, but if you're not super wealthy or from the right family then you don't have any say... you go to war when they tell you to go to war. And the violence in "Threat" is about how we in the trenches are so angry, but we take it out on each other instead of taking drastic measures to make change.

VJ: This is probably one of the few (if not the only) feature length films to put the spotlight on straight-edge. It's a huge theme in the movie. Jim, the protagonist, is straight-edge, and so is one of the agitators, Marco. Their views on straight-edge seem to be polar opposites.

MP: Apparently people think I was particularly harsh on straight-edge kids. I never set out to make a definitive movie about straight-edge. I was straight-edge and many of my friends were, so it just made sense to include straight-edge characters. I don't wear Xs on my hands to shows anymore, but I've never had a drink, never used any drugs... I didn't intend to make straight-edge look bad. But one of "Threat's" main themes is intolerance, and I'd be lying if I didn't say that a lot of straight-edge kids can be overzealous to the point of intolerance. I'd just gone on tour with Earth Crisis and I met a drug-dealing, gun-toting straight-edge kid. Hardline was a big movement at the time. There were gangs of straight-edge kids storming bars and beating people up. So I integrated that vibe into one of the straight-edge characters, but instead of just being dogmatic he starts off as being very noble, he's trying to stop drunk drivers after a friend is killed by a DWI.
Another theme of the movie is that people are so angry that it won't take much to light the fuse of a riot. What could be a smaller incident than something as stupid and juvenile as pouring a beer on someone's head? The point is that everyone is waiting for the chance to attack, and they won't need much of an excuse. So using straight-edge to set off the riot wasn't really about straight-edge, it was about the fact that just about *anything* could have caused that riot.

VJ: So this is not a call to arms?

MP: A call to arms? We're already at arms. It's a call to focus your anger at the real enemy.

VJ: Generally if you ask anyone to name independent films or filmmakers, you might hear Clerks or Quentin Tarantino. Who where you looking at when "Threat" started to come off the page?

MP: I was looking at more politically volatile films. See, I never wanted to be a filmmaker. I didn't want "Threat" to get me work in Hollywood as a director, so I didn't look for guidance from those indie movies that launched Hollywood careers. I wanted to tell the truth, shake people up, shock them into thinking slightly different. So I was looking at movies like "Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song" by Melvin Van Peebles, "The Battle Of Algiers" by Gillo Pontecorvo, "Spook Who Sat By The Door" by Ivan Dixon, Richard Kern's movies, "Romper Stomper" by Geoffrey Wright... stuff like that. But I hafta admit that I was also obsessed with "Natural Born Killers."

VJ: So it might have been more or less of an art piece,

MP: Yeah it started as an art piece and by some bizarre coincidence it turned into a movie.

VJ: "Threat" is a feature length film, though. Most people would have settled for video?

MP: I think video is great for certain projects, but it's not a replacement for film... at least not yet. It's more ephemeral than film. When you look at something shot on video, you know instantly what video format it was shot on and when that format was in general use. Film is always film. We knew we would have to suffer and struggle for a long time to make "Threat" on film, but no matter how long it took to make it, that film would stand the test of time, for better or for worse. Also, we had a very specific aesthetic in mind for Threat: dreamlike black & white daytime and color-drenched nights with the kinds of saturated reds and blues you'd see in a comic book. It works great with film, but if you do it with video it would get psychedelic and then the story and performances would suffer.

VJ: So when you and your partner Katie Nisa started out, how did the two of you think you would actually shoot, edit, or even afford the project?

MP: We had no clue. Once we made the decision to actually make the movie ourselves, we knew we wouldn't stop until we figured everything out the hard way. Katie knew a crazy film student named Benjamin Brancato who had shot over 20 short films in 3 years. We brought him on as Cinematographer, but he was just a junior in undergrad film! I got an internship at a film co-op called Film/Video Arts. I would clean up after classes and help in the equipment vault and in exchange we got to use the equipment when it wasn't in use. We hung up flyers for casting sessions that we held at venues after hardcore shows. I used to write for this zine "Under The Volcano" and I ended one of my articles by asking people to come out and PA on my movie and that's how we started building the crew. Kids came to the set to volunteer and we all figured it out together.

VJ: The score and soundtrack of "Threat" is possibly as vivid as the movie itself. At times it seems to provide a narrative of its own. How did a German industrial band like Atari Teenage Riot make its way into a movie about hardcore kids in New York?

MP: By playing at CBGBs! I always loved Atari Teenage Riot and while working on the movie I thought that would be the perfect music. It was a total fantasy at the time, I never thought it would happen. When we were cutting the first trailers for the movie, we used Atari tracks without permission. When they played at CBs, I went backstage after the show and gave Alec Empire a copy of the trailer. He loved it and not only did he agree to let us use Atari tracks, but he gave us carte blanche to the entire Digital Hardcore catalog. Over the years he contributed more and more, eventually doing new music for the soundtrack and composing an entire alternate-score for the DVD. We were really blessed by his involvement.

VJ: Also what is up with the two soundtracks? What is this "Judgment Night?"

MP: Yes exactly. Look, "Threat" is a mash-up of a movie. When people came to the set, they didn't know what to make of us. There were hardcore kids and hip hop kids, crusty punks and goths, hippies and straight-edge kids, film geeks and industrial kids. Mashing up our subcultures is what it became about. So when it came time to make a soundtrack, we didn't know what kind of music to focus on. At its root, "Threat" is most strongly influenced by hardcore, but we wanted to change it up a bit so we had industrial and breakcore artists mash-up the hardcore tracks. The "Judgment Night" soundtrack was definitely the model, it was one of the best soundtracks ever and it totally opened kids up to a style of music they were probably ignoring at the time. The fact that we could get Killswitch Engage and Eighteen Visions on an album with Gorilla Biscuits and Minor Threat and then add Alec Empire and Enduser and EDGEY and Otto Von Schirach and Schizoid into the mix, it's the greatest kind of clusterfuck you can imagine.

VJ: So you had the film in the can, a trailer, and a score.... how did it make it onto the screen? I read that you took the nearly finished film to Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival. And what was DiY-Fest?

MP: The story of us going to Sundance is just the perfect example of how we had no idea what the fuck we were doing, and how our own ridiculous ignorance of the film world turned out to be our greatest asset. Apparently your film has to be accepted by Sundance in order for it to play there. Who knew? We thought it was more of an indie film party, just roll up and show your movie and if people like it then they get the word out. So as soon as we finished a rough cut, we hit the road with it and planned a tour to the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. We piled fifteen kids into a van and played "Threat" in bars and clubs and skateparks along the way. Keep in mind, the movie wasn't even really done. It sounded like shit, the colors were all fucked up, and we had title cards inserted for scenes we hadn't shot yet. It was ridiculous. So we finally got to Sundance and it turned out that it's more of a Hollywood junket type thing full of movie stars and coke parties. But we noticed a Doc Martens shoe store across the street from the big, flagship Sundance movie theater, and we talked the owners into letting us turn it into a movie theater of our own for two nights. We went to Wal-Mart and used their 30-day no-questions-asked return policy to get a truckload of TVs, and we built this big multi-screen installation in the shoe store. Instead of promoting it to the Hollywood suits at Sundance, we drove out to Salt Lake and promoted it to the kids and we wound up selling out all four shows. We saw right there that we didn't need to jump through Hollywood hoops to reach our audience, so we took the movie on tour across the US and then we got invited to the Raindance Film Festival in London and we got to tour through Europe. After each screening, Katie and I would run a Do-It-Yourself filmmaking workshop, basically explaining how we made "Threat." That developed into its own festival called DiY-Fest, where indie artists would explain how they do what they do. We managed to get together tons of people from all different scenes, Jim Jarmusch, Ani Difranco, Jello Biafra, Lloyd Kaufman from Troma, it was a blast.

VJ: So how did "Threat" finally get finished?

MP: While on tour we met a commercial editor who loved the movie, and he helped us finally finish all the really expensive and technical post-production on "Threat." By then we'd created enough of a stir around Hollywood that there were a bunch of offers to buy the movie, but we figured we never got anywhere by doing it the easy way. So we held out for a deal that would enable us to keep making movies, as crazy and angry and hardcore as we want, and never have to sell it to Hollywood suits just to get it out to the kids. So we built our own little micro-studio, signed an output deal that gives us total control, and now we're hard at work making more movies.