15 Feb Half-Cocked was Filmed 20 years ago

Earlier this week my friend Tara posted a photo I took of her and a few friends and wrote.

ALRIGHT. its my very first throwback thursday. cuz we were about to shoot this moving document 20 YEARS AGO today. Cynthia Nelson, Jon Cook, Jeff Mueller, T Sean Meadows, Michael Galinsky, Kristin Furnish-Noble and everyone else. Miss you people. Carry on…

We’ve been carrying on ever since we made “Half-Cocked” those 20 years ago. In all honesty it has not been easy. Like the people in that film, we didn’t really know what we were doing. We weren’t professional, and like the subjects/characters we had no interest in being “professional”. “Half-Cocked” wasn’t a calling card. It was a document.

If we hadn’t been so niave I don’t think we would have been able to make the film. The shoot was hard, but somehow we got a movie in the can. We shot on film and edited in Suki’s closet.

We decided to make the film in October of 93 and started shooting 5 months later in February 94. By the following November we were done. Two months after we shot the movie I was on tour with my band Sleepyhead, opening for Yo La Tengo, when Kurt Cobain died. We heard it on the radio somewhere in the midwest. I felt like something had shifted and the film seemed that much more important.

Kurt Cobain with members of Half-Japanese after NYC show

A couple of days after Tara posted that pic I spotted the trailer for Lance Bangs’ documentary about Slint.

It reminded me that sometimes a band like Nirvana comes along at the right time and connects even though it is doing something challenging. Sometimes it takes 20 years for people to see the value in the work.

SCREENINGS

Roxie Theater, San Francisco March 20th followed by Q&A with Lance Bangs

Cinefamily, Los Angeles March 11, 12, 13 followed by Q&A with Lance Bangs

PhilaMOCA, Philadelphia March 14th & 15th followed by Q&A with Lance Bangs and Slint member David Pajo