Films / Other F Word, The

USA | Documentary Feature | 2011 | 98

.

Director: Andrea Nevins
Film source: Oscilloscope

A uniquely challenging documentary, straddles themes in this year’s festival. While it fits in the music doc strand, it goes far beyond what we think of as a “music” film. Director Andrea Nevins examines the lives of several middle-aged punk rockers and charts the changes that set in when former nihilists, some of whom were hell-bent on self destruction, become fathers. Now these former free wheelers must face the reality that they are no longer living only for themselves. They find themselves confronting their pasts and wrestling with their own often horrific childhoods.
Energetically entertaining, but also emotionally engaging, this often poignant film covers a number of aging, anti-authoritarian rockers challenged by their own parenthood to become the authoritarians of the future.

Punk rock was, and still is, about anarchy, no responsibility, doing it your way, and breaking as many taboos as possible along the way. But audiences for this brand of music remain young and renegade, while the veteran performers are turning grey and questioning how relevant these ideals are as their lives become profoundly changed by the responsibilities of fatherhood.
The film focuses primarily on Jim Lindberg, a twenty-year veteran of the skate-punk act Pennywise, whose still adolescent-minded bandmates don’t understand why this father of three can’t tour forever. Besides Lindberg, Nevins profiles Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers; Mark Hoppus of Blink 182; Lars Fredriksen and Matthew McCall Freeman of Rancid; Ron Reyes, former lead singer of Black Flag; Art Alexakis of Everclear; and other punk musicians as well as Tony Hawk, poster child for bad-boy skateboarders and now a very wealthy San Diego dad with a skate arena in his back yard.

We also get to hear from some of the children who have had to navigate the reality that their dads may be sporting Mohawks and tattoos. The film contrasts the musicians’ wild and screaming antics on stage and their gentle, loving personas as fathers at home.
For those either young and currently enamored of the punk scene or old enough to have been there when the whole thing started decades ago, there will be something in this film for you. -C.C.