Mo| |erf| |ker: A Movie

On Friday, I came back from Lawrence, KS, where I have been working with Brad Roszell of hTc, editing Mofo. I came back from some NYFF festivities and well, basically to see the one I love. Missing the city, for sure.

We have a rough cut. It's beautiful, but a deeper story is still being sought - in the editing room. It just takes time to get through the 200 hours we've cut. But, Brad is a maestro of Final Cut. I'm definitely happy with the way things are playing out.

So, it's been some time since I've posted, and now we have a new forum to do so - finally, on the seemotherfucker.com website. I can look back at the tumultuous six months of production without letting out an overwhelming sigh (or death gasp, as it were). It's just been satisfying for the film to look close to what I was seeing, 18 months ago. We have brought something ageless to the screen.

Yet, there is something else, an undercurrent, to the film - and something I've been critical of for quite some time. The modern rock debate: referential v. derivative. I believe that's all up to the music creators - whether they are citing their influences or ripping from peers - but I have a different inquiry. If so much is simply taking from past influences - either in deference or irreverence - why the *looking back*? Why aren't people trailblazing with new work, new ideas? Certainly, I don't believe we're a post-modern world - that's fruitless and leads to cynicism. But why don't we look forward?

Simple - we're afraid. No one is saying fuck you anymore. Why are so many of our icons, from Dylan to Springsteen to Jagger - screaming out at Bush and his fucked up actions - when so many young artists are merely getting on-board for the money? Why do we not have anything to say? There is so much that needs to be said!

Music sucks now because we're not responsible for what we create. Where's the culpability of speaking your mind through your art? And even to those few who do say FUCK YOU, why are we not buying it instead of the multitudes of crap thrown in our ears daily?

We live in fucked up times. Our president sucks, we're in a war and many other little conflicts, and the American legacy abroad keeps getting worse and worse. Yet who, from the younger generations, is willing to spite their irony for sincere objection? Who is willing to say FUCK YOU?

OK, I'll say it. FUCK YOU. It's time to go after the wrongs in culture, the wrongs in politics, the wrongs that have been keeping us quiet, and admit our faults. We're a generation in debt. We're a generation screwed by our own needy tendancies. And now, we're more worried about paying our credit card bills than we are about our longterm future. We need to admit our faults and go after the ones that gave us those problems.

But, let me explain a deeper side to this. There's that old hippy adage - "our environment is not an inheritance from our ancestors to be spent down; it's a loan from our children." I think we were all told that line once or twice growing up, in many different contexts. If we are to believe our parents and grandparents believed that shit - then look what they gave us? If that's true - and they continue to wreck our future - then why look forward? Why look into a place where, someday, an entire new generation is going to look at us in rage, asking us why we gave them such a shitty legacy. So, let's listen to music from better times, simpler rebellions, easier days to get our heads around. We can't live with the very real, COMPLICATED reality of today and ultimately, a tomorrow we might never sort out.

FUCK THAT.

Well, we won't sort it out if we don't own it. And in order to do that, we need to be making future-forward music, future-forward film, future-forward art. We need to stop looking back - being cheeky with our subtle references to past greats - and own our futuresounds.

Looking back

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