Kill Your Idols Coming to DVD
 

http://pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/37164

If you had $300 to blow, how would you spend it? A plane ticket? Your share of the rent your roommate's been screaming at you for? A binge at a record store (probably why your roommate is out for your head)?
Scott Crary directed, shot, and edited his first large film project for less than that amount. The film, Kill Your Idols, takes a look at New York's art-rock scene over the last thirty years. It features interviews with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Liars, Black Dice, Arto Lindsay, Glenn Branca, Lydia Lunch, Michael Gira, and more.
Crary's small expenditure resulted in the prize for Best Feature Documentary at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival, as well as a distribution deal with Palm Pictures. Kill Your Idols will screen at Cinema Village in New York City starting July 7. There are plans for more widespread release and the film will come out on DVD early this fall.

Pitchfork caught up with Crary last week via e-mail. When asked what his motivation behind the film was, he wrote: "Originally, I was pursuing just the newer bands and a much wider cross-section of them (with bands like the Walkmen, Interpol, etc.). Over time, a certain concentration of the bands I was interviewing either kept referencing a certain 5 year period in NY underground rock (77-82) and/or were being paired with bands from then by the media. The interplay between those two generations of bands became more compelling to me, so I began hunting down the originators that everyone was referencing from 30 years ago to see what they thought of their progeny."
Although a number of the bands featured have roots in the No Wave movement, Crary was careful to point out that Kill Your Idols is not centered on No Wave. Rather, the purpose of the film is to comment on the fact that such harsh, dissonant acts inspired and spawned a number of bands working today.
Said Crary, "Of course the irony of a movement like No Wave, which sought to consciously rebuke what came before, eventually leaving a concentrated legacy of its own appealed to me. And the film became more about defining that irony than any sort of attempt at a historical document or overview."
It took four years for Crary to make Kill Your Idols, including several months of convincing bands to appear in the film. Crary credits Nick Zinner, guitarist for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, with introducing him to a number of the bands featured: "Nick from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs exposed me to a lot of the burgeoning bands back then. For instance, he'd suggest I check out Liars, Liars would suggest I check out Black Dice, etc."
For Crary, having Palm Pictures distribute his film was a logical choice, given the company's experience releasing the innovative Directors Label DVD series of music videos. Furthermore, the company has a direct connection to the originators of the no wave scene. As Crary noted, it was Palm Pictures founder Chris Blackwell's label, Island, which released the scene-galvanizing No New York compilation in 1978.

seems real cool. thanks moshe

killer, cant wait for that to come out
moshe, you alwas got the late breakin news man. reputation points awarded to you.

Sweet. Palm Pictures does a lot of cool stuff.

Very very cool. Thanks for the heads up once again.

Looks good.

Been wondering about this one for a while since I read about it on imdb. I hope it gets good distribution so I can buy it here.

I'm hoping for some vintage sy footage in this.

thanks for the heads up moshe. you really do have your finger on the pulse

several of my school chums made a short film about a coat hanger named Crary. i doubt this is at all relevant to the thread or anyone here, but that's what i immediately thought of when i saw the guy's name. if they ever put it on the internet, i will post a link. because it's a great film. seriously. great.

is there any cool Black Dice footage in there?

thanks again moshe...
about time too for this release!!!!!

yes, thanks for info!
so that's kill yr. idols, noise and dave markey short films dvds coming out.
hopefully at least one of them will be easy reachable in music shops in my area.

thanks for the info .. :)

great news... i hope it come out here in Brazil...
it must be astonishing to see sy play kill yr idols back in the eights... and this time with a good audio. :P

any date for the dvd release?

neat-o.

Just saw it yesterday. What a horrible film. How can you make such a boring movie from such an interesting subject? The really bad parts were when the movie tried to present the YYY's and some other bands as resurrectors of the No Wave scene. Karen O as the new Lydia Lunch??? Give me a brake.
One funny moment is when Thurstonwasasked what next and he replies "Yes Wave" :)

not worth buying then?

no!

dont think its that bad moshe. the yyy being in there kinda dumbifies the thing but its a pretty good watch.

pity. it's really a subject that deserves having a good documentary being made about it... don't think I'll find it for rent somewhere so I guess i'll wait for it to appear on youtube or something. :D

there are lots of other DVDs I need to buy anyway, like the No Fun Fest one.

i thought "no wave" was a movement consisting of rude people that do not like to salute other people on the streets and such.

well, maybe my expectations were to high.

FAIR POINT. PUNK:ATTITUDE IS A MUST BETTER DOCUMENTARY....

kool, i will have to get this.

i have all the best black dice footage. i guarantee that.

do share chris!
seriously, black dice are real hit and miss with me. they are either amazingly great or just boring (this is just my opinion!). kinda adds to the thrill of getting stuff cuz you just dont know what to expect so i gotta respect them for that!

check this video out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8guEn5jiYY

Meh, it was okay. I bought it thinking it would be better.

yes it is a little boring but personally, i learned alot from it, so not all is lost..

http://brainwashed.com/index.php?opt...k=view&id=5674

Kill Your Idols" Written by Matthew Amundsen Monday, 30 October 2006 New York’s No Wave scene of the late ‘70s was a brief but visionary moment in music history centering around bands whose members were frequently non-musicians but came from a variety of artistic backgrounds. While this documentary is by no means a definitive statement, it certainly sheds some light on what the movement was all about and what it meant to many of those involved, and how their pioneering spirit may or may not live on in the music of the generations who followed.
Plexifilm

The documentary begins appropriately enough with an interview with Martin Rev of Suicide. His description of how he and cohort Alan Vega were close to living on the street during Suicide’s genesis is a similar influence to the urban decay that fueled Lydia Lunch and her No Wave peers. Lunch features prominently here, along with Jim Sclavunos, Glenn Branca, Arto Lindsay, Michael Gira, Thurston Moore, and Jim Thirwell. Their stories, supplemented with music and footage from the time, gives a general impression of what the scene was all about.
One of the criticism that’s hounded No New York, the Eno-produced compilation that brought the scene to light, is that it’s a mere tip of the iceberg and leaves out far more than it includes. Unfortunately, that trend continues here. One of the more noticeable omissions is Mars, who also featured on the compilation but only get the briefest mention here. Yet they’re not the only victims. As evidenced by the family tree included on the inside cover of the DVD, there were dozens of bands mining the same territory who will never see the light of day. It’s a shame that first-time director S.A. Crary didn’t hunt down some of these more obscure artists since their views from the other side of the spotlight would surely be illuminating.
Instead, Crary shifts gears after a mere 25 minutes and instead talks to current, younger bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Gogol Bordello, Liars, Black Dice, A.R.E. Weapons, and Flux Information Sciences. At best, some of these artists seem to have little in common with their supposed forebears, and at worst are irrelevantly vain and clueless. Gogol Bordello comes across as sincere and earnest in their efforts to combine disparate elements to create new sounds, yet their philosophy is at odds with those of the No Wave bands, many of whom were purposefully anti-music in their approach. It’s too bad that at the time of filming, Liars are pre-Drowned and still in their initial dance punk phase that thankfully gave way later to an uninhibited experimentalism that transcends their beginnings. Black Dice and Flux maintain respectability, but the likes of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and A.R.E. Weapons waste too much valuable screen time.
After interviewing the younger bands, Crary then starts interjecting barbed comments about them from the No Wave subjects. As justified as some of these comments are, I can’t help but wonder why Crary spent half the film building the case for the newer acts only to have the main subjects tear them down. I would much rather have had the film focus exclusively on the No Wave bands and go into more detail rather than try to make some dubious connections between these generations that are ultimately negated anyway. No Wave’s immediate scope of influence should have provided more than enough material to flesh out the documentary without having to resort to interviews with current bands, whose inclusion is a little baffling and suggests economic interests more than historical ones.
Despite these complaints, I’m happy the documentary exists at all. The relevant interviews are excellent, the footage is illuminating, and the editing of the feature cleverly reflects the aesthetics of the time in question. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s enjoyable enough for what it is.

a.r.e. weaopons suck tho!

Sounds interesting. Does it focus much on Liars? I got this compilation a while back that had I dreamed a dream and a load of "no wave" things, it was called "New york noise 2" and it was quite interesting so id like it if it focused more on that sort of thing. If i can get hold of it in England i probably will.

True dat.

saw A.R.E. Weapons live about 3 or 4 years ago and i have to agree that they are not good to me...

and about the kill yr idols dvd... i was abit dissappointed in it overall, and it does speak from someone who is doing a "documentary for the first time" however they did do there homework on the subject, though the relationship being made with today's "no-wavers" (YYY, Liars, Black Dice, Gogo Bordello...etc) vs. the "no-originators" seem to carry on way to long and became unfocused unrealized and need i say pointless.

Can't wait to check that shit out