I was there! (It was actually last night.) I know Devo and Gerald's social media accounts advertised it, but I wasn't prepared for the large turnout. Tickets sold out in advance (which has happened to a lot of MoMA screenings lately) but interest was definitely higher than usual - an hour before the screening, there was both a long standby line and a long line of ticket holders showing up early. Some cool sightings, Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth was one of the first people seated in the theater, and Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley walked through the lobby, so it's possible they were trying to get in.
FWIW, this was originally booked for their smaller theater and remained so when I bought an advance ticket a week ago, but I'm guessing they moved it to the bigger (and better) theater due to the demand.
Here's the museum's listing for the screening:
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www.moma.org]
Peter Conheim gave the introduction and then he moderated a post-screening discussion with Mark and Gerald before taking questions from the audience. Q&A's for these things can vary quite a bit, but this was one of the generous ones, lasting 30+ minutes and stretching past 9pm.
Just so it doesn't get lost to history, here are some notes:
Conheim's intro was appropriately only a few minutes. He mentioned nearly everything was restored from the original film negative. The earliest films had been done all on film anyway, but once they were on Warner Bros. and moved into the MTV/video era, that meant a transition to shooting on film but editing on videotape - the rough equivalent of "standard definition" and not up to today's standards. So they went the extra mile and scanned the original film negative and recut it to match. (The few things that looked like video looked good for what it was, and I'm guessing they left them as video because of substantial video effects that might've been too tricky to replicate correctly.)
During the discussion and Q&A they covered a lot of ground. From what I can remember chronologically (in terms of what was addressed rather than the order the topics were discussed), someone asked about their legendary 1975 Cleveland show with Sun Ra and whether it existed in complete form. Conheim would chime in much later, saying it did and that a good chunk of it was presented on a Rykodisc reissue, but first Gerald hilariously recalled how it was disastrous for them. It was Halloween, so all the men were apparently dressed in clichéd outfits like the Wolfman and the Mummy, but the women were all dressed like prostitutes, and I think he said a lot of them were high on nitrous oxide or something. He said that they got the gig because they lied and said they were a cover band - so they would go on and say, "here's a song from Bad Company," then play one of their own. The response naturally was "hey, that's not Bad Company! You suck!" and they'd retaliate by playing "Jocko Homo" ("you can imagine how that went"). Eventually they got out of there, went to some crappy restaurant nearby, and came back dressed as their regular selves which meant none of the hostile audience members would recognize them. But by that point only 20 or 30 people were still there for Sun Ra, and Gerald and Mark said he was amazing. Mark then said Sun Ra inspired his keyboard style - he then demonstrated Sun Ra's aggressive technique and said Sun Ra played with his palms and fingers wide open, bashing the keyboards the whole time. Mark thought "that sounds great!" and adopted that style.
One of the highlights of the night was seeing their early performances at Max's with David Bowie introducing them. There were two cameras FWIW and though the film sometimes showed just one angle, a lot of it was split screen. Conheim mentioned they didn't leave this in the film but there is a shot where you can see something like a rolled up classroom projection screen, which was their low budget set-up for showing pre-show films at the time. (Gerald mentioned they avoided opening acts, listing many practical aesthetic reasons, and said the films were made for that reason, serving as their "opener.") It sounded like artists really liked what they were doing early on - besides Bowie, Toni Basil came to a show with Iggy Pop and Dean Stockwell and of course it was Stockwell who got a tape and passed that on to Neil Young. Conheim mentioned the appropriate footage from the film they did with Young wasn't included in the screening because Young owns it, and they were still negotiating with their camp to let them not only restore the picture but to restore it to the full nine minutes as Young edited it down later on.
Earlier, Mark mentioned that Warner Bros. wanted to spend something like $5000 on life-size Devo cutouts for promotion, and they asked them if they could take that money to make a film. Warner reluctantly agreed, but that's also how they came to own ALL of their films - they were done using promotional money that was meant to spent, not recouped in some way as if it was a loan (outside of album sales), and they were so far ahead of the curve, no record contract at the time made any mention of short films, so all of that just went to the band. "Whip It" was the only time they were asked to make a film - the label usually didn't get why they wanted to make them and let them do whatever they wanted with them, but when "Whip It" became a surprise hit, they asked them to do something for it. (Mark joked they wrote it for Jimmy Carter to help his re-election campaign - I always associated Devo with the Reagan era in terms of what their music was about and what it sounded like, so when Mark said that, it kind of raised my respect for the band as being that much more innovative.)
They actually shot a 35mm film projected as backdrop for a tour and they'd interact with it. (They actually rehearsed with the film and got to a point where they could play in conjunction with it with great precision.) Digital makes it easy now, but back then, that kind of technology didn't exist, so they took the very cumbersome and very expensive route of touring with their own 35mm projector. People like David Bowie came to those shows because they wanted to do it too and wanted to see how it was done. Gerald mentioned an L.A. Times critic who said what they did was like a video game - "if I wanted to see that, I'd go to an arcade. Go home and play some rock n' roll!!" Gerald then said "After all that work, that's what we get? Imagine if David Byrne had done that."
With Rod Rooter, they said they wouldn't name names, but they didn't really write any of his dialogue - when they moved to L.A., they couldn't believe how much worse the industry was out there and made a point to remember all the garbage execs, promoters, etc. would tell them then regurgitate it for Rod Rooter. (They did say most of the dialogue probably came from a Warner exec named "Bob," adding "too many Bobs!")
When someone asked them about working within the system, Gerald said the '80s kind of suggested that subversion was going to be more effective than rebellion, and Mark elaborated on that by discussing their commercial work. They did a Hawaiian Punch commercial where the tag line was "Hawaiian Punch hits where it counts," which Mark then countered with what sounds like a distorted vocal that says "sugar is bad for you." When they went to meet the producers to screen the ad, I think it was Mark's brother Bob who said "you shouldn't have done that, we're going to get in trouble now," but at the end, the producers just high-fived each other and said "Yes! It DOES hit where it counts!" and once they realized they can get away with that sort of thing, they did it for every commercial they scored.
Gerald mentioned it was sad to see "devolution" as expressed in their work play out so terribly in the world, saying "do you think anyone 25 years ago would've predicted what you're going to face in November?"
Finally, someone mentioned Bob Casale and how in a few weeks it will be ten years since his passing, and Gerald said he still hasn't deleted Bob's name and number from his phone.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/28/2024 05:17PM by belfast.
