When Punks Go Hollywood

Everybody knows about punk-rock music, but how about punk-rock movies?

Not just films about punk rock, but also made the way punk music is: fast, cheap and no frills.

That’s what Vandals founding member Joe Escalante is focusing on nowadays, when he’s not on tour or recording with the veteran O.C.-Long Beach punk group.

Veteran is the operative word regarding his nascent interest in movie-making. Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols used to scowl about “no future,” but Escalante has seen punk rock’s future and for him it’s spelled c-i-n-e-m-a.

“I’m 37 now--how long can you keep playing in a punk-rock band?” said Escalante in his spartan office at Kung Fu Records, the Hollywood-based label he and Vandals guitarist Warren Fitzgerald started five years ago. “This movie thing is something I’ve learned to do and it’s something I could see doing for a while.”

The office provides a study in ironic contrast. In one small bookshelf sits his timeworn three-volume edition of 18th century British historian Edward Gibbon’s seminal work “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” right above a collection of videos containing vintage animated TV series--mostly Jay Ward shows--including “Hoppity Hooper,” “King Leonardo” and “George of the Jungle.” The videos, he says, were a gift from a friend who specializes in bootlegging classic animation.

“Our motto is, ‘No festivals, no theatrical screenings,’ ” Escalante said. “For what it would cost to make one print of a movie to show in a theater, we could make another entire film.”

Case in point: Their first movie, due next year, is the whimsically titled “Darn That Punk,” which cost $21,000 in toto--about enough to cover the shoelace budget in a $100-million major studio production like “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

The plan is to put “That Darn Punk” on video and market it directly to Vandals fans through their Web site (https://www.vandals.com).

Just as most punk-rock albums are targeted at the core punk crowd rather than at the pop mainstream--The Offspring and Green Day being the notable exceptions to that rule--Escalante sees a ready-made audience that’s been grossly overlooked, a view that was only strengthened during the Vandals’ recent three-week tour of Europe.

“Everywhere we go we have kids come up and say ‘I saw you in ‘Suburbia’ [the 1983 Penelope Spheeris punk drama]. I have it on tape and I watch it every night . . . We want to give them something else so they aren’t stuck with ‘Suburbia’ every night.”

And here’s the ultimate punk kicker: Escalante’s making the movie as an adjunct to the real focal point: the soundtrack album, which will feature music by the Vandals and several other Kung Fu acts, which keeps licensing costs and hassles to a bare minimum.

“We can do this because we own a lot of music, and we know the soundtracks will do well,” he said. “I don’t think anybody else could do it like this because no one else owns that much music and has the movie equipment too.”

Although “That Darn Punk,” an action-comedy about a bass player for a punk band who is kidnapped, drugged and left in the desert and tries to find his way back, was shot on video, future movies will be done on film now that Escalante recently bought a 16mm camera.

The 5,400-square-foot Kung Fu Records building also has facilities for film and TV production, as well as a permanent rehearsal room that’s been used lately to prepare for their sold-out holiday show Friday at the Sun Theatre.

If there is an overriding motto for most of the punk rock of the past 25 years, it’s “do it yourself.”

They tapped a friend with directing experience to oversee “That Darn Punk,” but Escalante plans to pare the operation even further and will handle that job himself on future films.

Odd Jobs

Most of the money that built Kung Fu came from Vandals royalties and Escalante’s earnings from five years as a business-affairs lawyer (he’s a Loyola Law School graduate) for CBS-TV in the early ‘90s. He’s also done legal consulting work for UPN.

Those jobs also gave him much of the experience he draws on in putting together deals, for the Vandals and other Kung Fu acts. He’s seen firsthand how the entertainment business usually works, and like a good punk rocker, handles his affairs pretty much the opposite way.

“I’ve been part of that mainstream TV and movie industry and just watched what happens to things in that world,” he said. “It’s kind of like the major-label [music] world.

“The most impressive thing about punk rock is you make something, put it out and you go on tour,” he said. “In the major-label world, you make something, then they tell you to make it again. Or it might never come out. Or lawyers get involved and everyone starts fighting.

“I’m kind of taking that [make it and put it out quickly] approach to movies.”

He also launched a private legal practice to bring in more money during Kung Fu’s “lean years,” and wound up representing handling “Pennywise, all the Sublime stuff, the Long Beach Dub All Stars, all kinds of [punk] record labels.”

In an age when recording contracts routinely run longer and include more conditions, regulations and amendments than the document that established the United States, Escalante said he strives to reduce Kung Fu contracts to a single page.

Another fundamental punk credo that permeates Kung Fu’s dealings is the importance of community. Young bands signed to the Vandals’ label get to tour with the Vandals. In turn, even younger bands that appeal to those young bands have an inside track to getting Escalante’s ear.

The Ataris, a young pop-punk band from Indiana that’s now one of Kung Fu’s hottest acts--brought Antifreeze, now also signed to Kung Fu, to his attention.

The big trade-off in all this for Escalante is the lack of time for songwriting, a job he’s had to hand off almost completely to Fitzgerald, who rose to the occasion magnificently in writing virtually all the songs on the Vandals’ latest album, “Look What I Almost Stepped In,” one of the strongest of the group’s 18-year career.

“On our previous record [‘Hitler Bad, Vandals Good’ in 1998], I wrote or co-wrote about half the songs. On the new one, I co-wrote one. Sure, I’d like to be able to sit around all day and write songs and play video games. But it’s important for me to be here, letting people know that when we say the Vandals own this place, there’s really a guy from the Vandals here.”

The keep-it-simple attitude applies to the Vandals too. The group records for Nitro Records, the Huntington Beach label set up by Offspring members Dexter Holland and bassist Greg Kriesel in part as a home for some of the punk bands they idolized growing up, among them the Vandals and TSOL.

Know Your Audience

Encouraged to pull out all the stops musically and financially for their new album, Escalante, Fitzgerald, singer Dave Quackenbush and drummer Josh Freese (related story, B6) declined.

They have no fantasies about lucking into an Offspring-like breakthrough. Fitzgerald wraps up the band’s outlook in 2 1/2 minutes in “Behind the Music,” the uproarious leadoff track on the “Look What I Almost Stepped In”:

Our ads are in the trades

And a video got made

And it cost a hundred grand

But we never got it played

And we’re trying to hit the road

But the agent doesn’t know

If there’s enough in the budget for tour support

So we’re playing local clubs

And we’re trying to get a “buzz”

And we got a good review in Music Connection

This could be the big one

Time to celebrate perhaps

Our fate is in the hands of strangers

Going gold or down the hole . . .

“At this point we pretty much know what our audience is. Something could happen and you could slip on a banana and maybe get some radio airplay, but probably not.

“This record actually costs less than the one before it,” Escalante added. “We made it like ‘Here’s how you make a punk record’: You make it the best you can and you don’t make a $100,000 punk record that’s only going to sell 80,000 copies and not recoup. How long can you continue to do that? You think you’re going to have a big radio hit the next time and it’s all going to pay off? I don’t think so.”

Escalante uses the same reasoning to help the bands on Kung Fu stay grounded in reality. He sees young punk bands like the Ataris getting further in six months than the Vandals did in its first 15 years.

He’s happy for them, but also amused when he gets a complaint like one he fielded during the Vandals’ recent tour. A crew member for one of the acts griped that the bunks in the bus his band was using were a bit short for his tall frame and requested sleeping quarters on the Vandals bus, which was a bit more spacious.

“I spent 3 1/2 months touring Europe in a van and sleeping on top of the guitar cabinet. This guy, it’s his first time in Europe and he’s in a $1,000-a-day bus and his bunk’s too small,” Escalante said with an incredulous laugh. “This is called ‘tough love.’ He needs to know this is not a luxury trip. It was 15 years before I was ever in a bus.”

“I try to keep them from all the misery that we had to go through,” he said.

At the same time, it’s unlikely they’ll ever have the experiences to inspire a song like “Behind the Music.”

“Exactly,” he said. “They’re writing love songs, and songs about loneliness on the road. It’s funny, I was just listening to the new Ataris record and they’re talking about their lonely life on the road.

“If that’s your life on the road,” he said chuckling, ever the upstart punker at heart, “that’s pretty cool.”

SHOW TIME

The Vandals Christmas Formal is Friday at the Sun Theatre, 2200 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim. With the Ataris, the Aquabats and Assorted Jellybeans. 7:30 p.m. Sold out. (714) 712-2700.