Cinema Veri-Punk

The Sex Pistols used to scowl about “no future,” but Joe Escalante has seen punk-rock 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?” asks Escalante, a founding member of the veteran Orange County/Long Beach group the Vandals. “This movie thing is something I’ve learned to do and it’s something I could see doing after I’m not in a band.”

When he’s not on tour or recording with punk groups, the bassist and songwriter is now focusing on punk-rock movies that are made the way punk music is: fast, cheap and no-frills.

“Our motto is ‘No festivals, no theatrical screenings,’ ” says Escalante, who’ll join his cohorts on Friday at the Sun Theatre in Anaheim for the Vandals’ sold-out “Oi to the World” Christmas concert. “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 a meager $21,000. The plan is to release it on video and market it directly to Vandals fans through their Web site https://www.vandals.com.

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 acts on Kung Fu Records, the label he and Vandals guitarist Warren Fitzgerald started five years ago. That 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 says. “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.”

Lean Filmmaking

Saves on Salaries

Although “That Darn Punk,” an action comedy about a punk musician who’s kidnapped and left in the desert, was shot on video, fu ture movies will be done on film--Escalante recently bought a 16mm camera.

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. He says Fitzgerald will write the script and star in the next one, saving salaries on at least one actor and one screenwriter.

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

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, he handles his affairs pretty much the opposite way.

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 and wrote 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.

“It’s important for me to be here,” says Escalante, who’s sitting in his spartan office at the label’s Hollywood headquarters, “letting people know that when we say the Vandals own this place, there’s really a guy from the Vandals here.”

He’s happy for the fast track he sees younger punk bands on today, but he’s also amused when he gets a complaint like the one he fielded during the Vandals’ recent tour.

A crew member for one of the acts griped that the bunks in the band bus were too short for his tall frame and requested sleeping quarters on the Vandals’ bus.

“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 says 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.”

Still, he says, “I try to keep them from all the misery that we had to go through. And the market’s good, so they should be able to do well.”

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