{"id":36360,"date":"2006-11-08T12:00:47","date_gmt":"2006-11-08T17:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/?p=36360"},"modified":"2016-02-01T01:49:38","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T06:49:38","slug":"a-decade-after-the-hype","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/2006\/11\/08\/a-decade-after-the-hype\/","title":{"rendered":"A Decade After The Hype!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In the early 1990s, the American music scene was irrevocably changed by an explosion of bands from one small sector of Northwestern real estate- the city of Seattle. Seemingly overnight bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden were dominating radio station play lists with the roaring guitars of angry, disaffected youth, a combination of the sonic power of heavy metal ironically combined with punk\u2019s rejection of commercialization.<\/p>\n

But like any burst of energy, this dynamic explosion soon burned itself out leaving in its wake shattered dreams, disillusioned bands and more than one causality.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s when documentarian Doug Pray entered the picture, to try and decipher what exactly spawned this musical movement, which had somehow gained the moniker \u201cgrunge.\u201d The result is the film Hype!<\/strong>, which was released in November 1996 after winning the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival the previous January.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is really an amazing story,\u201d Pray said in a March 1997 interview. \u201cYou have a small handful of bands- about twenty people who in the course of five or six years completely changed pop culture. They really did, they totally revolutionized the music industry. I mean Nirvana single-handedly did, but all those bands were a part of that. When you step back and look at it like that, it\u2019s fascinating. You think, \u2018How does this happen?\u2019 Because you know it will happen again somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pray\u2019s film traces the history of the Seattle music scene from the mid-1980s and bands like Young Fresh Fellows to its world-wide explosion less than a decade later. And with that new found popularity came hoards of record companies looking to sign up the latest bands and entertainment press looking for the “Seattle story.” All the while, stores like Macy\u2019s were suddenly milking the musicians\u2019 budget-minded propensity for flannel shirts into a high-end, boutique item. It was a collision between rock music and commerce the likes of which had last been seen a quarter of a century earlier in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cActually, nobody really knows what grunge was,\u201d Pray admitted. \u201cIf you look at it as a group of bands or as a community of people who didn\u2019t take themselves seriously and played pretty loud, fun music – and even the dark, heavy stuff is kind of fun \u2013 then yeah, [that\u2019s grunge] I don\u2019t know even so much if there\u2019s a sound than there is an attitude that everybody shared.\u201d<\/p>\n

One part of that Seattle attitude that perplexed many was how many of the area\u2019s musicians seemed to actively resist what they saw as the music industries\u2019 attempts to strip-mine the city of its musical gold.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems sort of whiny if you didn\u2019t really see it or if you\u2019re not really there,\u201d Pray said. \u201cYou kind of wonder \u2018What are they complaining about? Wouldn\u2019t anybody want to be the Capital of Hip?\u2019 It is a different perspective when you\u2019re really there and you realize how much history there is. It\u2019s like anything, when you really get to know something you realize the huge difference between the media\u2019s perception of something and what is real.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hype!<\/strong> has its origins in 1992, smack dab in the middle of the explosion of the Seattle music scene. Nirvana and Pearl Jam had released their breakthrough albums the previous fall and music industry scouts were scouting every bar and club within 50 miles of Seattle for the Next Big Band. Pray\u2019s friend, producer Steve Helvey had seen some music videos that Pray had directed for the Seattle bands Young Fresh Fellows and Flop and approached him with an idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said \u201cLook, if you know bands up there in this amazing music scene I keep reading about, why isn\u2019t anybody doing a documentary? Let\u2019s do something,\u2019\u201d recalled Pray. \u201cMy initial reaction was completely negative. I was like \u2018Steve, that is the dumbest idea in the world because everybody\u2019s heard of it. It\u2019s already happened, you know. You would think to do a movie like this you\u2019ve got to be there from day one. First of all, you\u2019ve got to be from there and second you\u2019ve got to be there for every event of the whole history. It had already peaked, at least in my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Pray knew that although he was acquainted with some of the area\u2019s bands, he was still an outsider and as such, under potential suspicion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main reason was just that these people were so cynical, so anti-media,\u201d Pray said. \u201cI know about that, how sick of the whole \u2018Seattle scene\u2019 hype that a lot of these bands were. I just thought there\u2019s no way. I finally picked up the phone and called my friends and said \u2018Look I don\u2019t know if we\u2019re going to do this movie\u2026\u2019 I was so apologetic just to ask if they were into doing it. And I started realizing that there might actually be a real reason to make a movie like this, to do something that was really different from all the other imagery and concepts that you could find everywhere else.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason they were mad is because they had been misrepresented. All of sudden, it seemed like there was plenty of room for a movie that would actually just represent them and would let some of the humor and show some of the bands who may not have been as popular but who were certainly as important to the development of the scene.\u201d<\/p>\n

After contacting several bands, Pray and his film crew arrived in Seattle and began shooting several smaller bands on the city\u2019s club circuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were filming bands who had before then been completely ignored by the mainstream media,\u201d said Pray. \u201cPart of that is a practical reality that we couldn\u2019t immediately go up there and film Soundgarden. So we filmed the bands that I knew and that my friends knew. That was one thing that actually confused the heck out of our investors who were like, \u2019Who\u2019s Gas Huffer? Why did we just spend ten thousand feet of film filming a band named Gas Huffer?\u2019 To me, I thought it was great. This is really cool, this is the real Seattle scene.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was Pray\u2019s professionalism that convinced many skeptical musicians of the production\u2019s good intentions. Pray recorded the performances with a 24-track digital mobile recording truck and filmed the performances with multiple cameras.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cOver the course of time people came to realize that we weren\u2019t the forces of evil,\u201d stated Pray. \u201cWe were not Hollywood, we didn\u2019t have a lot of money. We were taking the filmmaking part seriously. Slowly, the more prominent bands who arguably had more to lose came to say \u2018I guess this is ok, I guess these guys are all right.\u2019 At first everybody was worried that we were just some Hollywood group coming in to package the whole thing and put out \u2018The Grunge Movie.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the most striking bits of footage in the film was actually captured by Seattle music fan a few years earlier- video footage of Nirvana\u2019s very first live performance of the song that would become their breakthrough smash \u201cSmells Like Teen Spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a guy who shot that and just had the tape,\u201d explained Pray. \u201cIn typical Seattle fashion had not exploited it or told anyone about it. That to me is so characteristically Seattle, so very humble. If that guy had lived in LA, you would have seen it everywhere. [The tape] came really late in the game. I had a working cut of the movie and was just trying to finish up. I was like \u2018We really, really need some more archival footage,\u2019 i.e. Nirvana and some other bands. This VHS came in the mail one morning and I popped it in and was like \u2018That\u2019s it! That\u2019s amazing.\u2019 The biggest coupe on that was just getting the support of the other members of Nirvana, Chris (Novoslic) and Dave (Grohl), who were cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time of Hype<\/strong>\u2019s release, Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain\u2019s suicide was still fresh in the memories of music fans. One can\u2019t help feel a twinge of sadness watching Cobain and his band mates at a time when they had no idea of the success they would achieve and eventually become the victims of.<\/p>\n

But while Cobain\u2019s death was headline news around the world, his passing wasn\u2019t the only death that would shake the Seattle music community. On the evening of July 7, 1993, Mia Zapata, the lead singer of band The Gits, was brutally raped and murdered while walking home. At the time the film was produced, Zapata\u2019s murderer had not been found.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had some really great interview material talking about that death and the impact of that death on the community,\u201d admitted Pray. \u201cIt simply didn\u2019t work in the movie. The movie was about this music community then all of a sudden took a left turn and for ten minutes went into this whole other equally interesting but totally different type of movie. I got really frustrated and I talked to the band. The band basically felt like we should just ignore it and basically let the Gits be seen in all their glory and let her sing, but not go into this whole other thing. We ended up giving footage to Unsolved Mysteries and they did a big piece on it. It\u2019s just something that no matter how we would have played it, we would have been in trouble. If we had put it in the movie it would have felt exploitive when really her death had nothing to do with the media and the hype, whereas Cobain\u2019s death seemed inextricably tied to the idea of the price of success.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou actually feel a great responsibility sitting in the editing room trying to tell this story accurately yet at the same time making it funny and entertaining,\u201d Pray continued. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to do a real boring, PBS style documentary about \u2018The History of the Seattle Music Scene.\u2019 I didn\u2019t want to treat it like this major historical thing. I don\u2019t think that rock should ever be treated with total reverence. These bands didn\u2019t take themselves seriously and that\u2019s what they were afraid of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Note: This archival interview with director Doug Pray was originally conducted in March 1997 while the director was still doing publicity for his documentary Hype!<\/strong>. Portions of this conversation previously appeared in an April 4, 1997 article in the Wilkes-Barre, PA Times Leader newspaper.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Archival Interview With Director Doug Pray<\/div>\n

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