Banger Films Official Blog

DC has always been known as more of a punk/hardcore town, so we weren’t sure how DC’ers would respond to our film. But, as it turned out, we had a great couple of screenings and were treated very well by the festival. Also, one of DC’s few remaining metal/rock bars, The Asylum hosted parties after both screenings and we didn’t need to buy a single drink. Good times…

We also checked out the DC sights, cruising to the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam and Korean Memorials, the White House, and the Natural History Museum (I had to check out the mastodon, of course ). Sights aside, though, the highlight of the DC trip was by far hanging out with non other than Jeff Krulik, co-directory of the all-time cult classic “Heavy Metal Parking Lot”. Jeff has been supportive of the project from the beginning and allowed us to use some HMPL footage at the beginning of our doc (for a nominal fee, of course). He drank with us until the wee hours of the night and gave us a free copy of the recently released HMPL DVD complete with outtakes. Can’t wait to check it out…

Oh yeah, and I appeared on “The Situation” with Tucker Carlson to defend the metal case. But wait, Tucker no longer wears a bowtie and his hair is actually below his collar. Could Tucker be secretly listening to Slayer?

Los Angeles – April 11-14, 2006

Our LA premiere was at the ArcLight Cinema, an amazing old cinema in Hollywood that hosts the annual AFI Music Documentary Series. It was great to be part of the festival featuring some of the other fascinating music docs on the Police, David Bowie and the Pixies. We won’t mention the one about George Michael, though. Ugh.

Not only was the screening for ‘Metal’ sold out with a great Q&A, but Kerry King of Slayer and the guys from Children of Bodom were in the audience. This was a great moment for us because Kerry was the first major artist who appears in the film to actually watch the film WITH us. Admittedly, it was a little nerve-wracking but afterwards he told us he loved the film, which was a huge boost. The CoB guys were also happy with how we used their music in the film. A good start to a long night…

After the screening we head an exclusive party for every-one who attended the screening at Club King King (which was ceremoniously renamed Club Kerry King for the night) and Jackie from Indie 103.1FM (host of the mighty “Chaos: The Metal Show) did a podcast from the party complete with tunes from the film and interviews with Kerry, Alexi from CoB and Scot and I. Jackie has been a long time supporter of our film and she is doing great things for the metal scene in the LA area. it was damn cool to hear Kerry and Alexi talk about the film in such a positive light on her show. Check out her show here. Chaos with Full Metal Jackie.

After the party we hit the The Rainbow on Sunset only to find Lemmy playing his favourite video game at the bar. Exactly where we left him two years ago!

Oh yeah. And we met these dudes at The Rainbow… Metal Meets Bling.  ‘nuf.

Our US theatrical premiere was at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. A festival that is a little short on Metal but long on good BBQ and good times. We were more than a little startled to be greeted by a stretch limo courtesy of our US distributors, Warner Bros. Oh well, you only live once eh?

We caught The End Records showcase with Norway’s own Green Carnation – it was good to see Andreas and Adrian from The End out in full force. We also checked out the Relapse Records party and chowed down on some killer Mexican grub with the Relapse and Century Media folks.

But the hands down highlight was the arrival of Eric Bryan, one of the fans who appears in the film. He traveled all the way from Riverside, California to Austin just to see the film’s premiere. His parents paid for his trip for his graduation present! He did the Q&A after the film with us and dropped some hilarious comments about downloading and Metallica. Eric is a young metal fan who really knows his stuff and will have a very bright future in whatever he sets his sights on.

What else did we do? Well, let’s just say that our final night concluded with Scot drinkin’ bourbon out of a glass pistolero, fer chrissakes! Need I say more?

Now, prior to being invited to the Bermuda International Film Festival, my only reference for this out-of-the-way island nation were “The Triangle”, rum smuggling and cheesy rattan furniture. You know, a place that would resemble the set for the TV crime drama series, Fantasy Island, minus the crime and the drama.

Little did I know that Bermuda would have it’s own, full fledged metal scene! Granted, the entire scene could fit into one row of a theatre (!), but it was great to see Bermuda’s metallers out in full force for both of our screenings. At one screening a whole group of kids had been given the weekend off of school to watch the film. This really got us thinking about the spread of metal to all corners of the globe, which will be the focus of our next film.

Apart from the screenings, well, we hung out ath some crazy mansions, stayed at Michael Douglas’ mom’s resort (weird), took a bike tour down the center of the island, and visited Bermuda’s oldest graveyard. But to be honest, most of our time was spent sucking back “Dark ‘n’ Stormys”-the local specialty drink consisting of rum and ginger beer. Let’s just say hangovers were taken to a whole new level. Ouch!!

Halifax, Canada – September 22-25, 2005
The Atlantic International Film Festival was our second film fest and let’s just say that Nova Scotians know how to put ‘em back, eh. The “hospitality suite” was certainly that; hospitable. We went hard…
But on a more serious note, we had two screenings of the film, one in downtown Halifax and one in the nearby Dartmouth. A friend from Dartmouth describes it as “Not the end of the world, but you can see it from there”. Ha! The crowds were small but totally metal. I got in touch with some local metalheads through chat rooms before we arrived and it was great to see the Halifax metal community in full effect. At first, we were a little worried about attendance at the Dartmouth screening. In the end we had a good crowd and got excellent feedback.
We also did some generic tourist stuff and got the guards at Citadel Horns to throw the devil horns. I guess they had heard about the film on the radio news that morning. (I think that was the earliest interview I’ve ever done: “That’s interesting what you say about Slayer, Sam, but now let’s look at the local weather forcast…” Pretty surreal.) But the hands down hilight of the Halifax trip was that I got to check out two Relapse Records bands, Undand anb Buried Inside, at the Attic. Buried Inside was killer – Totally gritty, totally lethal. The Attic was a wicked little rock/metal club where i got to hang out with some people who came to the screenings. Seems like Halifax has a cool scene going on…