Speaker 1: Oh is it show time?
Speaker 2: People say, good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas,
Speaker 3: pop popcorn, and no monsters.
Speaker 2: In the Protection Booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't.
Speaker 3: Boring at off.
Speaker 2: How do you feel about.
Speaker 1: Pyra Radio and if Sam Fringe and y B FCC.
Speaker 3: What I like is that we're able to play whatever
Speaker 3: we want to play, We're able to say whatever we
Speaker 3: want to say, and nobody dicks with us.
Speaker 4: In fire radio, It's just like a weird urban legend,
Speaker 4: and then you'd hear it and realize.
Speaker 2: It was real. Kind of this like mysterious thing that exists.
Speaker 3: Able people knew there was an illegal radio station, so
Speaker 3: we're like, no, we knew what it was.
Speaker 5: Adot Applyvate radio stage last eight month signal across five
Speaker 5: entire city blocks. My message for those pirates out there
Speaker 5: that are saying that we're going to get away with
Speaker 5: this was, uh, don't get too comfortable.
Speaker 1: Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth.
Speaker 1: I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking
Speaker 1: with Sue Carpenter. She is the writer and director of
Speaker 1: the new documentary forty Watts from Nowhere that is playing
Speaker 1: over at the slam Dance Film Festival coming up pretty
Speaker 1: darn soon. Miss Carpenter was a DJ and founder at
Speaker 1: an underground slash pirate radio station back in the mid
Speaker 1: nineties into the early two thousands. Had a great time
Speaker 1: talking with her about the station as well as why
Speaker 1: she decided to make this movie right now. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening, and I hope you enjoyed the interview.
Speaker 1: Before this was a documentary, it was a book. Can
Speaker 1: you tell me a little bit about how the book
Speaker 1: came about.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the book came about because I have a horrible memory,
Speaker 6: So shortly after the station was busted, I decided that
Speaker 6: I should chronicle it when I had everything fresh in
Speaker 6: my brain, and so the book came out in two
Speaker 6: thousand and four. I started to write it, and I
Speaker 6: think I got the deal in nineteen ninety nine or
Speaker 6: two thousand, so I started to write it probably a
Speaker 6: year after the station went under and that's why that exists.
Speaker 2: And then why the documentary.
Speaker 6: Now, Because I've found that there was all this vintage
Speaker 6: footage that I didn't know existed or hadn't remembered. To
Speaker 6: the point about me having a horrible memory because I
Speaker 6: did a sit down interview in nineteen ninety eight with
Speaker 6: the person who had all this footage. I don't remember doing.
Speaker 6: I only found out that this footage existed two years ago,
Speaker 6: and I thought as a journalist, I had worked in print,
Speaker 6: I'd worked in radio, worked in television, and I figured, Okay,
Speaker 6: I have all this experience. I know how to tell
Speaker 6: a story. Now I have this footage, I'm just going
Speaker 6: to give it a shot. So that's how that happened.
Speaker 2: This project came together pretty quick.
Speaker 6: I am not somebody who likes to go slowly. I
Speaker 6: know that if I just dragged this out, I would
Speaker 6: hate it. I had a very tight deadline. I wanted
Speaker 6: it to premiere in twenty twenty five because that's the
Speaker 6: thirty year anniversary of when I went on air, and
Speaker 6: so for us to meet the deadlines for all the
Speaker 6: film fests, it meant that we had to have our
Speaker 6: first cut together last summer and then massage. So in
Speaker 6: earnest it probably took seven months, and then it was
Speaker 6: like three months of dialing things in. It was locked,
Speaker 6: but we had to upgrade some of the photos in
Speaker 6: the video and music and get all that license and
Speaker 6: all that mambo jumbo.
Speaker 2: Just gathering all the people must have been quite an ordeal.
Speaker 2: I work in daily news.
Speaker 6: I'm a breaking news reporters on used to working pretty
Speaker 6: quickly getting in touch with people. And also this is
Speaker 6: self financed, and I couldn't afford to drag it out either,
Speaker 6: you know what I mean. So I'm just lucky that
Speaker 6: people came on board and I could set up the
Speaker 6: interviews and make sure those were happening and delegating. Once
Speaker 6: you find your people to do certain things and they're
Speaker 6: off and running while you're doing your thing, and it
Speaker 6: really worked out.
Speaker 2: Were you still in contact with all of these folks.
Speaker 6: No, I really was not, and I was re entering
Speaker 6: their lives cold and funnily, Quasar in the movie, who
Speaker 6: seemed a little hesitant to be interviewed at first, sat
Speaker 6: for an interview, and then we got the film together,
Speaker 6: the first cut, and then I somehow shared it with
Speaker 6: him and he liked it so much that he wanted
Speaker 6: to be involved as a producer. And he just is
Speaker 6: one of these people who continues to know everybody. So
Speaker 6: he was able to take a lot of the really
Speaker 6: tough things off my plate, like trying to clear the
Speaker 6: Mazzie Star footage or get certain pieces of music because
Speaker 6: he knows those bands. That was great.
Speaker 2: Why the hesitation was it because this was inherently an
Speaker 2: illegal activity.
Speaker 6: I don't know. I think that some people just they
Speaker 6: moved on to their lives, so why do they need
Speaker 6: to revisit it. But I don't think that was most people.
Speaker 6: And it was a slight hesitation. It wasn't you have
Speaker 6: to convince me. It was like pushed me over with
Speaker 6: a feather, But it was just like, why are you
Speaker 6: doing this? And I think there was also some that
Speaker 6: it was going to be a vanity project. Look at
Speaker 6: what I did, look at how cool I was back
Speaker 6: in the day, and I really did not want that
Speaker 6: to be what it was. And I was very careful
Speaker 6: working with the editor to make sure that it just
Speaker 6: didn't seem like I was blowing my own horn.
Speaker 2: Well, it is interesting that so many of the interview
Speaker 2: subjects address you and are speaking directly to you, and
Speaker 2: that's a nice touch.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's because I was doing all the interviews. The
Speaker 6: original interviews from back in nineteen ninety eight were done
Speaker 6: by one of the DJ's, Robert Sullivan, and a little
Speaker 6: bit by me too, But the ones that were done
Speaker 6: in over the last year were done by me, and
Speaker 6: I think that really helped because they knew that I
Speaker 6: knew the story and they knew the story, and I
Speaker 6: think that it got different answers from them that seemed
Speaker 6: warmer and made the film seem more intimate. And he's
Speaker 6: watching it feel like they're part of it too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels like they're in the living room with
Speaker 2: you when you're interviewing them.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you mentioned the rights and clearances and I couldn't
Speaker 2: believe just how much music you had in there. What
Speaker 2: kind of hoops did you have to jump through for this?
Speaker 6: We have an amazing music supervisor, Maria Koog, who came
Speaker 6: to me through Quasar Brandon, the guy who knows everybody.
Speaker 6: He was like, you should be working with Mara on this,
Speaker 6: and she just worked her magic. We got stuff I
Speaker 6: never would have expected us to get. I would not
Speaker 6: have expected us to be able to clear Red Hot
Speaker 6: Chili Peppers, Rage against the Machine, and I'm pulling out
Speaker 6: the biggest bands, which is obviously not what KBLT or
Speaker 6: Pira radiumid Station was really about, but they do play
Speaker 6: a role in the station's history, and then Fugazi, who
Speaker 6: apparently does not license their music anywhere, Bikini Kill, John Spencer,
Speaker 6: Blues Explosion, some of the local bands like Touch Candy,
Speaker 6: which was really one of my favorites from back of
Speaker 6: the day, Pop Defect. The animator was also in a
Speaker 6: band called the Abe Lincoln Story, so there's some footage
Speaker 6: of that band in there. A lot of it was
Speaker 6: the local scene. Everybody has moved on with their lives,
Speaker 6: and weirdly they moved into areas that were very helpful
Speaker 6: for the making of this movie. Animation, music, supervision, music composing.
Speaker 6: So I just feel like I was really lucky.
Speaker 2: Would having Tom Morello in the movie help with the
Speaker 2: licensing a breach against the machine?
Speaker 6: I think that it did, And that was weird that
Speaker 6: I even got to interview him. I was doing a
Speaker 6: story for broadcast television and I normally never even do
Speaker 6: those stories, and for some reason, his people reached out
Speaker 6: to me and said, hey, do you want to do
Speaker 6: the story with Tom, and so I did, and then
Speaker 6: at the end of that interview, I just said, Hey,
Speaker 6: I'm working on this documentary. Can I ask you a
Speaker 6: couple questions for the documentary? Have you heard of the station,
Speaker 6: and he had he was never involved with the station,
Speaker 6: and answer those two questions. I of course then had
Speaker 6: to get approval to include them in the documentary, and
Speaker 6: then those people we had to reach out to through
Speaker 6: the music supervisor. But I feel like the movie really
Speaker 6: syncs up with who he is as a person. It's
Speaker 6: very socialist, it's very like power to the people. And
Speaker 6: also that song Gorilla Radio is like so completely on point,
Speaker 6: which is why I wanted to use it. I think
Speaker 6: it was all of those things. And even though we
Speaker 6: were offering like almost no money, they don't need it,
Speaker 6: so I think that worked in our favor too. Yeah,
Speaker 6: but I was shocked that we got almost every single
Speaker 6: song that we wanted.
Speaker 2: You've been that sweet spot talking about ninety five, where
Speaker 2: there are some independent bands that have already signed with
Speaker 2: the majors, your Nirvana, your Pearl Jams, but there are
Speaker 2: bands that are still out there born independently, and dealing
Speaker 2: with them, I imagine has to be way easier than
Speaker 2: dealing with the big boys.
Speaker 6: We knew that we wouldn't be able to get any
Speaker 6: universal bands just because they wouldn't play with us for
Speaker 6: our price point. That we were offering or offering everybody
Speaker 6: the exact same money, whether it was a band that
Speaker 6: nobody had heard of or fro the band that everybody
Speaker 6: had heard of. So some were easier than others, but some,
Speaker 6: like multiple bands were on that same level, and so
Speaker 6: she was dealing with the or same label, and then
Speaker 6: she was dealing with the same person, and once somebody
Speaker 6: had said yes, then it was just like, so that
Speaker 6: was great.
Speaker 2: I also have a very bad memory. So were there
Speaker 2: times while you were making this documentary where you're hearing
Speaker 2: stories about yourself and you're just like, I don't remember
Speaker 2: this at all.
Speaker 6: I don't know if I was really hearing stories about myself.
Speaker 6: I was trying to get them to fill in gaps
Speaker 6: of the story, just to be able to tell the
Speaker 6: story cleanly through other people's words and how people misremember
Speaker 6: so their stories might not completely sync up. And I
Speaker 6: had that in a few different situations. Mike Watt didn't
Speaker 6: remember how he came into the station, but I did,
Speaker 6: and somebody else did. Oh yeah, I did hear one
Speaker 6: new story, which it's when a spiritualize came into the
Speaker 6: radio station just for a really quick interview. I didn't
Speaker 6: realize that Hope sand of Baal from Mazzie Starr was
Speaker 6: with him. Obviously I was not there because I don't
Speaker 6: remember that. But there were just so many bands that
Speaker 6: had come into the station, huge bands that I should
Speaker 6: have been informed of that I it was just so normal.
Speaker 6: I guess at the point Beth, people didn't feel like
Speaker 6: they needed to tell me that my favorite artist was
Speaker 6: just in my house.
Speaker 2: How big was the studio before you put in all
Speaker 2: the equipment maybe.
Speaker 6: Five feet wide and it was like the size of
Speaker 6: a queen size mattress.
Speaker 2: So have you seen this with an audience yet?
Speaker 6: I did a friends and family screening in August. It
Speaker 6: was just a little screening room that only sat thirty
Speaker 6: people at a time, so we did three in a
Speaker 6: row and it was a lot of the DJs and
Speaker 6: my son and it was really level. It's so fun
Speaker 6: when people that you know who were part of it
Speaker 6: like react and just I loved that they loved it.
Speaker 6: That was different that I got. I felt like it
Speaker 6: wasn't just see you later on their way out the door,
Speaker 6: tried to avoid. I felt like they genuinely liked it.
Speaker 6: So that was good.
Speaker 2: Wow, look forward to you being able to see it
Speaker 2: now at slam Dance. This should be fantastic.
Speaker 6: The premiere I just found out yesterday is going to
Speaker 6: be in a theater with four hundred seats. I am
Speaker 6: hoping that we fill them, and then if it is
Speaker 6: fold then I'm hoping that it is just like rowdy
Speaker 6: and laughter and yeah, the whole emotional roller coaster that
Speaker 6: I hope everybody who watches it feels.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much and thank you for the film.
Speaker 2: Like I said, I really enjoyed it and it was
Speaker 2: great talking with you.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much.
Speaker 7: I could never say my way to the job because
Speaker 7: my love what always lets me right up. And since
Speaker 7: my options I've been with other way asked at a
Speaker 7: bargain with my ready here DJ, I said, I'd like
Speaker 7: the song to be number one. He said, I'd really
Speaker 7: really love to help you, Madison, And then I knew.
Speaker 5: That I would have him to thank because he asked
Speaker 5: me how much I had in the bank.
Speaker 8: He said that they.
Speaker 5: Love him investment, and then all the others I've been
Speaker 5: giving them sounds. He said, then you are would justify
Speaker 5: the guys. Any line, he said, the record wouldn't have
Speaker 5: to be happy, and I want everything to hear if
Speaker 5: it's not. It was the event that I got, and
Speaker 5: that the other one they're giving is a shot.
Speaker 3: Let's you know, mind there is some girl cheating.
Speaker 5: Man you name, and they were giving the sun because
Speaker 5: then the reward it just just fine to gons edit
Speaker 5: the line name. Mister d J, I thought you said
Speaker 5: we had a day. I thought she said you scratched
Speaker 5: my back end, I'll scratch you, reckon.
Speaker 8: And I thought you said we had a day.
Speaker 5: Well, I talked you about the world of Suddress.
Speaker 2: I wonder whinning in the freedom this?
Speaker 8: You know, the rabbits had.
Speaker 5: To spit tween him, just be space patient must be
Speaker 5: wearing them because.
Speaker 8: They haven't made a sign. Not did anyone to meet him?
Speaker 8: Came and the chuckie is mood out of town.
Speaker 5: The diacono said, didn't know. I did be He said
Speaker 5: the theme was not serve investment. And then all the
Speaker 5: others have for given the sound, he said, and then
Speaker 5: we are justified the gossom.
Speaker 8: As a man of the line in mister Gid, I thought.
Speaker 5: You said we have a d I thought she said
Speaker 5: you scratch my back and I'll scratch you. And I
Speaker 5: thought you said we had a day.