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