What I didn’t expect from Beautiful Losers was how much fun it would be to watch a documentary of the most unpretentious, unmoody and successful artists of my generation. All the artists (Harmony Korine, Mike Mills, Stephen Powers, Thomas Campbell, Margaret Kilgallen, Shepard Fairey, Jo Jackson, Ed Templeton, Geoff McFetridge, Chris Johanson, Barry McGee, Aaron Rose) seem like they’re unconsciously competing to steal the show and win biggest laugh (Harmony wins, in my book). But the best part of Aaron Rose’s movie is how it transcends its genre and becomes a coming of age movie like I’ve not seen in a doc before.

Aaron Rose is the director, but his legendary Alleged Gallery was the incubator for these artists in the early 90’s. I talk to him about being at the center of this scene back then and what it meant for him and his buddies to “grow up.”

 

 SXSW 2008: Aaron Rose interview [7:39m]: Play Now | Download

SXSW 2008: Aaron Rose interview
(Written transcript after the jump)

Paul Moore: I was calling “Beautiful Losers,” I think it’s the feel-good movie of the festival. Because I feel great right now.

Aaron Rose: Oh, good, good. Yeah, that was part of the goal, I guess, to inspire people. If feeling inspired feels good.

Paul: Yeah. I should say I’m talking to Aaron Rose, the director of “Beautiful Losers.” But you’re also one of the beautiful losers, I guess. This is a documentary you made about your friends, but you guys were all part of a youth culture in New York that was very involved in skateboarding and the punk scene. Then all of the sudden all this creativity that was sort of growing out of this space that you created, a gallery of sorts.

Then it became very commercially successful and sought after, and brought a whole new generation artists that included Mike Mills and Harmony Korine and a whole bunch of names that, because I’m a movie guy, I didn’t recognize. But if you want to rattle through the names, you certainly can.

Aaron: Artists like Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, Thomas Campbell, Ed Templeton, Geoff McFetridge. You said Mike Mills, Harmony Korine. And there were so many more that we couldn’t fit in the movie. It was a period of time in the early ’90s when everyone was in their early 20s and hadn’t figured out what they wanted to do with their lives yet.

But they knew they were the creative people hanging out in that place. You know what I mean? So a lot people got to know each other in that period of time.

Paul: And you added a little homage to my favorite skater, [Mark] Gonzalez, in there too, which was great.

Aaron: Yeah. You can’t talk about skateboarding and art without talking about him. He’s inspired so many people.

Paul: Well, I’ve got to tell you, I walked into this documentary thinking, this is one of those documentaries that’s an homage to one of those groups of people that have a strong sub-culture following. And it’s going to be informative and that’s going to be nice. But I feel that maybe because you were personally connected, you really did something different.

And when you introduced the movie, you said it was about growing up, and then I sort of forgot about that until the last third of the movie, and then it came back to me. I thought, wow, this really is, there’s an arc to this whole thing and it really is about growing up and it’s really inspiring. Do you want to talk about this growing up thing?

Aaron: Well, when we started working on this and trying to figure out, “What’s the story here?” Because this thing is so huge now, there are so many people involved, that there are so many stories within the beautiful losers’ world. And we’re like, “OK, what’s the best one.” Or, “What’s the story that we can tell here that’s maybe going to appeal to the most people and not just skateboard kids?” Or not just graffiti kids.

Because when you make a movie, you want more people to see it than just the people who get it or whatever. You know what I mean? The real crux of the story is that it was underground. It was a bunch of losers. It was a bunch of people who had no money, who had no fans, who didn’t know what they were doing, who got famous.

And in the course of that, they had to grow up. Everybody has to grow up. No matter what world you’re in, you’ve got to grow up. You go from being young and fancy-free and crazy to, like, getting married and getting a mortgage and buying cars and all these sorts of things.

And it’s something that happens to everybody. This just happens to be unique in that these artists are coming from a place of being real social outcasts, and lawbreakers, and graffiti artists and skateboarding, both of which are illegal in most cities in America.

So, it’s even kind of a bigger question, in those artists’ heads, because getting success in the mainstream comes with all this, like, selling out questions. To sell out or not to sell out? And how do you sell out in the right way and how do you sell out in the wrong way?

So when I say “growing up, ” it as just about having to accept a lot of facts of life that come with getting older and getting successful.

Paul: I was talking with Michel Gondry a couple of weeks ago about Be Kind, Rewind,  and he had this entire motivation for making the movie, was trying to not exploit an audience for ticket sales, but in fact tried to encourage an audience to then go out and make their own whatever-it-is, to go out and have their own experiences.

And it seemed like that growing up for these artists was also, at least in this documentary, a lot of it was about finding ways to start just inspiring people to make their own thing, rather than trying to horde this success to themselves.

Aaron: Yeah. Well, that’s progress. Progress will only exist if people continue to make things, and continue to push and continue to grow. And more than anything, the story, or the artists in it, or this street culture, or anything this movie is about, from the very beginning — from, like, the second we started shooting — we said, the movie has to be inspiring.

The movie has totally failed if people don’t want to go out and make things afterwards. So, that’s the whole idea behind it. The motivation for making this wasn’t just to like toot our own horn and be like, “Look how cool we are!” It was always about getting people out there, get people to make things, get people to follow whatever weird, crazy — the more off-the-wall dream you have, the better.

Because the world needs more of that, especially today.

Paul: Yeah. So I was curious about you particularly. There’s a point in the movie where you talk about the closing of your gallery, and how it wound up being the best thing for you. You found a different identity by not having your identity wrapped up in being in the scene, in being in the center of it.

Aaron: Yeah.

Paul: What does this documentary, then, now represent to you? Is it something different, because you are creating something new, and now touring with it?

Aaron: Yeah. I mean, there were times along the road of this film where I thought the same thing was going to happen. [laughs] There were periods of time where it almost did fall through. And maybe that would have been a good thing, I don’t know.

They’re very different. And I tried to keep — in working on this film — I tried to keep as much as possible in the mindset of being a documentarian and being a newscaster. And not being an artist and not being creative and all that, and just being like, we’re doing this history. We’re doing this so it can be filed away on the shelf in the library, and in 100 years or 300 years or 500 years, some kid can pull it out and write on it or learn from it or whatever.

So going through the whole thing, which was very different than I felt when I was in the gallery, where I was wrapped up in the whole scene of it. I’m not really wrapped up in a filmmaker scene, or even being a filmmaker. The movie’s just another thing I made. It’s no more important than a zine I made last week. Or the way I tie my shoelaces in the morning. It’s just another thing I made.

And the most important thing on this was just trying to stay honest and report it historically correct as I remember it, and if the artists approve. And then walk away and not to get too caught up in the whole scene thing.

Paul: And in being a historian, you actually made a movie that was a lot of fun. I think Beautiful Losers, it was just a blast to watch it.

Aaron: Cool. Well, it’s a fun group of people. Artists are great, you know? Because when you’re an artist, the weirder you are, the more people love you. It’s one of those weird professions where the more of a loser you are, the more money you make.

Paul: Yeah. Those Harmony Korine scenes were really classic for sure.

Aaron: Yeah.

Paul: Well, thank you, Aaron Rose, for talking to me.

Aaron: Thank you.

Beautiful Losers
SXSW news, reviews, interviews and discussions