In the early 90’s a small group of kids gravitated to Aaron Rose’s Alleged Gallery in New York City. It wasn’t so much a gallery as hang out spot that used to be a storefront, but to pass time this group–loosely knit through skateboarding and punk music–experimented creatively. They were the dispossessed losers of suburban America and as Mike Mills, whose one of them, says, “If you’re not dispossessed, why make art? Why try to save your life by making something?”

Having fun creating only to look back and realize that creating was your survival, then having to negotiate getting back to that fun spot so you can survive is the path of Beautiful Losers. Aaron Rose’s documentary is a painfully funny coming-of-age story about some of today’s most influential artists and it follows one rule: Don’t take us seriously.

There’s really not enough I can say about how funny the artists are in Beautiful Losers. A lot of filmmakers know that an interesting documentary hinges on how engaging the person at its center is. This doc has a dozen people who could command their own 90 minutes. To name some: Harmony Korine, Mike Mills, Stephen Powers, Thomas Campbell, Margaret Kilgallen, Shepard Fairey, Jo Jackson, Ed Templeton, Geoff McFetridge, Chris Johanson, Barry McGee, Aaron Rose (the director).

As kids, they came together with a lot of time on their hands and a childlike love for creating stuff. Anything. Nothing they would consider “art,” since that’s for professionals, but great stuff. When they had a show of hand-painted skateboards called “Minimal Trix” (very 90’s) at Alleged Gallery—a show the founder Aaron Rose considered uninteresting—Thrasher Magazine did a write up. That was the proverbial break and soon the show was touring. The momentum led to a bigger show, minus skateboards, called “The Independents.” The introduction of their raw, unchecked creativity set the trajectory for commercial success.

“We were doing the most rare thing in the world: Connecting. That’s why the companies came after us,” Steven Powers says. They started doing everything from VW commercials to “work” that basically just involved a trip to Tokyo where they received a thousand dollars a day to go out and mess up the city. They were getting paid a lot to loan their balls-out creativity to anything and everything. Then came the big question, “Have we sold out?”

Beautiful Losers is as playful as the artists in it (Harmony Korine’s “decapitated bookie” story got the loudest laughs I’ve heard at this festival so far). It has fun with itself and, before you can see it coming, wrestles with some of the most meaningful questions you’ll ever ask. Two things Aaron Rose told me after the movie were 1) This is a movie about growing up and 2) If people don’t leave this movie wanting to make stuff, he failed. I’d go a step further and say was I not only pumped up to make something, I felt compelled that having fun making stuff is one of the most important things we can do.

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