Podcast #26: Hole and the Monster

MusicFilmWeb: See It Loud

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Bob Forrest was the crazed frontman of indie cult band Thelonious Monster. Patty Schemel was the pounding drummer driving Hole in its heyday, and one of the few out lesbians in mainstream rock ‘n’ roll. And for a while in the 1990s, they might have topped anyone’s list of LA rock’s likeliest drug casualties. Schemel spent time as a homeless crack whore, Forrest as a homeless junkie, and a lot of people thought they were dead.

How Schemel and Forrest survived, recovered, and re-invented themselves – she is happily married, gigging, and running a dog-sitting service; he’s a nationally known drug counselor and one of Dr. Drew’s sidekicks on VH1′s Celebrity Rehab – is told in two of the highest profile music films on this year’s festival circuit, Hit So Hard and Bob and the Monster.

Covering similar geographical, chronological, and thematic ground but in sometimes startlingly different cinematic ways, the two films debuted side by side at South by Southwest. But Bob and the Monster director Keirda Bahruth and the Hit So Hard director/producer team of P. David Ebersole and Todd Hughes didn’t meet until the movies were again programmed together at last week’s Sheffield Doc/Fest.

For the latest edition of See It Loud, MFW gathered the three filmmakers at a local pub to talk about their newfound friendship after years of eying each other’s productions at a wary distance and how they addressed the challenge of breathing new life into the rock ‘n’ rehab doc.

This podcast contains one bad word. The opening theme by Los Musicos de Jose comes from Mevio’s Music Alley. Contrary to what you might think from listening, it is not sponsored by Sheffield’s Chicken Bar.

Movies in this one:

Bob and the Monster

Hit So Hard

Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone

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