The making of ONE NINE NINE FOUR - Part 2

This next section explores the next phase of how we put this documentary together, however before I do I’d just like to get something out of the way. The leak that was on Youtube has subsequently been removed by Google, we got sent a cease and desist from one of the Publishers however because we didn’t put it up(or know who did) we couldn’t exactly take it down - so they had it removed.

Now here’s a note from Matt Wardle, the Producer:

Jai has very much captured the inception of the idea for the 90’s punk rock film. I wore the Producer hat, which was a role that I had no idea about but relished. When Jai and myself had the drunken plane flight talking about his film idea and all our favourite punk bands which we both grew up listening to I knew I just had to be a part of it. As at the time it was something that had never been done before and I basically just really wanted to see a film about that movement. In the end it provided one of the best experiences I have ever had. By taking on the producer role I, with the help of Bill and Jai, contacted many of the artists/producers/agents/managers seen in the film with a spiel about what we were doing and why. Jai and I had created a list of who we wanted and I set about contacting them. I probably had about a 99% success rate. The punk ethos was still alive and kicking. The only one we had trouble getting a hold of was Greenday but that led to several stories which I will get into later. With much going back and forth with managers, agents and them being busy touring we couldn’t confirm AFI – so Davey if you’re reading and would like to say you part get in touch! While we were at the Sundance Film Festival I began confirming tentative dates for interviews as we were headed to LA in just a few days - Matt Wardle

The first interview that we teed up was with Larry Livermore, founder of Lookout Records and the guy that signed Green Day to their first record deal. We were still in Sydney at this stage and by some way of luck, Larry happened to be staying in Darlinghurst which was right near my office. I sent him an email I think I got from his blog and we met up for a coffee too speak about the project, after our initial meeting Larry decided to let me interview him for the documentary and we did it in my office once day before we left. Awesome! Larry Livermore the founder of one of the coolest punk labels ever was in the office of my own little indie label talking about Green Day & Operation Ivy.

While we were still in Australia, I reached out to my Friend Stu Harvey from Short Fast Loud who put me in touch with Joey Cape from Lagwagon and Tony Sly from No Use For A Name. I’d drafted up this email explaining the project, who we were and why we wanted to do it and sent them off into the night. The next morning I remember waking up and seeing emails from Joey Cape and Tony Sly, both of them were humbled that I asked to interview them and Joey asked if I’d reached out to Fat Mike - I told him that I didn’t have contact details for Fat Mike, so not even a minute later Joey was e-introducing me to Fat Mike from NOFX telling him that he should be part of this. Fat Mike said Yes and we were to interview Joey and Mike at Joey’s house in San Francisco.

Bill Silva our executive producer who used to manage Blink 182 and Unwritten Law, reached out to both of those guys on our behalf. At the time Blink had broken up and Rick Devoe, who managed them was only looking after Tom post split. We wanted to speak to Devoe too, so he said he and Tom Delonge were in and Scott Russo from Unwritten Law was in also. We were getting very excited, we hadn’t left the country yet and we’d already interviewed Larry Livermore and had teed up interviews with Tom Delonge, Tony Sly, Joey Cape, Scott Russo, Rick Devoe and Fat Mike.

However we still had a bunch of interviews that we needed to lock down including: Green Day, The Offspring, Bad Religion, Rancid, The Vandals, Goldfinger, Pennywise and AFI. We had contacts for The Vandals and Goldfinger while Bill had ins with The Offspring, AFI and Bad Religion. Green Day, Rancid and Pennywise were going to be the ones we were going to need to hustle.

We had it all mapped out or so we thought. We’d booked a house in the Hollywood Hills for 6 weeks and in that time we would shoot all the interviews then head back to Australia to edit. Our bags were packed and off we flew to the US, our first stop was to be Sundance.

In Part 3 we will speak about our time in the US, our first round of interviews and how nothing ever goes to plan…