Pitchfork

Kill Your Idols, a documentary film, takes a look at New York's art-rock scene over the last thirty years. It features interviews with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Liars, Black Dice, Arto Lindsay, Glenn Branca, Lydia Lunch, Michael Gira, and more.

Director Scott Crary's film took the prize for Best Feature Documentary at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival, as well as a distribution deal with Palm Pictures. Kill Your Idols will screen at Cinema Village in New York City starting July 7. There are plans for more widespread release and the film will come out on DVD early this fall.

Pitchfork caught up with Crary last week via e-mail. When asked what his motivation behind the film was, he wrote: "Originally, I was pursuing just the newer bands and a much wider cross-section of them (with bands like the Walkmen, Interpol, etc.). Over time, a certain concentration of the bands I was interviewing either kept referencing a certain 5 year period in NY underground rock (77-82) and/or were being paired with bands from then by the media. The interplay between those two generations of bands became more compelling to me, so I began hunting down the originators that everyone was referencing from 30 years ago to see what they thought of their progeny."

Although a number of the bands featured have roots in the No Wave movement, Crary was careful to point out that Kill Your Idols is not centered on No Wave. Rather, the purpose of the film is to comment on the fact that such harsh, dissonant acts inspired and spawned a number of bands working today.

Said Crary, "Of course the irony of a movement like No Wave, which sought to consciously rebuke what came before, eventually leaving a concentrated legacy of its own appealed to me. And the film became more about defining that irony than any sort of attempt at a historical document or overview."

It took four years for Crary to make Kill Your Idols, including several months of convincing bands to appear in the film. Crary credits Nick Zinner, guitarist for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, with introducing him to a number of the bands featured: "Nick from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs exposed me to a lot of the burgeoning bands back then. For instance, he'd suggest I check out Liars, Liars would suggest I check out Black Dice, etc."

For Crary, having Palm Pictures distribute his film was a logical choice, given the company's experience releasing the innovative Directors Label DVD series of music videos. Furthermore, the company has a direct connection to the originators of the no wave scene. As Crary noted, it was Palm Pictures founder Chris Blackwell's label, Island, which released the scene-galvanizing No New York compilation in 1978.