![_Dandy Warhols at Emo's East [Show Preview]](http://austinist.com/assets_c/2012/05/DandyWarhols-thumb-250x250-715813.jpg)
Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre on Tour: An Interview with Director Kerthy Fix
Austinites often speak of feeling a singular bond with similarly motivated and energized Brooklyn, NY brethren. If you could give that feeling an appealing electronic beat, dance it out with some amusing choreography, and shout-sing about it, you get close to the night Brooklyn Local/Director Kerthy Fix world premiered the surprisingly endearing and oft-hilarious Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre on Tour at SXSW. To introduce Bomp, she encouraged the audience to get up and dance since, sadly, it's the closet you'll get to a Le Tigre show these days. In a film where continuity could be thrown out the window since the band's electronic foundations allow separate performances to be synched up, each captured song does send jolts through your sedentary body and—as multiple viewers mused after the screening—an uncontrollable urge to clap like you were actually there for the show. It's exciting.
Fix took on a unique challenge compared to her previous film, Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields, when Le Tigre lead singer Kathleen Hanna handed over 50 tapes of footage in the hopes of creating a fans-only DVD. Once Fix went back and shot interviews with Hanna, Johanna Fateman, and JD Samson, the team realized they had something more akin to a complete film on their hands.
While Bomp does not provide any revelations on why Le Tigre is no longer touring (Fix offered a number of potential reasons at the post screening Q&A, including a Hanna quote of getting "tired of being the feminist Barney"), the concert film finds its focus by concentrating on the Le Tigre tactic of embracing the messy and vulnerable as beautiful.
We spoke to Fix in the midst of the downtown bastard child that is SXSW Music and St. Patrick's Day on the same night. The only people that have ever munched on a Mr. Natural gluten-free cupcake in a steakhouse (Austin/Brooklyn love!), we found a refuge in Ruth's Chris to discuss the motives of a documentarian, finding humor in the serious, and, of course, memorable moments involving our favorite dance-politicos, Le Tigre.
Your bio is very Austintatious with your first film credit being a production assistant on Slacker and your first TV credit being the holding up of cue cards for Willie Nelson on Austin City Limits. Can you speak a little bit about your experience with film in Austin?
I actually decided to come to UT because I came to visit and I saw the pictures when ACL was shot in the Communications building—just the studios there...and I loved music—that’s actually why I decided to go to school at UT.
I ended up working during school for Austin City Limits and they shot a lot of other shows. They would contract with outside producers. They came in shot a show called Willie’s Big 6-0. It was for his 60th birthday. There was Bob Dylan; there was Paul Simon; there was Bonnie Raitt, BB King...the list goes on. So many superstars. I was a little cable puller for the camera and it’s just like, “OH MY GOD, THIS IS AMAZING!” So I think I just really loved music. Also, I thought the boys were really cute in Ausitn. [laughs]
It does seem like you were drawn even then to docu-projects and subjects that were associated with music. Where did that passion come from?
I don’t know where it comes from other than I’m really curious about what makes people work, especially unusual people. With Stephin Merritt, I felt like he was misread in the media. The person I saw day-to-day was a very sweet person with a dry sense of humor, so I was really interested in showing that he’s a playful person and he’s an incredible songwriter.
With Le Tigre, they were like a beacon in a very dark time—the Bush era was a shit time for queerness and feminism—I wanted that history to go on. I don’t know where it comes from exactly, except that I come from a family of people who love art and literature and music.
Did you ever consider Psychology? It sounds like you're interested in getting to what makes people work...their core.
I always wanted to tell stories. I was a little kid who put on shows in her living room...like would string up sheets and put on shows for my family. I think I just always wanted to tell stories. Maybe anthropology a little bit, but never seriously. I was in a theatre department in Virginia before I came to UT to go to film school.
Who Took the Bomp is a very funny film. You have a recent Wordpress entry titled “Why Has It Been So Long Since I Saw Feminist Art That Scared Me And Made Me Laugh” and then Le Tigre has stated that this documentary follows their “attempts to use humor when confronted with the inherent sexism and homophobia of the rock world.” How important is it for you to find the funny in those things and project that in your projects?
I think humor is much more persuasive and you can actually compel people just with your style.
I think when I was younger I was lot more angry and confrontational — I did performance art and music. I thought you could bash the message through. But as I’ve gotten older, I think humor is much more persuasive and you can actually compel people just with your style. If you’re a gentler, more empathetic person with a different point of view from someone, they're more likely to take you seriously than if you’re an angry person. As I’ve gotten older, I want things to be gentler, and humor is so gentle.
Kathleen said something similar in an interview about turning 30 and realizing what’s petty and what isn’t. Having that same journey of being a little hardcore when she was younger and still having those values, but being a little more fun with it.
Totally. Yeah, she’s said she has work that she’s embarrassed of and I certainly have — I don’t show people my student film about an abortion. [laughs] You know? You’re not going to find that on YouTube!
You spent about 10 years working on Strange Powers and you had attributed part of that to waiting for an event to hook the film on. We were wondering with this Le Tigre documentary, since their music is so influenced by politics and Bush and war, was it easier to find that hook?
Well, it was just going to be a concert film because we had all that concert footage. I think the hard thing was that it wasn’t footage like I would have shot. When you shoot your own footage, you’ve got a storyline already working in your head. It was a real challenge...so, in some ways, it was harder. But we knew it was just going to be these light, little anecdotes. In that way, I guess it was easier. We had lower expectations of it, maybe.
Speaking of those Le Tigre themes (the politics and homophobia), you recently finished a feature script about [first known transgendered person] Christine Jorgensen. Curious what it was like on the writing side and if you have plans for that script?
We’re actually trying to get grant money for it, ‘cause we’re going to shoot it as an object/puppet film. We’re going to build the puppet in the next few months and do some test photography so that we can show people what we’re talking about, because it’s an adult film. It’s not a children’s film.
I had a co-writer, Craig Harwood. It’s so fun. It started as a documentary and I started shooting. We realized we couldn’t make the film we wanted to make, because the whole thing about Christine Jorgensen is she was very savvy about getting her message out to the media, so she was never NOT on camera. She was always delivering her message and the real story is the internal experience of being the first transgendered person.
[huge, loud bouts of passing music, both inside and out, take over on all sides of interview] [laughing]
This is the perfect SXSW interview. One more question. A nostalgic question: You are a fan of Le Tigre. Do you have any specific memories involving a Le Tigre song whether it’s a dance party or a protest...
I saw them perform outside the Texas Union at UT when they still did slides. That, to me, was very special. You have to remember they were kind of the first people doing this lo-fi style: the slide projector, the funky costumes, the funky dance moves. They weren’t trying to be really slick and that was a real flip. Seeing them with all my girlfriends and so many cool people — Gretchen Phillips, who’s in one of their songs, and Cindy Widner and Kate X Messer...just all these great women. That was a really special event.
Actually, a highlight was turning my 14-year-old neice, Chrislin, onto Le Tigre. She's a big fan.
That's perfect. Keeping it alive.
It’s like, Awww.
---
If you missed it at SXSW, Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre on Tour gets a DVD release by Oscilloscope Laboratories on June 7th, 2011.
