Original subtitles

[soft piano music plays]

[upbeat music]

[distorting TV static]

- Hey, come on in.

- [Judith] When you were born, it was 25 hours of labor.

When they pulled you out,

you had the umbilical cord around your neck.

- I was born in Boston in 1969.

A year later, my parents got married.

They were both hippies.

They met up in the universities up there.

My father later became a lawyer for Richard Nixon

and worked for him for the next 30 years.

We're all Democrats.

That's just how it is in D.C.

You work for the Republicans because they have the money.

- So the doctors took you away,

put you an an incubator so I never held you

until three days later.

- [Ethan] My mother was organizer

and draft evasion counselor

for SDS, Students for a Democratic Society.

- You had these little turtle eyes

and you kind of looked at me like who are you?

- I'm dyslexic.

- We went to New York.

We went with this group that specialized

in testing dyslexia and developing exercises

that would help you progress.

They just remembered sitting in this office

and they came up with these silly exercises

telling you to crawl on the floor

and it would be embarrassing to you.

Then we'd crawl and I didn't think we had

confidence that it was helping in any way.

In retrospect, that was not a particularly good idea.

Sad business.

- Your dyslexia has been one of the most

formative factors of your life.

Diagnosed at a very young age

and the whole way you interact with the world

has been through the way your brain processes information.

It's cording who you are.

- I'm not sure where dyslexia comes from.

In fact, nobody really knows.

I suppose if I had to guess,

it would be from having the umbilical cord

wrapped around your neck when you were born

and cutting off oxygen.

[guns firing]

- When you're a kid and you're anything different,

you're ostracized, you're picked on, called stupid.

[muffled yelling]

People in my school wondering why this seven

or eight year old kid was falling asleep

in all of his classes and it was mostly because

every night I would go home to a screaming match.

When my parents finally did get divorced,

they decided to stay in the District of Colombia.

♪ Burden child

♪ I'll see when I'll smile

1977 so it was kind of close to

the end of the Vietnam War.

Every night when my father would come home,

he would turn on the nightly news

and there would be images of war and death and violence.

Asked my mother what did it mean to die.

My mother said, people have different beliefs.

Some people believe you die and then

you go to heaven or hell.

Some people believe when you die,

you're reincarnated and I looked into her eyes

and I was like, well, what do you believe?

My mother was everything.

This was like the center of knowledge for every kid

and my mother said, oh that's it, the end.

When you die, it's like a switch going off

so it's just a void of blackness.

And for me at like that age,

I was like, what the hell?

I was afraid to go to sleep, I was afraid to go out.

I mean, I didn't want to meet this void

because I was terrified of it.

A seven year old kid really can't comprehend that.

After that, I went through this whole period

of being afraid to go outside.

I would stay home and watch movies

so this is right around the same time that

Betamax came out.

We had one of the early first Betamax decks.

I would stay home and watch like

three or four movies a night

and I did this for maybe two years or something like that

until I finally said, I can't take it anymore

and instead of hiding from things that might hurt me,

I ran head long into it.

- [Man] You are now watching Russian TV.

This is no way influenced by the government.

- Good morning fellow Russianers.

Today in the weather, there will be

60 percent chance of showers.

Hell, I can't take anymore,

[gun firing] it's hell.

[laughing]

- Oh my god. - You okay?

[calm music]

- That is a film from when I was 14 in 1984.

My background in film is that I started making movies

when I was seven years old and never stopped.

I never signed up killing myself a lot in these videos.

This is shot on Betamax before VHS

and this is me playing myself in both roles.

I play the two guys.

It's upstairs guy versus downstairs guy.

Because I'm the only one,

I have to keep coming to the camera

and turning it off by hand.

I knew exactly the timing so I could turn it on,

get in the frame in the position

and walk towards the camera and turn it off.

Not good aiming, a lot of shooting.

[laughing]

This is the big finale coming up.

[laughing]

- [Man] Did you have a happy childhood?

- Did I have a what? [laughing]

- Turn it on, oh.

- Film was like a salvation for me.

[upbeat music]

♪ Once upon a time there was a dream ♪

♪ Biggest in the world

♪ You know what I mean

My grandfather gave me his old Super 8 camera,

which was a hand crank and you had the cartridge

you had to put into it and you had to get

the film developed.

The first time I got that film back

and projected it on a wall,

it was just splashes of light and I was hooked.

♪ Castle by the flame

♪ She said I'll show you something ♪

♪ Like you've never known before ♪

Then once camcorders came into reality,

I started shooting these videos

and the videos were one Betamax tape

containing three hours of skits and shorts

and I would spend probably about six months

every day shooting these little videos.

In my mind, these were epic movies that I was making.

- Hey Bobs, what's happening, man?

Hey yeah, it's a really nice day, isn't it.

- Yes it is, Bob, yes it is.

It's a real nice day, it's just terrific.

- Yeah, I raped your girlfriend, you know.

- What?

Oh my god, no no no.

Freeze, asshole.

- Wait, wait Bob, wait Bob.

I was only joking, Bob.

- Doesn't matter, doesn't matter.

You're fucked man, you're really fucked.

- I was joking, man, I was joke.

[gun firing]

[laughing]

[gentle music]

[screaming]

- I went to a private school for kids

with learning disabilities and at a certain point,

I outgrew the school.

Then I had to be in a special ed class.

We're gonna send you to just go look at this public school.

I went into audit the class

and these were kids that were like

severely physically and mentally handicapped

and the teacher really didn't teach so much

as acted like a nurse,

made sure they were eating and using the bathroom

and all of those things and the teacher at the end

was like, look, you really can't go here.

Just go anywhere else but you're not suited for this.

My mother basically had tricked me to go to

a boarding school in Boston.

- I completely deny that.

- Every weekend I wanted to go into the city

because that's where the punk rock shows were

at this place called the Rath.

I started dying my hair black

and dressing more punk rock

and this was a school with a dress code

so I had to come back to school

and then hide everything.

You know, put it under a bandana when I had a mohawk

and all of this.

Oh. [groaning]

God, I hate morning.

Shit.

Going to school, god damn.

- We put in a lot of hours.

I guess that, comes with being a lawyer in D.C.

[groaning]

[screaming]

- [Woman] Ethan!

- I became very depressed.

One night I was with my girlfriend

and we had just come from seeing a show,

Hayden Hall in Boston and we were walking back

to her neighborhood in Brookline.

That night I had been drinking a fair amount

as I did every time to get the courage

to go to these punk rock shows

and the car was driving up the street

and I ran and I dove in front of the car

but I was so drunk instead of going in front of the car

I actually landed right in the door and the car stopped.

The guy was like opening his door

and then I got up and started screaming at him,

like, you fucking asshole, why didn't you hit me?

I started kicking the door and the driver looked at me like,

what the fuck?

This kid's totally crazy and drove off.

I was 16 years old.

After I had an epiphany and you're gonna die

so why would I give the satisfaction

to the rest of the world by ending my life early?

Why wouldn't I just sit here and try to

do as much damage and make as much art,

put myself out there as much as I can,

and after that, it made me more aggressive

about pursuing what I wanna do in life.

I'm not recommending it to anybody else,

but that's what it did for me.

[upbeat music]

- You had blond curly hair,

wholesome looking teenager and I went to

the airport to meet you

and then this creepy looking kid gets off.

He's got a Mohawk, chains around his neck,

looked like he hadn't had a bath in weeks,

and I'm thinking to myself,

oh, his poor parents.

Can you imagine having that kind of kid?

And all of the sudden I hear from behind me, hi mom,

and I turned around and that creepy looking kid was you.

My first impulse was to take my raincoat

and throw it over your head

so no one would see you, but you were my son,

so I gave you a big hug and said, welcome home.

- Film me, I'm gonna have to hurt you.

- [Man] Why, it's your camera?

You should be. - I don't wanna be filmed.

- [Woman] Really think about it hard.

- A lot of the reason I got into punk rock

at such an early age was because of my parents' divorce.

My mother moved to Georgetown in Washington D.C.

which is a neighborhood where there was

a lot more alternative stores,

there was punk rock kids hanging out.

♪ Can't do something just don't get it ♪

On M Street, there was a record store called Smash

and in there, I would go ask the clerk,

what do you think is a really good record to get

and then I would run home and then play it

over and over again.

♪ Dead end's best

♪ Just like the rest

Part of helping me learn to become a better writer

is I would take the lyrics sheets,

'cause every punk rock record has a lyric sheet

and I would hand copy out every word for word

onto a cassette tape and make mix tapes

that I would then give out to my friends.

♪ Down and everyone here

♪ Trying to do something they just don't get ♪

Prior to punk, everything was what you can't do.

If you can't read, you're inferior.

Punk rock was that key that said

none of that matters.

It was like Occam's razor.

It leveled the playing field.

It was a sign on the door that said

there are no boundaries.

You can kick this door in,

you can walk through this door,

you can open other doors.

- Fuck you, man, fuck you, fuck your family.

♪ Fuck this town and everyone in it ♪

♪ Trying to do something and they just don't get it ♪

- Once we became teenagers,

it was pretty much us on our own.

We didn't really see any adults until later

in the evening and just did what we wanted.

- My house became the place where everyone hung out

and everyone was drinking and having sex

and doing whatever and me and my sister

basically raised ourselves like feral little animals

that we are.

This is a day of a normal boy's life

driving through the suburban neighborhoods.

And this is my brother.

[laughing]

- Go away.

- One of the very first creative things I did,

I started making silk screen shirts.

♪ 20 dollars it's all I got

♪ 20 dollars and it give me a lot ♪

When I went back to Washington D.C.,

I started printing these shirts.

I just wanted people to see it.

I wasn't trying to make a profit

and I didn't realize I was ripping off the artist

who designed the flyer and I didn't realize

I was ripping off the band the Bad Brains

which was also a D.C. band

and I started selling these shirts in Smash.

I had put my name Ethan M on the bottom of every shirt.

The owner off Smash coming up to me,

going like, look, your shirts are really great

but you got to do me a favor, kid.

Take your name off of that because Daryl

from the Bad Brains has been coming in looking for you

and he is pissed.

I stopped making shirts after that

and that's when I noticed the fanzines.

- [Man] We're here with Project Nerd.

- See, this guy's got it.

Speaking of this guy, this is Ethan joining us

for a very special episode of the Nerd Cast.

[upbeat music]

So what is a zine?

- You have fan, a fan of something specific,

and magazine.

Put the two words together, fanzines.

Magazines that are independently published,

sometimes Xeroxed, but the one thing they're not

is polished.

I would look at these zines and go like hey,

this is all kind of a mess and I think I could do this too

and I really got into it.

- It's a passion project.

Nobody makes money, it's just artists who want

people to see their artwork.

- How many of you were born before 1988,

anybody in here?

Okay, this is me in high school.

My fanzine developed from a music centered zine

to something that was more focused on the arts.

♪ Let's go get lost somewhere

♪ Where only love is in the air ♪

People started recognizing me.

It gave me confidence to keep trying

to pursue something creative because

it was the first time that not only was I

able to express myself, but I felt like I was

affecting the community at large.

- If he was a boss, I would find this very difficult

but since we were friends before we did this,

we can both call each other on our shit

and that's how we talk to each other.

- I've never read a single fanzine.

I've distributed [laughing] them at coffee shops everywhere,

but I've been in them.

I don't think I've ever really read it.

- Slightly irritated at the way

people sometimes misuse words

or they won't use the proper form of a word

and so maybe part of the reason

that I helped selfishly is because

it reduces irritation when I read these stories

that I wanna read.

- He handed me a zine, and I think that was

his way of hitting me and now we're married.

Bye!

- For me personally, my parents are both workaholics.

My father would sit at the office every night

'till about 9 or 10 o'clock at night,

so that meant after school I was taken to his office

and would be put into a conference room.

In that, they would bring me a pad of paper.

They would bring me pencils, staplers,

you know, stuff in the office

and I would make artwork.

I would put them into little books.

I would go over to the copy machine,

I would make copies and make multiples.

At age seven, I was technically making zines.

I'd bring them into school and on the school bus or whatever

I'd give them out to my friends.

- Every issue has a different artist on the cover

and has their bio on the back.

It inspired me to do my own zine.

- You're gonna go through the art world and community

realizing that every time you try to do something,

there is somebody in between you

and getting to success.

There is going to be art directors,

there's gonna be curators.

The fanzine side steps all of that,

just like your portfolio

and then you can leave that anywhere in the world.

[upbeat music]

The good thing about doing a fanzine

opposed to doing a blog,

accessing people you would never have contact with

a lot of times happens through a fanzine.

We leave it on the seat of a train,

we leave them in banks,

we leave them in coffee shops.

By leaving it in a random location,

somebody who picks that up who knows nobody in your circle

is not interjected into what you're doing automatically

and that's a really powerful thing.

- Every issue of the zine we've got one artist of the issue

that we award that title to.

It's that person that gets the cover.

- I did this cover photo for the zine.

That zine sat in front of the right person

who then hired me and then it was like a chain effect.

It led to me photographing for several magazines.

Wow, damn, things just changed right after that.

- What's your best zine story?

- There was Faction Five and Maximum Rock and Roll

and all of these zines that used to review zines

and I would put free for prisoners

so I would mail it.

I'd have to from the publisher's meet

because that's the only way

a lot of the zines would get into the prison system

would get letters from prisoners all over the world.

I started receiving letters from a gentleman named

John Wayne Gacy, notably known as a serial killer

who killed I think 32 people, buried them under his house.

[upbeat music]

My roommates at that point were like, hey,

do you mind never putting our address on the zine

because we have serial killers writing you letters.

♪ I would blame you so much more ♪

I've hand stapled, I don't know, 100,000 zines.

I've gone through staplers, like had to buy new ones

'cause I've worn them out.

I got into writing, I got into doing art,

I got into everything flowed from doing these fanzines

because if you feel like you are lonely and isolated,

it's a great way to bring you out of that

and connect with others.

The fanzine helped out a lot of people

but for me personally, I think it took me

as far as I could go.

I'll always make the fanzine,

but at a certain point, I wanted to do something bigger.

I wanna reach a large number of people

and affect change in a greater sense.

At this point, I was willing to try everything and anything.

- [Man] For the man in the family.

[farting]

[coughing]

- See, so apply old fart for that man in your family.

- Got a call in the middle of the night from you

and you were in a panic.

You told me you had just attacked somebody

with a machete.

- We had a show in Rhode Island

and I had a pin on my shirt.

I was very excited about the show.

I jumped on Ethan's back and accidentally stabbed him

with my pin which must have been pretty painful.

Next thing I know, I'm kind of just being

suspended off the ground in a choke hold from Ethan

and he's, don't ever stab me again, what the.

After like two seconds, he realized

that I didn't mean to do it

and he was the look of sheer fear of my own life [laughing]

and he let me go.

- My first question was, well, were they dead or alive

and you said alive.

Said, okay good.

And then you described that you were having a party

and there was a, I guess a drunk football player

from Colombia who was being very obnoxious

and so you threw him out.

He came back with buddies and at that point,

you took out the old machete that I gave you

when you were 10.

- Basically mugged him.

Went to get his wallet but couldn't get it back easily

so ended up just taking the kids pants off completely

and then took the wallet [laughing]

and told the kid that when he came back

with the money that he owed us,

he could have his wallet back.

But he was too humiliated to ever come back in the bar.

- Chopped his arm, not off, but cut him up.

Bleeding, he fled.

You called me as not your mother, as your lawyer

and asked what you should do.

I said, okay, if he's alive, call the police.

Report a home invasion and when the police come,

explain what happened.

Whoever gets to the police first,

the police is gonna believe.

- One day, two detectives came to the door looking for him.

Apparently he busted some kids tooth.

They went to the bar and arrested him.

- Do I think you're a tough guy?

No, you're a marshmallow.

- Later on, you called me back,

and I said, well, how'd it go?

And you said, they wrote it down as a home invasion

and then you said as a young cop was leaving

he turned around and he said, did you get him good?

And he said, yeah.

- I was two blocks away when Ronald Reagan got shot.

I was three blocks away when a guy

tried to blow up the Washington monument.

I lived in this world where I always thought

at any moment I could get blown up or killed

by some nut bag or some foreign power.

I got into a lot of violence.

Got in fights, got arrested.

I had a reputation as being someone who was violent

and in the high schools and I remember

there were a lot of people who were afraid of me.

[gentle music]

But I came to this realization that

all of that posturing was related to

this fear, this deep seated fear of getting physically hurt

or dying and then I started looking at all of these

other tough guys around and I started realizing that

wait a minute, all these guys that are really tough

are actually completely terrified.

I know they're just like me.

They're frightened little boys who were afraid of

the big black void.

- [Man] Ethan.

- Hey bud.

Is it on?

Turn it off 'cause we're gonna get a fire extinguisher.

- [Man] Okay, say your last words.

- [Woman] Look, there's cars behind you.

- [Man] Bye.

- The violence in D.C. sort of had rules to it.

You'd be put in violent situations

but you weren't doing drugs

or you weren't in-confrontational

that the rules sort of applied that you wouldn't get hurt.

very time you stepped across that line,

then you would be in a world of extreme danger.

I know people who were shot and killed.

- The thing about the punk rock scene

during the time period was a collision also of crack cocaine

hitting the city and violence escalated.

[gentle music]

I had one friend and somebody went to his house

and he let the person in

and the person shot him six times and executed him.

The killer then calmly closed the door behind him and left.

A girl who was my friend's older sister,

she was gang raped and strangled

and left on the side of a road

and it was her aunt that found her car

and then found her body.

Christina, she was an older punk girl from the scene.

She was known to be pretty tough.

She carried brass knuckles around with her.

She went to Boston and then started dating this guy

who she broke up with.

He went and executed her and then killed himself.

Rob, I ran into him in New York and then

three hours later, he had shot six bags of heroin

and overdosed.

My friend Matt, almost like my brother,

him and his wife were separating

and the wife got a gun and walked into his work

and shot him like six times,

leaving his daughter without a dad.

- Your friends death.

I remember I put my arm around you

and sitting down and talking with you about

because you were terribly upset.

- I've had probably a dozen friends die.

The violence and the bad things

that have happened in my life is one of the major things

I use to push me to do something creative

because when you get into those dark moments,

you have choice.

You can go and be more destructive.

You can sink into a dark hole,

or you can use that as something that allows you

to do something to better yourself.

To make art was a way to cope.

There was no reason to have a fear of failure

because I knew I'd be dead soon.

I was contemplating my options.

I had the choice of either going to art school

or staying at home.

If I had stayed home, I'd probably be dead now.

- We are destination downtown

and we're documenting the stories of these amazing people.

Located to the Lower East Side from Washington D.C.

and he is an artist and a film maker,

one of the founders of the Antagonist Movement.

[applauding]

- But the concept of coming to New York

and knowing a couple of things

and one was like The Warriors,

the movie The Warriors, so I was like,

I'm gonna come, I'm gonna have to join a gang.

I'm gonna be knife fighting with everybody

and then the other part is my family,

we live, we have relatives in Rhode Island

so we'd take the train from D.C. to Rhode Island

and in that passage,

all you would see is the very worst parts of New York

like just rubble and burnt down buildings

and all of this stuff and I was like,

my god, New York City is a wasteland.

I knew a lot of the local gang kids

that were much tougher than me

so the very first week I was there,

I saw this kid walking our of Mona's Bar

and crossing the projects on 11th Street

and just kids from those projects

throwing 40 ounce bottles at him and him running away

and me going like, oh my god.

This guy is covered in tattoos,

he's way tougher than me, local Puerto Rican kid,

there's no chance I'm gonna make it.

Two days later, I was walking out of my building

and another friend of mine that I had known

from the punk scene drove up in his car

and he's like, oh you know, how you doing?

Blah blah blah and I'm like I'm good

but I'm a little nervous about the neighborhood,

like am I gonna get murdered in my sleep here?

And he's like, no, no one's ever gonna bother you here

and I go, why's that?

He goes, well I happen to be in this time period,

you're pretty much like the only white guy here

and I'm a parole officer

and I'm all of these guys' parole officer,

so look at the corner.

And like all the kids were watching us.

And they're like, yeah, they think you're a cop now.

[laughing] And I was like,

oh okay, great.

After that meant not only did I ever have a problem.

None of those kids ever talked to me ever.

I came from a place where violence and death

was something that was normal.

Still to this day when I walk into a restaurant,

I have to have my back to the wall

and my eye on the door because I don't want somebody

sneaking up behind me.

That carries over to what I do creatively.

I have anger and violence that simmers

just below the surface.

A little bit dangerous, a little bit rebellious

and maybe a little bit criminal.

- When you were about, must have been seven or eight,

we took you to a psychiatrist who wanted

to put you on Ritalin because the psychiatrist said

that you were hyperactive,

which I completely disagreed.

If you were interested in something,

you would sit there for hours and work on it.

So I told the psychiatrist that I absolutely refused

and she kind of went into a god like

how dare you disagree with me,

you're a bad parent, this is like child abuse.

I said, well, that's the way it is.

This child is not gonna be on drugs

and that's the end of it.

- Say no to drugs and that is probably because

I don't drink or use drugs.

- Your dyslexia which I think is more severe

than people realize

in unmanageable on alcohol or drugs

and I think you like to be in control.

- In order to be the best version of himself,

I think Ethan's got to stay sober for the most part.

- It was 1990 in New York and I started

working in the bars and that's when the big change happened.

There was one night I was bartending

and in front of me was an actor who wasn't acting,

a musician who didn't play any music,

a painter who didn't paint,

and a writer who didn't write

and these were people I saw day after day,

week after week.

They were there 'till the bar closed.

They stayed there after hours with me.

The one thing they have in common is that

they're here in the bar drinking all night every night.

You have to be willing to give up something.

- There was a point in time where

a lot of people that we knew were doing drugs,

specifically like a lot of people got into heroin.

Few of those people died.

Ethan's reaction to that was super worried

and did whatever he could to convince those people

that they should stop doing it.

I'll kick your ass, I'll steal your drugs,

I'll call your parents, et cetera.

- The stories you hear of artists having addictions

and those addictions actually helping their art,

a fallacy.

The reality is most people are hobbled by their addictions.

I just wasn't willing to risk that.

- Not everybody died, so I guess it,

maybe it worked with some of them.

[upbeat music]

- I remember being in a hotel with Ethan in Nashville

and watching MTV and all of the sudden

there was this video that I had written music for

and Ethan had directed and it was so exciting.

I remember sort of jumping around in a hotel room.

[applauding]

- [Ethan] Thank you for watching the film.

I'm gonna say I'm recording now

so you kind of get this thing

that I record everything in my life.

- There was always like a strange Hitchcock almost cameo

where Ethan shows up mostly semi nude.

He's usually washing some part of his anatomy or the other.

- It's unfair because he always ambushes you.

I have to film this thing by this date tomorrow morning

at 7 a.m. I will film you.

You will be filmed by me.

I am Ethan Ethan Minsker. [laughing]

- [Ethan] But now you're in a bunch of films.

Let's talk about that, the films.

- It's weird.

He kind of brands it Ethan and then the artist Ethan.

He puts himself a lot into movies.

I don't think it's bad.

There was nobody else doing it at the time.

He was the only one that showed up

with his camera every week and would edit it religiously

and most people would have given up after the first flop.

[upbeat music]

- [Man] On tonight's program, we're first showing

a film by Ethan Minsker.

- We're here down on the Lower East Side.

- I'm taking myself very seriously as a collector.

- I went to New York and went to art school

and then switched to film.

I made a documentary called Anything Boys Can Do

which covered the women bands on the Lower East Side

between 92 and 94.

- When I first saw Anything Boys Can Do, I was blown away

that a film made in the 90s and a film that

showcased rampant sexism in the music industry

could still be so relevant today.

- It played in over 50 festivals around the world.

It was my first time of having any taste of success.

[upbeat music]

- Ethan's films aren't about stories that are contrived

or follow some mold.

I mean, they're, all of his films are very personal.

♪ Any fool can tell what's happening ♪

♪ When you're caught without your friends ♪

He is going to make something with the community

that he's built.

It's going to be about building spiritual currency

and raising other people up and creating art.

- All these movies have the same cast of characters

so for the past 16 years, I'm in whatever it is,

five, six films.

- The things that I talk about today,

I'm not necessarily saying that you should

follow what I'm doing because what we have done before

could possibly land you in jail or prison.

There are local gang members in this,

so we pretty much use our whole community.

Once we started making the film,

we had people coming up to us saying like,

I hear you're making a film, I wanna be in it.

[laughing] I'm like, all right.

Some of these guys were like,

we got to put them in the film.

We can't cut them out.

[laughing]

Using guns in New York City in this time period

and still today you have to have a permit

to be able to rent a prop gun from the store.

The permit means you have to have insurance

and insurance is $2,000.

This budget of the entire film is $2,000.

That money went to drugs and a limo rental.

That said, I had provenance from when I was a kid.

The criminal element that I kind of mentioned before,

we show up and be like, well,

I've got this sawed off shotgun.

Why don't we use that?

And I'm like, all right, well now we're using real guns

in the streets of New York.

Two weeks before that,

a gentleman was shot and killed pulling his wallet out

in front of the police, so the whole neighborhood

downtown was on edge.

We literally had people standing on corners going, cops!

And then we would break up.

Everyone put the equipment away.

The criminal with the gun would then take the bag

and go another direction.

It was just like we were dealing drugs

but were dealing art.

It was filmed in one scene two weeks

before September 11 happened,

two blocks away from the Twin Towers.

The neighborhood shut down below 14th Street

for three months.

We still kept shooting.

We kind of agreed to it.

♪ Isn't it right

- Ethan works, he works a full time job.

He earns enough money to pay his bills,

and then he films.

It takes him quite a while to finish his films

because they're not financed.

- I worked in the film industry.

I did grip and electric.

I would do assistant editing for cable networks

and the thing I would find most common

is that the projects I worked on

were predictable and cliche.

I will never be that theatrical success.

I'd prefer to make my little odd films

that are geared towards like minded individuals

documenting subcultures and unknown artists.

It inspired me to wanna get more involved,

to have a bigger influence.

[jazzy music]

I just really wasn't sure how to go about doing that.

The dynamic of living in New York

is everybody moves here because they wanna

do something creative.

If you don't wanna move here because of that,

you're moving here because you wanna be

around people who are doing something creative.

Unfortunately, the rents make that very hard

because you become a slave to your job

so you're stuck in a cycle of having to work

to pay your rent and not doing what you're doing creatively.

The dynamics of the bars is they want people there

and they wanna make money, so we said, hey,

you got this room in the back of the bar.

Why don't we do one night art shows.

We did that for 11 years.

We showed over 3,000 artists and the reason it worked

is because you were giving people a chance

without having to worry about the economics of a gallery.

There was huge room for experimentation

so you couldn't say that those same elements

didn't exist in other cities, they did.

There were other cities all over the world

where there was cheap rent,

but they didn't have as many art movements

birthed out of them as New York City did,

as Punk Rock, as Hip Hop, as the Beatnik.

The thing about New York that's unique

is that it brings everybody together

and those people who have diverse perspectives

can come up with something unique.

♪ Art talk

♪ Just doing some good old art talk ♪

♪ With your host Ethan Minsker

If you're trying to do something creative,

you have to look at the resources

and assess your situation in your environment

and New York is uniquely suited to doing creative things.

All of those materials and elements are there

and if you become crafty enough,

you can figure out ways you can do these projects

for little or no cost.

New York had all of the creative elements

that I would need to be able to pursue my dreams.

It's a city full of people just like myself

who are desperate to do something.

♪ Not just a new idea but

Building a community like that

was the birthplace for starting the Antagonist Art Movement.

We try to go into the community, engage the community,

and then build our larger community through outreach.

- [Man] What kind of advice would you give

to those people listening?

- I'd say the major thing with us

is that artists in general are solitary

and by working together as a group,

it gives you a lot more options open up.

[upbeat music]

I'm the head curator and organizer

for a group called the Antagonist Art Movement.

We're based out of New York City

but we work with artists around the world.

Part of our mission statement

is to create venues and projects that allow

unrecognized artists to develop their talent.

Our goal is to act as a laboratory

to allow people to experiment without

the ramifications of the economics

that are associated with the art market.

- It's known the art world now.

It's just a place, it's about money

and moving and shaking and it's not really about

discovering artists or any of that anymore.

So as artists, we have to carry on

in our own sort of collective way.

- Ethan hasn't just built an organization

that's helped so many people and so many creatives

in the Lower East Side,

but he's helping to uphold the legacy

of the Lower East Side and the creative history

of his neighborhood.

- We were gonna do our own thing

and actually create things that are interesting and unique.

- Antagonist Movement was my gateway to New York City.

When I moved here, I had nothing and Ethan got me a job.

- Huge part of my 20s and my development as an artist.

- He got me writing.

- The Antagonist art movement is a family to me.

And kind of a cult, let's be real.

- Comparing it to some of the other artistic communities

which to me were much more elitist.

- In a strange place where you never find a leader,

[laughing] we found Ethan Minsker

or he found us, I don't know.

- The art market, overwhelming percent of artists

that are successful are from the same economic class

that owns and runs the galleries.

They go to the same few select master programs.

We select art purely based on

the content quality of the art.

We separate the concept of who the artist is.

[applauding]

The antagonist is the one who pushes the protagonist

to action so we're not trying to be the hero.

We're trying to get the hero

to go off and do the adventure.

I worked at galleries and art handler

and it's a very closed off system.

How can a gallery afford this space

to pay my salary and everybody else

is that they have to have artists that can cover that.

It was 2003 when we met Arturo Vega.

Arturo was the artistic director for the Ramones.

He did their t-shirt design, they rehearsed in his loft.

He was a mixing spoon where he would take people

from different elements and backgrounds

and introduce them to each other

and try to get them to collaborate.

Our art movement and all the work I've personally done

has been always referencing punk rock

so when you have somebody like Arturo

who comes along and isn't just passing through

but takes notice of what you're doing,

gets involved, and wants to push you to do more

and become friends with us is massive.

Arturo would curate shows for us,

he would mentor artists, advise us,

but for me personally, he was like the artistic father

that I never had.

Arturo brought us Richard Hambleton who showed with us

in the pop up gallery we had in the basement of a bar.

He hadn't shown in more than 20 years

so that was kind of a big deal for us.

- If we were to stare.

- [Man] We love you Arturo, we love you.

- [Man] Who's the cutest?

- I think an Antagonist is not about being beautiful.

It's about being beautiful and getting away with it.

[laughing]

- Arturo died suddenly in 2013.

It broke my heart but Arturo would have been

the first one to tell you that you don't mourn

someone's death, you celebrate it.

There are times when I felt like slowing down

I could feel this kind of voice

in the back of my head.

What you're doing is good, it's good for the community.

When you get in this conversation,

like how do we know each other?

Oh yeah, you don't remember?

Arturo introduced us.

He was bringing us these lost puppies

but all the lost puppies is really what made up

the bulk of our group.

- And those people eventually got careers

and became established

and some of them became world recognized.

- [Ethan] There are a few people

that have become successful,

Jonah Hill.

- 'Cause I'm a moron, dude.

My shit's not very well spoken at all.

Trust me, I'll be the first one to say.

- He was a kid off the street

that came in and started reading in our group.

We moved him up to headliner.

Dustin Hoffman's kids came in and said,

I want you to meet my dad.

He's doing a movie called I Love the Huckabees

which was Jonah Hill's first movie

and then took off.

The whole point is to try to make it something unique

that changes everything so if we make into mainstream

status, that's fine as long as you keep

the integrity of what you're doing.

We had done so many shows in New York

and felt like we weren't really getting anywhere

so we decided to do shows overseas.

- I actually find you guys really easy to deal with

since you've done a lot of

these exhibitions internationally.

There was a lot of encouragement there.

I like the fact that you guys do antagonize me

'cause when you've got a year to work on a show,

you tend to sort of be a little bit laid back,

especially if you're Australian.

- I was brought to this project by Ethan.

Conversation started about over a year ago.

I met Ethan through some friends

at a barbecue in New Jersey

in the Hoboken of all places. [laughing]

- The overseas projects, we would work with local artists

in tandem to come up with a theme.

- Back in 2007 in Berlin I met Antagonist.

We did an art show there together.

They influenced us to do these art shows

where everyone can show.

I'm living in New York and the Antagonists

helped me find jobs.

- By doing those, we would make connections

that would last for years.

- I came to New York and they introduced me

to a lot of people and opportunities.

Then I started working on some of their projects

like zines and films and art shows.

Now I'm trapped forever.

- October we're doing the Dwelling Project

in Sydney, Australia.

We're asking people to make buildings

out of recycled materials

and then we'll construct a city in the gallery.

Half the buildings and works you see here

are a performance art.

I will come in as Godzilla and destroy it

because I love doing that.

The deeper part of it is that it's about

the loss of your home and how people

all around the world constantly

there's someone losing their home

and a lot of people watch it on the news

and don't really feel it personally.

♪ Lemonade lemonade

♪ Lemonade lemonade gimme gimme lemonade ♪

♪ Lemonade lemonade oh

- One of my first shows I've ever done as an artist

kind of gave me an early sense

of a feeling of community.

I designed the latest Antagonist movement logo

and traditionally, the logo itself has been

designed by a different artist every couple of years

keeping the same theme of a ninja

inside of a black circle with Antagonist Movement around it.

- If you get that collective Antagonist stuff

in enough different spots, somebody will discover it.

♪ Places will be hard to find

- This neighborhood really represented

this sort of spirit of independent art

and making something that was new.

When I came here, I was like, I wanna start a group.

I wanna make something new.

All I wanna do is at least be the liner note

in somebody else's story where we're like,

we helped that person make something huge

and change everything.

[upbeat music]

The Antagonist Movement for me was a school.

It taught me how to work with other artists.

It gave me a greater and deeper understanding

of all of the possibilities of art out there

and not to be limited by just trying out one genre.

It gave me the courage to try things that were risky

and in doing so, it sharpened and honed my ability.

- Affecting individual peoples' lives in New York

which is such a dehumanizing place at times.

- And I think it's good because I think

we're some of the last left in the Alamo.

- In 2011, we lost the space where we did our events.

It's not really about the actually shows.

It's not about the physical art.

It's about the connections and the personality

of the people we work with

and those connections are what are really

the fundamental crux of the Antagonist Movement

because those carry on much longer than the show.

- I think his strongest talent is building communities.

- It started with me reading Ernest Hemingway

and Henry Miller books.

There's these parts where they talk about

going to the beach and vacationing

with a group of artists of different backgrounds.

♪ Words that calm me

It would be the starting place for new concepts

and ideas so once a year,

I would get a bunch of artists

and we would save up some money

and split the rental cost of a house.

There was something about getting outside

of your environment that led to new concepts

that it gives you more opportunity

because you're tapping into the knowledge

of all of the different people.

[gentle music]

Over the years, the artist retreat

morphed into the art brunch

and the art brunch now is something we do once a month.

I think as an artist it's easy to

get stuck in your projects so you should have something

built into your routine that is a social element.

All of my friendships and socializing

are done through what I do creatively.

The art brunch is a place where people can

give me critical feedback on my projects.

[jazzy music]

I started trying to think of what could be

the next step that could supplement those things.

- In 2011, Ethan and his family

and the Antagonist Art Movement

sent me back to NYU to study philanthropy and fund raising.

From there, I learned how to do grant writing,

accounting, budgeting and everything

under the sun for non-profit organizations.

- [Ethan] With these art projects we do,

we go to other countries and then we search out

kids from disadvantaged youth,

hard backgrounds and we try to teach them in workshops.

The thing I found amazing about that is you see

these kids who maybe are not interested in writing

or not interested in art but are very creative

and once you show them that sort of avenue of expression,

then it flips everything around.

Like the same thing with myself.

- Shannon, Ethan, and I are all directors

on the board for the non-profit Citizens For The Arts.

- In 2013, we were granted non-profit status.

- This is the next step.

- [Shannon] It's opened a number of opportunities.

We don't only do art projects.

We do things that are kind of in a humanitarian realm.

- When you feel that you've been doing the same thing

for a certain amount of years,

you have to actively go out and try to do something

that you're not comfortable with.

- There is a lot of challenges that we're facing.

- I had this idea in my head

that once we became a non-profit

that everybody would just start throwing at us,

but it's like hard to get five dollars out of somebody,

let alone 500 or 5,000.

- You went from having a large base of people

but at the end of the day,

there's only three people doing it

so it's starting at square one

and we end up putting our own money into it.

I think we've done quite well.

- You're never going to progress

if you just stay in the same place.

Hello.

Today on Film Festival, we'll have a couple of boys

trying to make fools of themselves.

Now, let's go and watch.

I think as an artist you also should be a collector.

It's a good way not only for you to collect great work

but it's also a way for you to get your work

injected into somebody else's collection.

I use my hallways like a mini gallery

and this reflects the work from all of the

one night art shows we did for 11 years.

Come on in here.

When we used to do the pop up gallery,

one of our things was doing group shows based on a theme.

For this painting, it was obscure dictators.

Normal people portrayed as great dictators.

And over here is a painting from our great

Caffeinate and Decimate show which was

the combination of mixing caffeine and handguns.

[jazzy music]

- Oh god, it's so narcissistic.

Who would make the film about themselves?

- [Ethan] What I find frustrating today

in making art is that

it's this celebrity cult that is

the fascination of making success,

especially within the media.

If I write a book and try to get a publisher

or an agent to pick it up,

the first thing they wanna know is, well,

who did you kill or who did you fuck?

Do you have an Instagram account?

- Ethan is like the most horribly obnoxious

self promoting person I know.

- Hashtag us, join us on Instagram,

join us on Facebook, tell your friends, spread the word.

We're famous for four blocks on the Lower East Side.

Outside of that, nobody seems to know us.

- Why is anyone going to pick my book off the shelf?

Here there's always a choice,

so if we don't self promote,

I don't know how anybody discovers our work anymore.

- Because I don't expect anybody to come down

and save my ass.

If I don't do it myself, it ain't gonna happen.

- You have to embrace the egotistical side of making art.

If the average person picked up a Picasso

and looked at it, they would go,

what the fuck is this shit?

But Picasso was an expert at making sure that

people believed it was the absolute

best art that ever graced this earth.

So did Andy Warhol.

You have to have the personality behind it.

I'm ready for combat.

This is apart of the outfit I'm wearing

is actually like my event suit

so I have to show this part too.

[whistling]

- [Woman] Oh, very nice.

- I feel art is combat.

You have to be ready for war.

Here you go, sorry Mis.

Most people are consumers.

I personally would rather be a producer.

[upbeat music]

♪ Take my winter

When people see me in my camo suit,

this is a reference to writers like

Truman Capote or Mark Twain.

Even though their suits were white,

your outward appearance is an extension of

your creative expression.

[jazzy music]

[growling]

I decided I would start focusing on my personal projects.

I'm never gonna be satisfied with what I do creatively.

That's probably at the same time

the part of the machine that makes me keep

taking on new projects and trying new things.

I just have to learn to give up the concept of

mainstream success but it would be nice to have a paycheck.

- As long as I've known you,

it seems like your whole style of creation

has always been collaborative.

I don't know how you get so much fucking shit done.

It's crazy and you don't care if it's not perfect

right away, you just make it

and that's admirable to me.

[funky music]

- I wanted to try to make a book.

The first book I wrote was Rich Boy Cries for Momma.

- You weren't able to find a conventional publisher,

so you resorted to self publishing.

- He self publishes his own writing

but he goes to great lengths for the quality of

every zine and book that he does.

He gets great people to do the artwork

and to help him design the book, to edit the book,

so in the end, what he has is just a really great

piece of art in itself.

- This one is about the D.C. punk scene,

about some of my friends getting murdered,

but it's a comedy too.

And Barstool Prophets, that's about

the New York City bar scene and all that.

- I read Barstool Prophets and just thought it was great.

It was a great introduction to the city of New York,

especially the East Village because

it takes place between 1993 and about 2014

and you get to see all the changes that go on

through the eyes of a bartender

and of course, bartenders have the best stories, so.

- I just knew that he wrote and I knee that he was dyslexic

but I hadn't really considered what the two of those

things meant until after I started editing his raw work

and then I was like, shit,

this has to actually be a struggle.

I admire that you still choose to do it.

- [Un] I would have to read everything out loud

so that he could hear, visualize and edit in his mind.

- Being dyslexic and writing a book

is on the level of a blind man painting.

It's a thorough process of editing

and normally a book has one editor

and has a copy editor while I have six people

who help me edit the book and dozens and dozens of people

who read over it.

It's a collaborative effort.

I'm never gonna be able to just

take a typewriter and write out a book

without a lot of supervision.

[funky music]

- His work is a lot like the films he makes.

Everything is within the frame.

[guns firing]

- Making my art, I recognize I'm making

a deal with the devil

and in the details of that contract state

is that you have to be willing

to put more of your private self

out into the greater world.

You risk being criticized and ridiculed.

- [Cynthia] The art world is full of bullies

just like any other part of society.

- Now I've been getting criticized

since I've been a kid.

It's one of the byproducts of being learning disabled.

I've collected the criticism and bad reviews.

I call them my little family of enemies

and I keep them around and use them as something

that motivates me because I need to prove them all wrong.

- Ethan is always ready for the consequences.

Actually, he's looking for the fight.

- It pushes my art to be better.

I don't think any artist starts out polished and perfect.

It's in your failures that you become better.

- [Man] This man is up here 30,000 feet

above the World Trade Center.

Sir, do you have life insurance?

- What? [screaming]

- [Man] I guess he didn't.

- When September 11 happened, I got a phone call

at nine in the morning.

My phone never rings at nine in the morning

and when I came out into the living room,

after the buildings had fallen,

you could see ash right outside this window.

Picking up my camera and filming gave me

the illusion of control.

It was a way of processing the events

that were unfolding around me.

By me is where the World Trade Centers used to stand.

It's now been a week.

I don't have the ability to suppress emotions

so I have to figure out ways

I can work through them

and doing something creative

has always been that key for me.

It's the one thing that keeps my sanity in check.

Those were tapes I hadn't looked at in 17 years.

It was just something I filmed and put away.

Couple of the people that used to come in the bar

are definitely now missing or,

I guess the word isn't missing anymore.

They're dead.

I was nervous about doing the performance art.

Once I started, I fell into this meditative state.

[loud drumming]

There's a feeling I derive from the work that I do,

a mixture of comfort and satisfaction

and that feeling can be a very powerful

and addictive force.

[applauding]

[gentle music]

You can't help thinking about

the people who lost their lives.

I understand when they're watching the performance art

it's going to look very childish,

it's going look like a kid just having fun again.

I want the viewer to have that disconnection,

not to understand the real kind of

personal emotion behind it.

Maybe later if they see this film,

their concept of what they saw will change.

Living in New York right now

is just like living in a war.

♪ Stay

[blaster firing]

♪ Trading laughs again

Okay there's a story you like to tell

about me over and over again.

- We were walking from the 9:30 Club to D.C. Space

which was a smaller club a couple of blocks away

down a dark street and a crack head comes up to us

with his hand in his jacket

as if he has a gun and Ethan says,

you don't have a fucking gun

and you better fucking have a gun

if you're gonna pull that shit

and I'm just terrified because if I was that crack head,

I would have just shot Ethan,

but the reality was, the guy didn't have a gun

and when Ethan challenged him, he just said,

yeah, I don't have a gun and turned around

and walked away very matter of factly.

- I've had guns pulled on me three times.

[energetic music]

The project I've been focusing on in the last year

has been Ghost Guns and the concept is related to

a lot of my friends who died as a result of gun violence

and I wanted to make these paper mache guns

that act as a memorial to the victims of gun violence.

The thing in the United States is

everyone feels it's impossible to do anything

about handguns and I don't believe

rolling over and giving up is the answer.

♪ They say

I enjoy shooting guns but if it meant saving one life,

I'd be happy to give up that right in a moment.

As a kid, you watch these movies

where the gun is always presented as the catalyst

for action and adventure but the reality is

is when you become an adult,

you can see the gun being unmasked for what it truly is,

a tool of death, destruction, and sadness.

I'll always incorporate guns into my artwork,

but its symbolism has changed from being

the hero to the villain.

♪ Who denounces all of you

[energetic music]

♪ Bad manner round me

My bed and my shelving I designed.

This is based on Frank Lloyd Wright and his designs

but the funny thing is is that Frank Lloyd Wright,

he did storage, so almost every one of his houses

was build without any storage

so what I did is I built storage units

based on his aesthetic and design.

It's pretty rude, right?

- Any project that he does, it drives me insane

because the space is very small

and he takes up the whole space

whether it's the kitchen, the living room.

- In here's where I put my shitty paintings.

The latest works I've been doing have been called

A Boy's Dream where I make a variety of

different war scenes where there's like

battleships from all different eras

and tanks from all different eras.

- I get claustrophobic and this shit is everywhere.

- This wall is a collection of all the weird

sort of things that have inspired me

and then just pieces that I've worked on

and then ended up on this shelf.

- It's like I'm living in an art studio.

It doesn't feel like a home.

- Seven years old, I made this box.

- [Un] How did you make it?

- [Ethan] Wood and paint and then stripped off

many layers of paint.

- It just feels like somebody vomited art everywhere.

- Any good tips for good parenting?

- You only have two functions as a parent in New York

and every parent should learn it.

As long as your kid does not join gangs

and does not become a drug addict,

you've done a great job.

[laughing] That's it.

♪ Turned on the light when I needed the dark ♪

- He was a little reluctant to become a family man.

I think he's worked through that

and he's kind of the best version of himself now

because of it.

♪ Took a swim when I needed to drown ♪

- My father was one of the greatest

workaholics of all time.

Your mom and I would say that was one of the things

that led to our breaking up.

The expectation that we would equally divide the work up

then that's involved with the care of children

and your mom thought that I didn't participate

in my share and she was right.

I was so wrapped up in my career

and working for the firm and succeeding on my cases

and I neglected to spend time with you and Natasha.

♪ Took a walk but I needed to run ♪

- When I first met Ethan, one phrase stuck with me

and he told me that he's never going to stop creating

no matter what and I thought, never?

That's crazy.

After we started dating, I saw how incredibly

persistent he was.

I admire him tremendously.

I didn't want him to stop making art

but after we had the baby,

I hoped that he would be more involved

with taking care of the kid

'cause when you have a baby,

you got to sacrifice some stuff

so it really annoys me, irritates me

that he's constantly making art,

but at the same time, I see that he is making art now

with his daughter so that it became their project,

not just his project.

That's pretty amazing.

♪ There are times in your songs ♪

- I like bed that you made.

Do you wanna see it?

Come. - Yeah.

So who's the best dad ever?

If your kid is afraid of monsters under the bed,

you know what you got to put under there?

- [Blu] Lights.

- [Ethan] Lights under the bed.

- [Blu] Yeah.

- [Ethan] Yeah, why?

- So the monsters won't, the monster will go away.

- Because if you're a monster and you're hanging out

under a bed then you better have sunblock

'cause this is a darn bright bed.

- Yeah because you can't add it like at the light store.

- Yeah and before you skeptics out there say,

yeah, but you're gonna catch your kid's bed on fire,

these are LED and they're not hot

and they don't put out a lot of energy

so energy efficient keeps the monsters away.

Any last words? - Yeah and it puts,

LEDs explodes the monsters.

- [Ethan] But now we spend a lot of time

under the bed, right?

- [Blu] Yeah and now we can explore it.

- Okay so best dad ever, yeah, right here.

[drumming]

My very first girlfriend,

I was like deeply in love with her

and it turned out she slept with basically

everybody I knew.

It was hard to really trust anybody thoroughly

after that had happened to you.

I didn't date anybody that I didn't like.

I think my major problem is that

I always felt like I was going to be abandoned

so if I had the opportunity to fall in love with somebody,

I would.

The problem is is that I've probably

fallen in love with too many people at the same time.

I don't think I ever did anything really bad

to the girls I dated.

I really did care for every single one of them,

but I dated multiple people and feelings were hurt.

My friends who worked in the bars

were always saying, like look.

If you have a kid, it's definitely gonna be a girl

and you're gonna suffer the consequence

of all the things you've done to these women you've dated.

As a kid I was watching PBS and there was

a documentary on an animator

who worked on the Betty Boop shows.

The guy just seemed to emanate happiness

and then the name comes up on the bottom of the credits

and his name was Grim, the most depressing name

you could ever have on a person

is name your son Grim.

I had this thought like, well,

there's so many people that I know

that are named Happy and Smiley

and they're all miserable fucking people

so if I'm gonna have a kid,

I'm gonna name it something sad

but I'm not gonna call him Sad

and I'm definitely not gonna call him Grim,

so Blu was a name that I came up with

because Blue represents sadness,

it represents color.

It could potentially be the name of a stripper,

but for my daughter, I felt if I gave

the Johnny Cash name A Boy Named Sue element to it

and name her something that's sad,

she'll have a life filled with joy.

♪ You're walking with an angel going home ♪

You look silly.

[screeching]

You should look at yourself.

When I did have a daughter,

I had this first instinct of like all these boys

are gonna do such horrible things to my daughter.

Then I said, wait a minute, that's ridiculous,

and in fact, I'm gonna give her all of the knowledge

of what it's like coming from a boy's perspective.

If anything, I think I'm gonna have to be

pulling aside that little boy

and saying like, I'm really sorry

whatever my daughter's about to do to you.

- I'm sure having a kid changed your world.

I'm sure on a certain level,

not that you weren't serious about your art before,

you were probably serious as death,

but this is a different kind of seriousness.

It's a more mature kind of seriousness.

Bigger pressure.

♪ Took a smoke 'cause I needed one ♪

- I want the door. - All right, now flat.

- [Blu] I want the door to be open.

- [Ethan] Okay here, here you go.

Lie down and flat.

Okay, where should I lie down?

- Here.

That one.

- Blu sits in a bed and her father sits next to her

reading a book.

You know, I spend a lot of time reading kids books

and the majority of them are horrible

so yeah, I'm gonna make a kids book with my daughter.

♪ Someone has told me

Oh no.

How many kids out there can say that

they actually have a book about them?

I don't see a difference between parenting

and being an artist.

My daughter is the greatest art project

I've ever made.

[grunting]

[gun firing]

[upbeat music]

- One of Ethan's gifts and I'll give him this

begrudgingly because he doesn't deserve

any praise whatsoever is that

his entire life from when he wakes up in the morning

from the very first moment he opens his eyes

'till the moment he closes his eyes,

he's thinking about ways he can challenge himself

and his cohorts into being creative

and do acts that transcend the banality of daily life.

[applauding]

- [Man] This is the third year here

and we're trying to build community really of

the avant garde and conceptual artists

and creative people that have made

major contributions to the scene that we know.

[applauding] - He's the box artist.

He's a writer, an artist.

- I would just like to say that I wasn't sure

if I sure put the switchblade on there.

I think I did right by that.

[upbeat music]

♪ Over the horizon we go

♪ Over and over let's go

♪ Ghosts of all I've known have let go ♪

It's hard to reconcile that my own desperation

might have helped somebody else.

We did become a starting place for a lot of artists.

We gave a lot of people opportunities

and more importantly, it gave myself a lot of opportunities.

Being able to travel around the world and make art

if it wasn't for the Antagonist Art Movement

and that wouldn't have happened if I didn't do the fanzines

and in some regards, that wouldn't have happened

if my parents didn't get divorced

and if my mother didn't tell me about the big black void

and if they didn't discover I was dyslexic.

One thing leads into another.

[screaming]

It's all over.

I hope more people go out there

and make films just like this 'cause I'll watch it.

Unless you're boring.

- When you're interviewing people,

do you have to be naked behind the camera?

- Why am I wearing this fucking camo suit? [laughing]

♪ Letting go of my ego

- There is a message behind this film.

I didn't make it for the people who were already inspired

or those who need to be inspired.

This is for all the naysayers in your life,

all the people who told you you couldn't chase your dreams,

that you needed to grow up and to get a real job,

that your work had no value,

so lean in, open your ears and listen.

Fuck you!

[applauding]

Don't forget to grab fanzines, I have them.

♪ My love

♪ Real love

♪ Find love for yourself

♪ Real love

♪ Easy love

♪ Find love for yourself

♪ Find love for yourself

♪ To find love

♪ Real love

♪ Cherish love

♪ for yourself

[upbeat music]

♪ Find love

♪ Real love

♪ Find love

♪ for yourself

♪ for yourself

♪ for yourself

[static crackling]

- That's all, folks.