(upbeat music)
- When you're writing for a film,
how does that process work for you?
Do you always need to watch the completed film first?
Are you starting to think about it before that?
Boots, especially for you since it was your own movie.
Did it make it harder or easier?
- Well what's funny is I actually made two soundtracks
because when I wrote the screenplay,
I immediately was working on the soundtrack and finished it,
but it took a long time to get this film made.
So all those songs I had released by then
so, for this it was weird because you know as an artist
I might have wanted to make different songs.
As a director, I had to kind of make
myself make certain songs.
So the first version I wrote were songs
that fit with the theme of the film.
And really, the things that I talk about are all the set,
most of my music is what the film talks about.
So that's easy.
So I realized what the soundtrack that we did
put on the film, that I needed to make music
that I believed that they would be listening to in the world
Which is not necessarily my music.
We don't sell platinum records.
So, I had to make.
- [Other Male Musician] Not many people knew him.
- So I had to make versions of cool songs
that they might be playing in certain situations.
And so that was a different way for me to think.
'Cause our music, the soundtrack, it's only happening
when the characters can hear it.
That's the rule in it.
Tune-Yards did the score, and the characters can't hear that
So, where usually I'm just like fuck it,
this is the stuff I like.
I don't care if it's the thing that anybody will ever play
on the radio or anything, this is just,
I want to put my passion in there.
In this, I decided to think in a different way.
So we had to actually make some stuff from scratch,
just to work and I was wishing
that I hadn't agreed to do it.
'Cause that's how I sold it.
It's like, look I can even do the soundtrack,
and I was wishing that I hadn't said that.
(collectively laughter)
We were doing 12 hours a day, you know and the editing,
then the weekends, I'd be doing the soundtrack.
- So, artists are often influenced by
the current political climate.
I'm curious for you all.
How are you feeling about the climate we're living in now,
and how is that inspiring your work?
- Well I think every piece of art,
and everything we say is political.
Because, what music does, what art does,
is it's like people like yelling at the stars,
and saying you know, we're here, this moment is happening.
It's a way for the listener and the artist to be engaged
with the world, engaged with the universe,
and feel this moment more now, with my music
I'm always encouraging people that the best way
to be engaged with the world is to change it.
If you go to a party, and everybody's dancing
and you're just standing on the wall.
You know you might brag to your friends later on,
how great the party was and all that
if you're a teenager, or whatever.
(laughs)
But if you weren't dancing you weren't really
taking part of that moment so.
- You'd already been doing research
You bring that song, they're dancing to it,
are they dancing to it?
- I also take my stuff to Best Buy and Target,
and just play it and walk into the other aisle.
And then see --
- [Diane] If everybody leaves the store?
- On the Bluetooth just like on the UE dock.
- In the stereo section,
and just see if anybody's bobbing their head.
- That is such a good idea.
- I mean sometimes people, they're just
in their own world anyway, but every now and then,
you get something and you're like okay.
- That's like the way cooler version
of like taking it to the club.
(laughs)
- Take it to Target.
- One time I had to write really quick
'cause I had been lying about starting on this album.
I got the money from the record label, Epitaph Records,
and Andy Kaulkin called me and he's like,
how's that album going?
And, I'd just fallen in love and I was like
just really in the house with this girl for six months,
and where the studio was, and he was like,
you got that, and I was like, oh yeah I got a lot of stuff
almost done and I got one song though, just totally lying.
And he was like, great I'm in Oakland.
(collective laughter)
Let me come by.
So I wrote this song real quick, just because
I had to put it all together.
Again I had the music already,
and wrote this song real quick.
And I was like, okay how do I be true
to what I'm thinking at this moment.
And it's a song called, I just want to
lay around all day in bed with you.
But it really is talking about
because of pressure in all that.
Like time, and what we would do with our time
if we didn't have to make money with it,
which is the basis of exploitation,
and all of those things.
But a lot of times, we think of those things as all separate
When they're not really in our head, they're not separate,
they're all connected and there's just a tradition
of cutting out these other things,
and making it quote unquote not political.