Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: After going on a hike and getting “really stoned,” OFF! guitarist Dimitri Coats approached his friend and bandmate Keith Morris with a tall order: He wanted to make a film that featured the band with the former Circle Jerks’ singer’s erectile dysfunction as the inciting incident. “I was a little worried (Keith) wouldn’t go for it,” Coats told IndieWire.
As the legendary dreadlocked punk singer detailed in his 2016 autobiography “My Damage,” he struggles with diabetes; as Morris previously disclosed to Coats, erectile dysfunction was an early warning sign. In the film Coats envisioned, Morris never followed his musical dreams and became a defeated elderly porno store clerk who is inspired by a bout of erectile dysfunction to visit a “boner doctor” (David Yow, of The Jesus Lizard).
This leads to a hallucinogenic “antidote” created by aliens with the help of albino bees, and in turn reveals his true destiny: Morris will form a band so great its music will alter human consciousness. That is, if a relentless AI race of assassins doesn’t stop them first.
“Free LSD” has a fever dream of a logline, but something even stranger happened: With help from punk-rock and Hollywood veterans, Jack Black, and Coats’ own experiences studying acting at Julliard, he crafted a midnight movie directorial debut that is funny, exciting, and at times surprisingly moving.
Before he dropped out of Julliard to pursue music, Coats said he learned how to write character arcs and juicy parts from studying so many great plays. “People will come up to me, and it usually starts like this,” Coats said. “‘I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I wasn’t expecting much from this movie because it’s made by a band. But, holy shit!’”
Writing, pacing, and direction for “Free LSD” is on point, and so are the performances. Morris goes for broke while Yow has spent years as an actor (although The Jesus Lizard is now preparing to tour for the first time in 26 years). It has much of the same late-night California weirdness, off-kilter humor, and punk sensibility of the 1984 classic “Repo Man” — which, incidentally, features a hilarious cameo from Morris and The Circle Jerks.
Coats said the movie would have been impossible without his relationship with Morris. “There’s something about our friendship and our creative process that forces us to push the boundaries in ways that I don’t think we would otherwise,” he said.
Coats was 40 when he joined Morris in OFF! back in 2009. They recorded three albums that Coats described as “very black-and-white” hardcore punk. He felt the band was “in a box” and needed a way out. Writing the soundtrack for a sci-fi movie about aliens and consciousness expansion was all part of that scheme.
“I sort of tricked everybody into being as bold as possible musically, especially Keith,” Coats said. “It really opened us up creatively.” The album “Free LSD” is a quantum leap for OFF! — imagine avant-garde saxophonist Albert Ayler teaming with prog-rock musicians to create a hardcore album. It was very well-received.
However, none of that helped them actually make the movie. Directors of the band’s music videos said they thought it would be impossible. The days of “Purple Rain” and the Monkees’ “Head” were long gone. A Kickstarter failed. “We had so many doors slammed in our faces and so many nos, and we just didn’t fucking give up,” Coats said.
Coats considered abandoning the film and chalking off a victory for birthing “all these incredible songs.” However, he said Morris became very emotional over lunch one day, even for a gruff punk rocker, telling him: “Dimitri, we have to make this movie.”
In that moment, Coats said, “I realized he was right by my side, and I promised him we’ll make the movie, even if we have to shoot it on a fucking iPhone.”
In the end, it was the music that brought the film together. Many Los Angeles film professionals love OFF! music, including director of photography, Christopher Raymond, who shot second unit on “Avengers: Infinity War.” Producer Kurt Kittleson (The Canyons) wrote a fan letter to Morris as a teenager. One of the first people to take the project seriously was editor Jonathan P. Shaw, who got his start in the editorial department on “Blue Velvet” before editing the TV series “Twin Peaks.” Coats said these industry professionals signed on for a fraction of their usual rates for the joy of working on something new and unusual.
In addition to Morris and Yow, the film’s musicians-turned-actors include Chris D. of the Flesheaters, Davey Havok from AFI, and and Don Bolles from the Germs. Most touching for this music fan, the late D.H. Peligro, drummer for Dead Kennedys, stepped in when the band’s drummer, Justin Brown, was held up by an extended tour. “We wanted to put all the freaks we knew from the L.A. scene in the movie,” Coats said. “It turns out they’re really entertaining to watch on screen.”
In fact, playing in a band is good prep for filmmaking. Band life is a collective labor of love and struggle — I once heard a musician compare it to “having three girlfriends.” It’s something the film captures well and even depicts as heroic.
Coats, who managed OFF! and produced its records, tried to run the set “like a band experience,” giving everyone involved a great deal of freedom, “and we took that fun seriously.” He also found there is a “musicality in terms of how to structure a screenplay” and setting up tours taught him to write for the budget. The crew pulled off an 18-day shoot during the pandemic. Their friend, Jack Black pulled off his cameos via iPhone.
By pursuing what many said was an impossible dream, the band crafted a heartfelt paeon to the self-realization that comes from following your creative dreams, no matter your age or background. Said Coats, “Something we’re very proud of is: Look at what these older people, these Gen Xers and boomers can do.” He said audiences respond strongly to “these more human films made by human hands, because there’s something more authentic about them.”
A response, incidentally, not dissimilar to how many of us responded to first hearing bands like Black Flag and the Circle Jerks, who played far from the corporate music system. While making the film and album, OFF! decided to retire as a band and “leave our fans with the ultimate going-away present,” said Coats.
They remain close friends. Morris is touring with a reunited Circle Jerks, while Coats has started a production company with Kittleson, Yes Way Films. Coats is writing his next feature, a dark comedy called ‘Pie Night,’ and said he is in pre-production for an adaptation of Terry Southern’s first novel, ‘Flash and Filigree’ with Rhino Films.
Said Coats, indie filmmaking is “what I’m going to dedicate my life to. I feel like all roads lead to here.” And, for this viewer, the movie did something I did not expect at all: It made me want to start another band.
“Free LSD” is now available on VOD platforms.
