Scenes From the Suburbs is a half-hour short film directed by Spike Jonze and based on Arcade Fire's Grammy-winning album, The Suburbs. The dystopian flick follows a group of high school kids living in a paranoid alternative reality where martial law rules a stretch of repetitive houses and lawns. The movie mixes the warm naturalism of Jonze's more heartfelt work with the under-siege aura of movies like 1984's Red Dawn as it imagines an America where towns are separated by checkpoints and heavily armed guards. (The recent video for Arcade Fire's "The Suburbs" acts as a preview for the short.)
In the middle of this year's SXSW-- where Scenes From the Suburbs had its U.S. premiere-- we sat down with band member Will Butler, who helped write the semi-improvised film with his brother Win and Jonze, and has a ski-masked cameo in it as what he calls a "yell-y soldier." Filmed in Austin's suburbs and starring local non-actor teens, the movie is set to be released on DVD "with bonus songs fromThe Suburbs" this summer, according to Butler. We spoke about the film and Arcade Fire's unlikely Grammy win. As for band news, he said the crew have been casually "doing demos and jamming and writing songs" over the last few months. Read on for the Q&A:
Pitchfork: What were some visual touchstones you were thinking about while making this film?
Will Butler: Terry Gilliam movies like 12 Monkeys or Brazil, and even E.T. andGoonies just because they're such strong influences on everyone in our generation. But also something like Red Dawn, where it's like a teen action-adventure movie but also a little stupid. The original dream was to make a 20-minute trailer for a movie like Red Dawn where you feel some emotional points and parts of it are really confusing and parts of it are really cool looking. We didn't have the ability to do a feature-length, but since we always make feature-length things in the musical world, we wanted to try to give it the feel of a feature, but also have it be a little more disparate structurally.
Pitchfork: This movie puts the suburbs in a very stark light. What's your relationship with that sort of environment nowadays?
WB: Well, the parts of the album that are autobiographical were inspired by growing up in the suburbs of Houston. My parents moved there for my dad's job, so there was never a real pride of place in my household; it wasn't like, "I'm stoked about my house and my yard."
And I went to boarding school for high school, so I kind of missed the whole "**** this place" phase when it comes to the suburbs. My parents moved to semi-rural Maine when I was in college, so I haven't really been back to the suburbs in a long time, too. I have definitely developed an appreciation for aspects of it now that I'm at the point where I'm considering having kids. It's like, "Oh shit, it would be nice to go to a place where there's no crime and great schools." I don't want to move back to the suburbs any time soon, but you see why people move there.
Pitchfork: Congrats on winning the Album of the Year Grammy. Did you guys figure you might win when you found out you were going to play last on the show?
WB: I just thought they used the more popular bands as rating draws earlier and then depended on the big award to be the ratings draw later. We were gonna do the last song no matter what-- it was a lot more fun to do it having won instead of having watched Eminem win.
Pitchfork: That would have been awkward.
WB: It would have been a little less fun. It was funny when that guy wrote to The New York Times saying it was all rigged because never has something been less rigged. It was exciting to see something happen that wasn't preordained to happen. We didn't pay people to get this award; it's not like Shell oil paid people to vote for it. We were surprised to win because I don't think our record had even gone gold by that point-- we definitely sold less than a quarter of any of the other nominees.
Pitchfork: Are you aware of the "Who Is Arcade Fire?" Internet meme?
WB: Yeah. It's pretty entertaining.
Pitchfork: Rosie O'Donnell totally knows who you guys are now.
WB: And Dog the Bounty Hunter.
Pitchfork: Some people are saying that Grammy moment could mark a turning point in music culture. As someone who's actually in the band, do you even think about stuff like that?
WB: Sometimes. I basically think of everything in terms of Radiohead, and I do remember when Radiohead's OK Computer lost Album of the Year to Bob Dylan. So I think it's a meaningful for people who are into music right now-- I would be excited if a band I liked won a Grammy. We'll see if people remember it half a generation from now.
In the middle of this year's SXSW-- where Scenes From the Suburbs had its U.S. premiere-- we sat down with band member Will Butler, who helped write the semi-improvised film with his brother Win and Jonze, and has a ski-masked cameo in it as what he calls a "yell-y soldier." Filmed in Austin's suburbs and starring local non-actor teens, the movie is set to be released on DVD "with bonus songs fromThe Suburbs" this summer, according to Butler. We spoke about the film and Arcade Fire's unlikely Grammy win. As for band news, he said the crew have been casually "doing demos and jamming and writing songs" over the last few months. Read on for the Q&A:
Pitchfork: What were some visual touchstones you were thinking about while making this film?
Will Butler: Terry Gilliam movies like 12 Monkeys or Brazil, and even E.T. andGoonies just because they're such strong influences on everyone in our generation. But also something like Red Dawn, where it's like a teen action-adventure movie but also a little stupid. The original dream was to make a 20-minute trailer for a movie like Red Dawn where you feel some emotional points and parts of it are really confusing and parts of it are really cool looking. We didn't have the ability to do a feature-length, but since we always make feature-length things in the musical world, we wanted to try to give it the feel of a feature, but also have it be a little more disparate structurally.
Pitchfork: This movie puts the suburbs in a very stark light. What's your relationship with that sort of environment nowadays?
WB: Well, the parts of the album that are autobiographical were inspired by growing up in the suburbs of Houston. My parents moved there for my dad's job, so there was never a real pride of place in my household; it wasn't like, "I'm stoked about my house and my yard."
And I went to boarding school for high school, so I kind of missed the whole "**** this place" phase when it comes to the suburbs. My parents moved to semi-rural Maine when I was in college, so I haven't really been back to the suburbs in a long time, too. I have definitely developed an appreciation for aspects of it now that I'm at the point where I'm considering having kids. It's like, "Oh shit, it would be nice to go to a place where there's no crime and great schools." I don't want to move back to the suburbs any time soon, but you see why people move there.
Pitchfork: Congrats on winning the Album of the Year Grammy. Did you guys figure you might win when you found out you were going to play last on the show?
WB: I just thought they used the more popular bands as rating draws earlier and then depended on the big award to be the ratings draw later. We were gonna do the last song no matter what-- it was a lot more fun to do it having won instead of having watched Eminem win.
Pitchfork: That would have been awkward.
WB: It would have been a little less fun. It was funny when that guy wrote to The New York Times saying it was all rigged because never has something been less rigged. It was exciting to see something happen that wasn't preordained to happen. We didn't pay people to get this award; it's not like Shell oil paid people to vote for it. We were surprised to win because I don't think our record had even gone gold by that point-- we definitely sold less than a quarter of any of the other nominees.
Pitchfork: Are you aware of the "Who Is Arcade Fire?" Internet meme?
WB: Yeah. It's pretty entertaining.
Pitchfork: Rosie O'Donnell totally knows who you guys are now.
WB: And Dog the Bounty Hunter.
Pitchfork: Some people are saying that Grammy moment could mark a turning point in music culture. As someone who's actually in the band, do you even think about stuff like that?
WB: Sometimes. I basically think of everything in terms of Radiohead, and I do remember when Radiohead's OK Computer lost Album of the Year to Bob Dylan. So I think it's a meaningful for people who are into music right now-- I would be excited if a band I liked won a Grammy. We'll see if people remember it half a generation from now.
