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JERKBEAST
A foul mouthed monster on drums, a brainless necrophiliac on bass and a rabbit smashing psycho on guitar. this is the formula for rock and roll greatness. Jerkbeast chronicles the rise to stardom of the worst rock band in the history of the world. Breaking barriers, laws and faces, this trio bring their hellbent music to the masses and never stop to think about how stupid they are. Never before has a movie been made that features such an insane amount of bad music, reckless violence and torrential insults.
But wait! Before it was a terrible movie it was a terrible TV show. A live, public access TV show to be exact. Real human beings called into the show live on a device known as a “telephone” and swore at Benny, Marty, Jerkbeast and a rotating cast of dipshits and weirdos. Then they swore back. That was it! For now just about all of that show should be kept locked away under a floorboard somewhere, but maybe someday it will be released in some form or fashion.
Oh yeah, there was also a terrible band in the movie, and then it was retconned into the TV show lore, and the band was called Steaming Wolf Penis, and the band was awful, but they recorded two albums and went on a couple small tours, played the UK even!
Strangely enough, the show and movie drummed up a very small but frothy fanbase who to this day remain loyal to the beast. If you are a Jerkbeast fan the filmmakers humbly request that you do not distribute the show (or anything else of ours) online. Thank you!
Director, writer – Brady Hall
Director, writer – Calvin Lee Reeder
81 minutes
currently out of print
About The Production
The main thing to keep in mind with all things Jerkbeast is: we had no idea what the fuck we were doing. Three doofuses in their early 20s trying to be funny with no stakes for thinking much about good ways to be funny. We loved absurdism and and profanity and just rolled with whatever came out of our brains and strangely enough there were no drugs or alcohol involved. There’s a lot of stuff between the movie, TV show and band that remains legitimately weird and funny, but some stuff has not aged well and represents the kind of humor we’ve all grown out of. But you can’t change what’s already committed to film so we want to respect the work while also recognizing that we would do some bits differently now.
The show was created as a reason to do another local Public Access TV show in Seattle. This was before Youtube, social media or any kind of livestreaming so the only way to do a live show and have people watch it was to actually do a live show from a TV studio. Luckily Seattle had a very robust and accessible Public Access station and oh did we access it. I built the Jerkbeast suit out of actual garbage: newspaper, random pieces of metal and plastic, a bike helmet, football pads, a blanket, some costume fur, pokemon balls for eyes and a lot of liquid latex and box tape. Jerkbeast’s left hand was always in a cast and sling because I used my actual left hand inside the suit to work the mouth. The original idea was for one of us to wear the suit each week but the first show I was in it and after they saw how bedraggled I was after taking it off they decided that I should always be the Jerkbeast so that sealed my fate.
The Jerkbeast show lasted two seasons and was on every Friday for six months at a time. The premise was simple: take phone calls and yell at the callers while they yelled at us. We hung up on nice callers! We’d have friends in to do goofy shit, had live bands play and just spat out general nonsensical tomfoolery and developed a small but enthusiastic fanbase. As we finished up the first season we decided that we wanted to make a movie with the characters, so we got to work…
I wrote the script with Calvin Lee Reeder and we went into production pretty quickly. In our favor was a local fan, Rex Ray, who rented out a small warehouse with his then-partner Rebecca Bolte and they generously allowed us to use the space as a sound stage which was a lifesaver as it provided us an easy and cheap way to shoot sets that would otherwise be impossible. They also volunteered their time as crewmembers! We borrowed a Super 16mm camera from our friend Megan Griffiths and since Calvin and I worked at a local movie film lab we got steep discounts on processing and telecine. The Jerkbeast suit was not comfortable for running around in front of film cameras or out in the hot sun, and DEFINITELY not for playing drums, so I retrofitted it with a more breathable head and even put a fan inside the skull so I wouldn’t get heatstroke playing shows. When it was all said and done we spent roughly $6000 on the movie, which is insane for something shot on actual film. It was a true guerilla indie production!
The band in the movie, Steaming Wolf Penis, did a handful of shows around the world, including a small tour of the UK and playing a bunch of shows at SXSW in addition to some local Seattle gigs. We released two albums (listen below) and developed small pockets of fandom in Seattle, Texas, the UK and a few other scattered areas. Once in a while some new people will discover the material and get really jazzed up, but since the movie, show and music are all out of print and unpublished we don’t endorse any unauthorized publishing or distribution of it anywhere without our permission.
Steaming Wolf Penis
The TV show was first, followed by the idea to make it into a movie. As we wrote the screenplay we decided that the boys would have a band and that band would end up being called “Steaming Wolf Penis” because of course it would be called that. We wrote and recorded the first album “Assholes & Hand Grenades” in an afternoon, and a similar slapdash, steam-of-consciousness approach created the second album “Where The Fuck Is My Duffel Bag?” a year later.
Neither album won a Grammy, which is a miscarriage of justice, but the music endures as a seminal record of American life in the early 2000s. Or it’s just some dorks barfing out the dumbest music ever with no care for quality or artisanship at all. You decide!
Photos & Images
