Filmmaker Tamra Davis discovered some video-tape footage while evacuating the Palisades wildfires last year.
“I was evacuating from Malibu, and I had all of these boxes,” she said during a Sunday discussion at the ASCAP Music Cafe, moderated by Erik Philbrook, ASCAP’s vice president and creative director, marketing and communications, at the Acura House of Energy. “It was the third time I was evacuating, and I’m like, ‘What is in all of these boxes?’ and that’s how I found these tapes.”
The tapes were point-of-view interviews from 1995 with bands such as the Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Pavement, Rancid, Beck, The Amps, and Bikini Kill during the SummerSalt music festival in Australia.
“I said, ‘Oh, my god. I shot a whole documentary at that time,’” Davis said.
She was right. Davis turned the footage into a documentary titled “The Best Summer,” which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. And Bikini Kill lead singer and guitarist Kathleen Hanna is at the film’s ground zero.
“I met Tamra on that tour, and we would be bored,” Hanna said. “So she would be like, ‘I have this camera. Let’s go film stuff.’ And we started filming stuff.”
The two didn’t know what they were going to do with the footage.
“There ‘s a moment where Kathleen says, ‘We’re doing it for a tour memento, and we’ll give it to people,’ but no,” Davis said with a laugh. “We were just two bossy girls who would go, ‘Hi, we’re here to do an interview with you.’ We were doing it for fun, and I had no plan to do anything.”
At that time, Tamra was married to Mike D from the Beastie Boys, and she had convinced the band to add Bikini Kill, one of the original Riot Grrrl bands from Olympia, Washington, to the lineup.
“Tamra heard our single (‘Rebel Girl’) we did with Joan Jett , and she loved it,” Hanna said. “So she got Mike and the Beasties into it, and they invited us on this tour.”
Bikini Kill played on the “Dumpster Stage” in the early afternoon, according to Hanna
“I say ‘Dumpster Stage’ because it was by the dumpster,” she said. “And Tamra got everybody to come over to our stage to root us on.”
SummerSalt was Bikini Kill’s first-ever festival, and one of the many — including Lollapalooza, H.O.R.D.E. and Lilith Fair — that popped up during the 1990s, Hanna said.
“We really never played at festivals,” she said. “We were from a small town, a punk community, and played in a collective space — punk houses, basements. So, we were experiencing fame for the first time.”
Fame is a double-edged sword, Hanna said.
“People were kind of rejecting us in our own community because of it, but we were so embraced by the Beasties and Foo Fighters and the Amps,” she said. “It was an amazing experience for us to stay in hotels and be treated with respect. And while we had a feminist community, we felt like we found a musical community of people who really cared. And it was Tamra who made that happen.”
Feminism is Bikini Kill’s main muse, Hanna said.
“I was really inspired by the fact that there was a lot of rock music in (1995) and none of it dealt with violence against women, which was all around me and everywhere I looked,” she said. “I was in college, and my friends were dropping out of school because of date rape and remembering things that happened in their homes when they were finally away from their families of origin.”
Hanna saw and heard more of the like while running a night club at that time.
“All of these guys would come in and sing about how bad their girlfriends sucked or how they were alienated from suburbia,” she said. “But I was more inspired by batshit stuff like violence against women, sexism, racism and homophobia. I wanted to write about stuff like that because that was my lived experience, and I wasn’t hearing music about that. I wanted to try to be a part of change through live music.”
Davis, who had just finished filming the comedy “Billy Madison” with Adam Sandler, always had a camera of some sort in her hands during the tour.
“It was so exciting to be on the road, and these were all my favorite bands,” she said. “So, I was looking at these bands as a fan.”
That sentiment shines in the film.
“I love looking at the footage because it was shot with such love of this music that I loved so much,” Davis said.
Davis noticed that she had subconsciously not turned the camera on herself while filming these interviews.
“Once in a while you will hear my voice,” she said laughing. “I’m kind of bossy, even to Kim Deal, (who was in the Amps at the time,) I was like, ‘No, no. Those questions are easy.’ I was so forward. I was assertive. And I’m happy when I look back at myself because that’s why the hell I did what I did and became what I am.”
In addition to making “Billy Madison,” Davis’ filmography includes “Jean-Michel Basquiat the Radiant Child,” which debuted at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, 1998’s “Half Baked,” starring Dave Chappelle, 1993’s “CB4” with Chris Rock, a slew of music videos for the Indigo Girls, N.W.A, Depeche Mode and Sonic Youth, as well as TV shows such as “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Ugly Betty,” “My Name Is Earl” and “Crazy Ex Girlfriend.”
When Hanna, whose memoir “Rebel Girl” became a New York Times Bestseller, looks back at her life, she sees a significant difference when it comes to performing live.
“It’s interesting to think about Tamra’s film in the context of live performing because who I was as a live performer when I was in my early 20s versus now has really changed a lot,” Hanna said. “Part of it was because back then it felt very unsafe to be in a very vocal feminist band, because there was a lot of violence at our shows.”
Recently Bikini Kill and Hanna’s other band, La Tigre, have found a path into the mainstream, which gave her the comfort of being able to close her eyes and lose herself while performing live.
“I wasn’t able to do that (before) because I had to keep my eyes open for bottles that were being thrown at my head,” she said in all seriousness. “I didn’t understand the idea of transcendence in music when people would talk about it, except when I would smoke pot and listen to the Slits at my house. Today, because the kids are so much more smarter and give a shit about women of all different ages, shapes and sizes, I’m able to get that communion with the audience so much more — even though I still watch the audience to make sure everything is OK.”
Live performances also mean so much more to Hanna.
“It’s so important to have real-life experiences like at shows,” she said. “We need to get off the internet and meet each other and start book clubs or any kind of clubs when we are out and about together.”
Davis hopes “The Best Summer” inspires others to take a chance and make their film.
“When I watched it, I was so excited that a whole movie shot by one girl made it into a Sundance Film Festival,” she said. “All the live footage, all the interview footage was from this tenacious girl out there. You don’t need Hollywood and thousands of whatever to make a movie. Sometimes you just need to be a filmmaker and be like, ‘OK. I think I have good footage here,’ and take that risk and believe in yourself.”
Davis is honored that “The Best Summer” was selected for the final Sundance Film Festival in Park City.
“I was at the tribute to Robert Redford (on Saturday), and you just see what an incredible thing he built,” she said. “Robert Redford supported and believed in these young filmmakers. And we have these current slate of directors who came out of Sundance because of that man. Thank you to Sundance, all the volunteers and the people who supported this.”
‘The Best Summer’ in-person screenings
- 11:55 p.m., Jan. 29, Library Centre Theatre
- 1:10 p.m.,. Jan. 30, Megaplex Redstone 2
- Tickets: festival.sundance.org
- Web: thebestsummer1995.com