About this project
$10,177
37
"Skum Rocks", a full length feature documentary about the rise and fall of one of the strangest acts in rock history. The film begins with the group’s onset in the mid 1980’s as an avant garde college rock band, whose members were on William & Mary's varsity soccer team. Having no musical background, the foursome wrote their own songs and quickly emerged as one of Virginia’s largest college draws.
By the late 1980’s, Skum began to gain critical acclaim as well as an expanding fan base that allowed them to be brazen with their financial and business decisions. They turned down several record companies' advances, and began recording on their own label, Refuse Records, believing they were making the next White Album. After three years and several hundreds of thousands of dollars later, their master tapes were stolen in a carjacking in Miami. The band went bankrupt shortly thereafter.
The documentary focuses on the bandmates as well as the strange path they traveled. No one is left unscathed in this brutally honest, yet entirely entertaining look at the failure of would-be rock stars. From the road crew they recruited from a soup kitchen, to the guitarist who was obsessed with Traci Lords, to the endless supply of drummers who no one seemed to remember, to the original bass players who never learned notes, "Skum Rocks’" takes the rockumentary to a new level.
Jerry Mann, one of the Skum’s lead guitarists, died of diabetic complications last November when the project was just underway. The film is being dedicated to his memory.
Alice Cooper is the narrator!
Celebrity cameos -- including Steven Bauer, Jon Stewart, Traci Lords, Fran Drescher, Phil Donahue, Luther Campbell, Bruce Hornsby, Paul Rodgers, Vince Neil and Paul Stanley, to name a few -- make this film fun, fast paced and thoroughly enjoyable.
By the end, people will be pulling for Skum to get back together and give it one more shot. And why not? They are fun, likable guys who just happen to make really bad, ultimately fatal decisions.
The band filmed a three song set at the Cameo Theatre on Miami Beach last fall for the film, which was the first time the entire group had been together since 1991.
Editing will begin in early July, with the hopes of having "Skum Rocks!" into the festival circuit by the summer of 2012
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Funding period
- (60 days)