RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 1 sourcesNOFX ‘s “Fat Mike” Burkett “couldn’t be happier” with the life 40 Years of F–kin’ Up , James Buddy Day’s sanctioned documentary about the band and its farewell tour, has had since premiering at South By Southwest Film Festival in March. And he’s glad even more fans will have an opportunity to see it this month.
The film will play on more than 200 screens for two nights , Aug. 23 and Aug. 26. This follows an initial rollout via film festivals and select theaters worldwide , going on through the end of July.
“The initial plan was to find independent theaters and cool theaters that have booze and show it once a month kind of like Rocky Horror does,” Fat Mike, who produced 40 Years , tells Billboard via Zoom. “I was hoping our fans would want to see it more than once.” The upcoming theatrical screenings will broaden opportunities to see it — important to the band because there are no plans to take 40 Years to streaming services, ever.
“Now that NOFX has retired, I want our fans to have some place to go,” he explains. “There’s a lot of bands who are still playing who would want their movie to be streamed so anyone with a TV or computer can watch it, and maybe they’ll get bigger. But getting bigger right now is not really gonna help us. We’re not playing shows, so how about we do something cool? That’s what we’ve always tried to do.”
Director Day — best known for true-crime films and TV series, including several about Charles Manson — adds that the plan is still to maintain in-person screenings only. “Fat Mike’s vision for the movie is that you must experience it with the punk rock community, with friends, with drinks, with partying,” says Day, a NOFX fan who developed an email and Zoom relationship with Fat Mike some years prior to the tour.
“It’s something that must be experienced together and shared. There’s a singalong component at one point. It has animation. It has real backstage footage. It has concert footage. We set out to create something you would enjoy in a public space, like a concert. We’re going to expand that and show it in other venues, maybe in places you wouldn’t expect to see a movie play, but our goal is to keep it communal forever and to make this experience last for as long as it can last for.”
That is, of course in keeping with NOFX’s specific punk rock aesthetic, which Fat Mike also applies to the Fat Wreck Chords label he co-founded in 1990.
“It’s absolutely in line with what we’ve always done,” he says. “Since the movie shows our career and how we were very DIY, doing the movie DIY just makes so much sense. And we’ve been selling out 90% of the shows. Some of the theaters are freaked out — ‘We don’t sell out movies!’ — but we’re doing it.”
Some form of documentation was in Fat Mike’s mind when NOFX announced a 2023-2024 farewell tour that culminated in three shows on its home turf of San Pedro, Calif. — at which the quartet premiered a brand-new song, “We Did It Our Way.” “I’ve been wanting to quit for probably 10 years,” Fat Mike explains. “I do other things in my life. When you’re constantly going on the road you don’t do the things you want to so much. I wanted to get to those.”
The group self-funded the film and tapped Day to helm. The Canadian-based director used the farewell tour as a framing device to tell the band’s full 41-year history — founded by Fat Mike and guitarist Eric Melvin in 1983, releasing 15 studio albums and establishing NOFX as a punk rock signpost not unlike Fugazi in the hardcore scene. Day assembled an array of archival footage and images along with performances from the tour and revealing interviews with Fat Mike, Melvin, drummer Erik “Smelly” Sandin, guitarist Aaron “El Hefe” Abeyta and others in the NOFX circle. It’s packed with a bit of sex, lots of drugs (and drink) and plenty of rock n’ roll, befitting the large scope of story Day felt he had to cover.
“Obviously the story was they were breaking up, this iconic punk rock band,” he says. “In the movie, Milo (Aukerman) from Descendants refers to them as ‘the punk rock Beatles,’ and I think that’s apt. So you have the punk rock Beatles who are parting ways, and they’re gonna do that by going on tour one last time around the world and it’s taking place right in front of you.”
However, Day adds, “to me it was always a real-life Spinal Tap — that was kinda how I pitched it to them, and they were really into that idea. So we approached it from that perspective; you had to get to know these four men, and by getting to know them they would bring you into this world and take you on this road trip, which is their final tour. But you also have to go into their backstory and know who these guys were and how they came to be.”
Fat Mike — who wrote several new songs for the movie (a soundtrack comes out Aug. 28) as well as an instrumental score — feels that the resulting movie is “like a hug. It just felt so good. I mean, how fortunate we were, what an amazing, fun career. I really believe that our band had more fun than anybody in this business. We always self-managed. We did whatever we wanted to. When you don’t do radio (promotion) and you don’t do video and you have your own label and you still care? It’s just fun.”
40 Years reveals some uncomfortable darkness in NOFX’s world, however.
Fat Mike says that watching Day’s interviews with his bandmates “was one of the worst days in my life. They really had a lot to get off their chests about me. All three of them talked s...
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