Shot on over 50 locations around New York with a cast and crew of over 200 mostly non-professionals in their early 20's, 'Threat' is a US independent movie with ambition and attitude. Rooted in the hip hop and hardcore punk scenes, Threat traces the lives of six lead characters whose interaction ends in a full-scale riot on the streets of Manhattan. It aspires to the visual impact of a Hollywood event movie but was totally self-financed by its makers.
Formed in the late 90s as a production company by Matt Pizzolo and Katie Nisa, Kings Mob Productions has since grown into 'an army of young people.' "Some kids work around the clock," says Pizzolo, Threat's 22 year-old writer-director, "others work when they can or when they can't help it. The Kings Mob is run somewhere between a collective and a corporation."
Inspired by an arcane political group that operated in England in the late 1960s - The King Mob were ex-Situationist pranksters who aspired to be 'a street gang with analysis' - the 90's Kings Mob realised that they had to adopt a chameleon-like corporate structure in order to effectively subvert from within.
The Mob evolved from Pizzolo and Nisa's original intention to start an NYC-based artists collective. "But what we found," says Nisa, Threat's writer-producer, "is that most collectives are forced to scrape for funding and get caught up in red tape. They become paralyzed."
"So," Pizzolo continues, "we felt that in order to survive in this economy as subversive artists, we had to teach ourselves how the economy works and use that information to turn it on itself. We did some research and started a legitimate business."
"Our first project was Threat, a script that we had written together and, while shopping it around, were told by countless industry insiders that we would never be able to make it ourselves. So we got a bunch of kids behind us and just went out and did it. People really connected with it and devoted a year of their lives to it."
Although the Threat script was written by two people, the Threat movie was made by 200 people, who were all encouraged to contribute ideas. Threat's two main protagonists are Jim, a white, straight-edge hardcore kid who is homeless, and Fred, a black hip hop kid. As friends they begin to gain an appreciation of the common values that underpin their respective cultures, and the nature of the struggle needed to survive in NYC. But their friendship inadvertently becomes the catalyst for conflict between their crews. An argument at a hardcore gig spills out onto the streets and escalates into a full-scale race riot. Caught up in a spiraling maelstrom of violence, Jim and Fred try to maintain a friendship that threatens to be torn apart by allegiances to race and clique.
Jim, who is also drawn to Mekky, an HIV+ 16-year old girl, comes to the conclusion that it is dangerous to be close to other people. This materialises in Threat's street-fighting scenes which reach sickening extremes of violence. Of this Pizzolo and Nisa are unapologetic: "Threat is made by kids about kids. We're not trying to shock, this is simply a statement of our experience."
Unlike Larry Clark's 'Kids' and 'Hurricane Streets', two acclaimed portraits of perpetually dazed and confused delinquent kids, Threat's key characters are kids who, activated and agitated by their respective cultures, are engaged in challenging the prevailing street politic.
"As a society, we're not equipped with the language to connect to someone who is different," explains Nisa. "So the conflict in 'Threat' is caused by two people from different scenes attempting to connect, which erupts into mass violence - the next level from the violence that we all experience on a personal level. We've all experienced intolerance and ignorance. And we're all raised to be intolerant and ignorant. We wanted to open that up."
Shot over the period of a year, in grueling 22 hour sessions for weeks at a time, making the movie was an ordeal in itself. Despite going to great lengths to avoid agitating local residents when shooting outside, the cast and crew still experienced intolerance of their activities. Nisa, who in 'Threat' plays Kat, a young poet terrorised by a stalker, relates one particularly gut-churning incident.
"We were shooting out front of St. Marks Church when this business man walks past and kicks over one of our lights. Our borrowed lights! I was so pissed, I screamed after him 'asshole'. And he says, 'If you wanna make a movie go to fucking Hollywood!' The lack of sleep and stress all hit me then and I went off. And this guy comes back, gets up in my face and says, 'You got a pretty face. Won't be so pretty when I pour battery acid on it'. The guys all pulled me back like, 'Let it go, he's just crazy'."
But more often than not though they would find that local residents would pitch in and help them set-up shots. The local cops got so used to seeing them shooting around the East Village that they stopped hassling them, despite the fact that the Kings Mob crew obviously did not have the permits to do so. The Mob coined the term renegade filmmaking to describe their efforts to achieve the most visually dynamic shots using anything around them.
"One time," recalls Pizzolo, "I found myself driving a rented truck backwards the wrong way down a one way street with our Director Of Photography strapped to the side of the truck and a CB radio taped to my face so I could give directions and we could get a really cool dolly shot. And then this cop gave a ticket to one of the double-parked cars we passed but not to us!"
Intent on producing every aspect of the film themselves, the expanded Kings Mob was fortunate to be able to draw on a formidable array of writers, musicians, and designers who are developing other Kings Mob-affiliated projects such as books, music and clothing lines. "Am I A Threat?,” the movie's musical calling card, is a defiantly hardcore hip hop track by rapper Kamouflage (who plays Desmond in the movie) and producer Queque. Reflecting the film's dualistic nature, the track is due to be re-interpreted by a NYC hardcore group. Queque - who is composing Threat's electronic and hip hop-influenced score (which also includes original music by Alec Empire, The Destroyer) - and his partner Killili are also designing the Threat titles, while Killili is overseeing the animation sequences that run through the movie.
Rather than being co-opted into the system, the Mob are looking to effect change and share the knowledge they have gained from making 'Threat' with others. Pizzolo and Nisa have been touring indie music festivals in the US, running workshops on D-I-Y media in the hope that the kids attending them will go out and start something themselves.
"When we were thinking of forming a D-I-Y production company," says Pizzolo, "there were no models on how to do it in independent film. So we looked to musical role-models like the Wu-Tang Clan and the punk label Epitaph and the hardcore Dischord label. Now we want Kings Mob to be the role model that we couldn't find."
