You’re a Millennial living through the aughts of Gen Z. You’re in high school, hastily finishing last week’s homework, and anticipating the wild shenanigans you’ll catch in the evening on MTV’s Jackass spin-off Viva La Bam, the network’s hit reality show starring skateboarder Bam Margera and his fellow band of Pennsylvanian misfits. In between harebrained spectacles and stunts, most likely involving destruction or pranks or both, rock and metal tunes would play over top of B-roll interludes. You may have heard these songs before on a CKY skate video, and you may have caught these songs again during Radio Bam, a Sirius XM show hosted by Margera and friends. If you were still having difficulties finding the songs or identifying the musicians, a double CD compilation titled Viva La Bands would surely reunite you with the music.
Often of European – or more specifically Nordic – descent, Bam Margera would bring his taste of international music to his projects. Long time fans will be familiar with his affection for the gothic love metal of HIM, but this admiration also introduced other bands cut from similar cloth to North American audiences such as Children of Bodom, Turbonegro, and The 69 Eyes. Margera would also continue to flex his filmmaking skills and co-direct several music videos for some of these bands with cinematographer/producer Joe Frantz. Frantz could always see how Bam’s eclectic taste in music played a vital role to their collaborative work, even if his partner may have been unaware of how powerful his musical influence was. “Bam’s international influence on pop, rock, and gothic music was not intentional,” Frantz explains to me. “You have to understand that back then, only a percent of US households had one single family computer, and only one half of American adults owned a flip phone – there was no such thing as music apps. People only had access to bands that were pushed by big industry labels, broadcasted on the radio and sold in CD stores. When Bam started using bands, such as The 69 Eyes for the soundtracks of the CKY videos, people were intrigued by this new wave of music. He somehow ignited a fire that burned through people’s imagination. His taste in music influenced an entire generations taste in music and their lifestyle.”
That influence, while perceived as nostalgia of a more reckless time, still rings true twenty years later. Bam Margera Presents: The 69 Eyes – Lost Boys Never Die! is a new documentary on the making-of Margera and Frantz’s “Lost Boys” music video for The 69 Eyes. Featuring a remastered version of the 2004 music video, along with recent interviews and never-before-seen footage of the shoot (as well as appearances by Jackass’ Chris Raab, Brandon Novak, Steve-O, and the late Ryan Dunn), this documentary – which was released for free on The 69 Eyes’ YouTube channel on Halloween – is a must-watch for anyone who grew up during Margera’s pop culture reign.
Considering the directorial duo have made behind-the-scenes featurettes before, notably the classic bite-sized docs on CKY’s Infiltrate Destroy Rebuild video album, I was interested to know if making a feature-length documentary on “Lost Boys” was always in the cards. “When we were shooting the behind-the-scenes video for The 69 Eyes “Lost Boys” music video, we were doing what we would normally do, which was to document everything we were doing back in 2004. It was second nature to have a camera rolling at all times.” Frantz elaborates, “we did not have a grandiose idea for the behind-the-scenes feature, but we had envisioned a documentary that would be similar to our HIM documentaries and music videos, such as “Buried Alive by Love Featuring Juliette Lewis “. The documentary is true to the spirit of the original shoot and the stylistic current that would run through the music video catalogue devised by Bam Margera and Joe Frantz, a vision that musicians could enlist trust in. “Musicians generally just let Bam and I do our thing,” Frantz explains.
Over time, Joe Frantz has become an archivist for the CKY video series and, pretty much, anything adjacent to Bam Margera. When questioned about if Joe had always planned to preserve this history, Frantz opened up about Ryan Dunn. “When Ryan Dunn had his tragic fatal accident, I began to realize how special it was to have spent time with him for over a decade. One day, I went over Bam’s house and saw a bunch of the tapes that we had shot together in a pile. So, I took those home and digitized them just for my personal memories. I had no idea at the time, but I became compelled to digitize every tape that I had. It cost me over $25,000 in hard drives and mini DV videotape players over the years. And, also several thousand hours of my time. I currently have hundreds of hours of footage logged. If a person were to do nothing else, but watch the footage for 12 hours a day, seven days a week, it would probably take them five months to see everything.”
As a long-time fan of Bam Margera and Joe Frantz, especially their artistic interests, Bam Margera Presents: The 69 Eyes – Lost Boys Never Die! is the dream project I’ve been dying for. Alternating between an exclusive sneak peek and a passionate video essay, Frantz’s project digs beneath the cult and personal influences of the vampiric band and their musical homage to The Lost Boys, Joel Schumacher’s 1987 bloodsucker horror-comedy, to create a layered doc about how inspired, collaborative art is created. The film isn’t without funny throwbacks of on-set horseplay (usually, and expectantly, at the expense of Novak) and spirited jostling of favourite scenes from Schumacher’s movie, but the documentary thrives when the process of making the music video is broken down into steps; such as the construction of a replica lair and how keeping it a secret from the band was a deliberate choice to unlock new levels of excitement and creativity. The film is further proof that Frantz and Margera should already be seasons deep into a long-running series about film and music.
In the end though, what type of nostalgia does Bam Margera Presents: The 69 Eyes – Lost Boys Never Die! fall into? As of late, nostalgia has been given a poor reputation as a tool to pander for an easy, sentimental reaction. But, when used well, nostalgia has the power to evoke an era that inspired passion projects. “The CKY videos and Viva La Bam were a very big part of my life. So naturally, I would want to show them.” Frantz explains when I asked him about what nostalgia means to him. “Doesn’t everyone share old memories on social media?” They do but, generally, we don’t receive a surprise time capsule like Frantz’s doc. For that, Bam Margera Presents: The 69 Eyes – Lost Boys Never Die! is one of this year’s special highlights.
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