Cheri Lovedog
IFQ sits down with Cheri Lovedog, the writer of Prey for Rock & Roll and the filmmaker of Hollywood Trash & Tinsel, in Las Vegas. Lovedog rocked LA’s music scene in the 80’s and 90’s opening for Jane’s Addiction and Hole. At age 35, she quit the LA music scene and opened Lovedog tattoo parlor with her partner Robin Prey in Santa Cruz. Lovedog wrote Prey for Rock & Roll, which became a play and then a feature length film, starring Gina Gershon, Lori Petty and Drea De Matteo. Prey for Rock & Roll screened at Sundance, Toronton, Tribeca, Santa Cruz, San Francisco Gay & Lesbian Festival. Hollywood Trash & Tinsel screened at the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival and the Santa Cruz Film Festival. Cheri openly speaks about her two films, the marketing torture of Prey for Rock & Roll and the making of a new documentary. Maybe a female generated rock revolution is in the future…you decide.
IFQ: What was your motive for creating the short documentary Hollywood Trash & Tinsel and how did it originate?
Cheri Lovedog: I was documenting the whole thing as a play in New York…just videotaping various things. I really did not have an agenda with it. I recorded all through the movie and after the movie was made, it went to Sundance and it was doing great. Then we got picked up by a releasing company and they started marketing the movie. The way that they marketed the movie was completely against everything the movie stood for. The movie, it is very pro-female and very much about rock & roll, friendships and being a survivor of abuse situations as oppose to becoming a victim. It is a very empowering movie and it is an autobiography. They started marketing the movie as a “sexy Gina Gershon vehicle,” which really kind of pissed me off. Then we did the play in New York and the band in the play used to go play gigs in New York City and promote the play. For the movie, we should have had the band go out and tour and play in the Whiskey and CBGB’s, little cool rock clubs and promote the movie. They ended up doing this whole tour where Gina was singing, which is fine, but they had this all guy band as her back-up, which again completely negated the whole point of the movie-so that pissed me off. They filmed the tour for a documentary on IFC and it just about killed me to watch it because it killed my music. These three guys could not possibly relate to my music. Nothing against them, but I mean it’s very much about women in rock and chicks and our stories and what we lived through. It’s a very positive woman thing-not anti-male. I could hardly take it when I watched this. I had all this footage and I was like man, I need to make this right in the universe. I have to go , find out and fix it. I do not want to do it in a bitter fucked up way. I decided to make this kind of funny little mockumentary about how ridiculous it is to deal with the movie business. So my motivation was that I was really angry and annoyed and I needed to purge myself of it and set it right in the world. I decided to take sort of a comic approach and just get it out there and cleanse myself in some weird way.
IFQ: How did your film Prey for Rock & Roll evolve? You wrote the script, which was loosely based on your life in the LA rock scene in the 80’s and early 90’s.
CL: Yes, it was pretty accurately based on my life in those times, although the movie takes place in about a one or two month period. Obviously, all those experiences did not happen in a month or two, but probably over a course of 15 years while I was down there [Los Angeles] playing music. Originally, it started out as a play that I wrote. Then we did the play in New York and I played the lead, which Gina played in the film. Somebody in the audience saw it and wanted to make it into a film. I made a deal with him and he bought the rights to the script and made it into a movie. However, the psychic Sylvia Browne must get props because she is the one who told me to go for it and also, Robin, my girlfriend/executive producer. I had a lot of encouragement to go for it and I did. I never acted before and I really do not want to act again . I did the play and that was cool.
IFQ: You did not want to play the lead in the film?
CL: At first I did because we were going to do this really miniscule budget film, but as the project took off, Stephen Trask (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) came on and produced the soundtrack and so people came along got really interested in the project, like Gina Gershon. It just kept raising the bar. It was better for me in the long run for the movie to be made with Gina, Lori Petty and Drea [De Matteo] than me, because who the hell am I, nobody knows. The movie just got its on life and started going this way. I went with it, but stayed with the whole thing and was there during the filming to work on the script.
IFQ: How about the marketing? For instance, what happened when Gina Gershon went on tour with the band Girls Against Boys and promoted this film? They had this all male band and I was like, what the fuck!
CL: Nobody was more disgusted, appalled and shocked than myself because I had written the woman who was putting together the tour and I said listen, I’ll put together the most awesome all-girl band. First of all they should have asked the people who make the record: me, Samantha [Maloney], Sara Lee. We should have been initially offered, out of courtesy and respect and what’s right, which they didn’t. I emailed the woman, Janet at Immortal Talent, who was putting together the tour and I said, “Listen when you get this band together I’ll play rhythm guitar. I totally do not mind not being a lead singer. We are promoting the movie and Gina is the lead; she can sing. I’ll put together this killer band and we will support her, get her out there and keep it real.” She emailed back, we do not know what Gina is doing. She sort of blew me off and I did an interview in the LA Times with Gina G. and then she told me, “Yeah I got this band together and going on tour.” I had no idea until she told me that. I was really pissed off. I was like, “Why don’t you have chicks in the band?” She said, “No, I just want to go out as Gina, not as Jackie.” And all this crap. When they did the tour, I could not even go to one of the shows. I just could not do it. It was if someone took your kid and slapped him around and abused him–you just cannot watch that! I could not be a part of it in anyway at that point. I did make myself watch the documentary they made of it. This documentary supposed to promote the movie Prey for Rock & Roll, and I wrote all the music in the movie, but none of my music was in the documentary because they were assholes and they pulled all the music out of the documentary-they became Gina’s songs, which were crap. They were a band that had no feelings for my music when they played it. I was just horrified and it made me physically ill. I couldn’t make any money in royalties. They ended up doing was screwing me, my family and my kid out of an income. That’s all they accomplished in some weird, bizarre head budding ego trip with the releasing company. Oh, we paid for it by the way-Prey for Rock & Roll, which I invested in. I paid for a tour of my music to go out and be played with the most horrifyingly, inauthentic insulting circumstance in the world and then, to further that insult and injury, have all my songs pulled out of the documentary, just to insure that my music would not get out into the world or the possibility that I may make an income on my music for the first time in my life.
IFQ: You mention in your documentary that when they went out promoted Prey for Rock & Roll and when it hit the shelves, there were no laurels used in the film promotion, even though you won awards in different film festivals.
CL: I do not understand why they did not put the laurels on there. As a writer to have a movie that I wrote, which is a true story, accepted into Sundance is like the ultimate validation for a writer. It’s tough to get in there and I was like, oh my god, it’s amazing and at that point the only thing that we had going for ourselves was the movie, based on a true story, all original music, Gina and Drea-the two main movie stars and Lori and that’s it. At that point there was no spin on it and there was pull quotes or tag to it. It was just Prey for Rock & Roll. True Story, Cheri Lovedog. Here’s her music. Here’s her story. Here’s the actors that did it. We played at Sundance and it did so well that they found us another screening because all the press could not get in, so we had another press screening. People loved it. When they started marketing it, it all changed because they did not market the movie for what the movie was. It just went right downhill then. The whole releasing was terrible, the poster was terrible, everything was terrible, it was all bad.
IFQ: Tell me about how you took the play and made it into a feature length screenplay. Describe the adaptation process.
CL: Well, I did not change much from the play. The story stays pretty much true to the play. The thing that you can do in film that you can’t do in theatre is open up the story more and show more. In theatre, there is a lot of dialogue to tell the story and the music moved the story a lot more in the movie, because in the play we play songs all the way through and that would be a part of the story. In the film, you can play the music and then show other things happening. On one hand, it really opens it up to tell your story with a lot of visuals. On the other hand, it is really hard because you have so much more peripheral stuff to deal with and you have to keep track of everything. Robin Whitehouse, who actually directed the play in New York, was the co-writer of the script and helped me transition it from a play script into a motion picture script. It was easy because a lot of dialogue we kept exactly the same and a lot of things I got to open up on. Then actors came in. Drea and Ivan had worked together a lot. They said the role of Tracy was written for Drea. In New York, she was going to be in the play and then she could not do the play because of The Sopranos schedule. Then we had someone else play that part in the play. But when the movie came up, I was like, Drea there is going to be a movie and I really want you to play that role. I talked to her a lot and sent her the script and wrote that character specifically for Drea, which was awesome because she and Nick (Ivan) were together. They did a lot of improvising, and I am totally cool with that. They kept it real in the moment. For example, in the movie there is that character Punk Rock Girl, who I love and is so fucking funny, and in the play, we talk about her and there is a song “Punk Rock Girl.” So it is nice to actually bring that character into the movie–and the same with the booker, Chuck. He was discussed in the play, but we never saw him. We got to bring to life these people in the movie that were topics of discussion in the play. The only thing that we changed from the play to the movie was in the play, Lori Petty’s character commits suicide because that is based on something that really happened to a friend of mine. When we did the movie, they were like, there is too much in it…there can’t be so much of this stuff. I said that she has to die because that was a turning point in the character’s life, when the person she knows dies, so you can’t take that away. Instead, we just had her die instantly as oppose to a suicide because they thought that it was too much. But, you know, I lived it!
IFQ: Tell me about your experience in the LA rock scene. You opened for Jane’s Addiction and Hole.
CL: At that time, everyone was taking off. Jane’s Addiction was still signed to Triple X before they were picked up by Warner, so they were just starting to sky rocket. We were on the same label as them, so whenever they had a gig, we would open for them. But L7 and Hole and all those bands, the scene was just taking off…Hole went huge and L7 did really well.
IFQ: I was on the film’s website and I listened to the songs, “Every Six Minutes” and “Prey for Rock & Roll.” Who are your influences in music and you were involved in the riot grrl movement?
CL: A little bit before that. We were before the riot grrl movement and a lot of that originated from Seattle. Actually, we came from the very beginnings/early on in the LA punk rock scene, like with the X, The Cramps, Puff Jimmy, Ally Cats and when it started taking off in LA was when it really inspired me. The riot grrrl scene came as a part of that, just a little later on. By then, I was a little bit too old to be a riot grrl. I’d hit my 30’s and for me to be a riot grrl at that point, you know….
by Nicole Holland