PUNK | CSTVT’s unlikely route to Hot Topic
“I’ve got this leather wallet; it’s the only wallet I’ve ever owned,” McEvilly says. “I bought it at Hot Topic when I was 11, and it’s still holding up—no big deal. Based on that experience, Hot Topic is OK with me, I guess.”
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He and the film team worked down to the wire in advance of the Sundance screening in January (and the movie in theaters is further revised from the festival version). Abrams’s music is solemnly pretty without being dour and touched with hip-hop without settling into genre. “When I think back, it’s amazing to me that Josh pulled this all together in six weeks, having never scored a film before,” says Piper. “We didn’t need to license any temp cues for Sundance. He finished them all.”
Known for playing in Owen, Joan of Arc, and Cap’n Jazz, as well as just for being a Kinsella, he jumped aboard. He formed an ad hoc band of scene veterans—Bob Nanna (Braid, Hey Mercedes), Joe Trohman (Fall Out Boy), Dustin Currier (the Felix Culpa), and Drew Brown (Weekend Nachos)—to cover songs from Morrissey’s catalog.
“There are a handful of bands that come up every time we talk about it,” he says. “Danzig, Metallica, Fleetwood Mac.”
