Following a recent screening of We Are the Best!, a new masterpiece of punk-themed cinema, I had the opportunity to speak with its director, Lukas Moodysson. Since his 1998 debut film Show Me Love, the 45-year-old Swede has been renowned for celebrating young misfits, but We Are the Best! has been widely acknowledged as Moodysson's best film since 2000's Together. When he arrived in New York to promote it last month, though, tending to the concerns of journalists was not at the top of his list. "THE VERY FIRST THING I DID IN NEW YORK WAS: FIND THE BUILDING WHERE RIHANNA HAS AN APARTMENT," Moodysson wrote on his very active Tumblr, a collage of gifs and RiRi pics juxtaposed with quotes from the likes of Nietzsche and Miley Cyrus. Like another recent Swedish punk export, the young band Makthaverskan—who have made several appearances on his blog—Moodysson is an eternal teenager.
We Are the Best! is about two tough, hilarious, and skeptical-as-hell 13-year-old outcasts named Bobo and Klara. The setting is Stockholm in 1982—an era that, to our protagonists' disdain, has become properly New Wave. "He has betrayed punk," the outspoken, mohawked Klara declares at one point, of her older brother. "He only listens to Joy Division!" Isolated by their classmates, pissed at their gym teacher, and knowing that punk couldn't possibly be dead, the girls endeavor to channel their frustration and anti-conformist beliefs into a real punk band. Eventually, they recruit a fellow outcast named Hedvig (who can actually play guitar), hoping she'll ditch her devout Christianity and help them pull together their sound. There are hurdles to jump: The misogynist bullies in heavy-metal band Iron Fist, who dominate their youth center practice space; the adult men who insistently call them "a girl band." This only motivates Klara, Bobo, and Hedvig further. Their first song, which the actors impressively penned themselves, is an anti-mainstream rallying cry titled "Hate the Sport".
As documented by the Brookyln Academy of Music's recent "Punk Rock Girls" film series, We Are the Best! falls into a long tradition of femme-punk filmmaking à la Josie & the Pussy Cats and Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains. A film like this would require an outsider of a director, and as our following discussion reveals, Moodysson fits the role—the film was based on the 2008 autobiograpical graphic novel Never Goodnight penned by his wife Coco Moodysson. We Are the Best! is ultimately an ode to misfit camraderie, detailing the ways that music and friendship can still save the estranged among us.
Pitchfork: How did you get into punk as a teenager?
Lukas Moodysson: I grew up in a small suburb outside of Malmö in the south of Sweden. If you felt a bit strange, there were not 10,000 different subcultures to choose from. Especially if you had some kind of rage inside you. There was just punk. And where I grew up, there were two of us. [laughs] It was me and my best friend. He's actually still my best friend. Or, my only friend. I don't have a lot of friends. We were the only punks. There were some who were older, but they were too tough—more masculine and aggressive, sort of drunk and destroying things. They seemed old, but they were just 15 or 16. Punk was extremely important for me, but for quite limited time, from ages 12 to 14. Then it changed to the Cure and that kind of music. Punk had a lot to do with anger. I felt I didn't fit in and all that.
Pitchfork: As a kid, what was the most important thing punk taught you?
LM: It taught me that you can do things without knowing how. I was into simple, handprinted fanzines—there were a lot of punk zines when I grew up. This was obviously before the internet. If you wrote something down, you could just print it and sell it for one dollar or something. That was very important. I remember going to some concert with Stiff Little Fingers, from Northern Ireland. I was 12, standing there and wanting to ask them some questions after the show. I never got the courage to ask, so I just stole other peoples' questions and wrote something down, and tried to publish a little fanzine with some guy I had met somewhere. A couple years later I started to read a lot, and was into poetry. That fanzine attitude stayed with me and I made a poetry fanzine, some kind of art thing. I think it came out three times. It's that attitude—you don't have to wait for someone's approval, you don't have to take a lot of lessons.
Pitchfork: What about the role of the teen outcast is important to you, and why do you think it's important to make misfits seem cool?
LM: First of all, it's a personal thing that corresponds, in some ways, to myself. I try to protect that inner teenager. That doesn't mean it takes over—I also am really happy to get older, and to get a little smarter, and I don't want to be a teenager—but I'm trying to protect that person inside of me who is open to things, and looking at things, and responding immediately and actively. A lot of grown-up people lose that. I have this theory that it comes back when you get really old, when you have lived your whole life. I am quite interested in old people. I remember my grandmother. Life gets sort of like—suddenly, it's a wonderful joy just to see the sun get up. That kind of openness is what I'm interested in.
At the same time, there is a feeling of some adult responsibility to talk to young people. I feel like I'm part of a Swedish or maybe Scandinavian tradition of taking children and young people seriously. Young people suffer in the world. Just some weeks ago, a girl I knew committed suicide. It should have been her 16th birthday on May 6. It's a difficult world to grow up in, and there are a lot of these young people out there. I'm not saying that I am Jesus and I'm going to save them, but there's a lot of culture in this world that is very negative, and dark, and heavy. It feels sometimes that someone should say something happy as well—that it's going to be okay, it's going to be fine; there are possibilities, and life gets better.
There is a scene in the film where Bobo is sad because she has thrown up all over these records at a party. She says, "Nothing in my life is going right." And Klara says, "You have a friend that really likes you. You even have two friends who really like you." I mean, that is a luxury. To have one friend is actually enough sometimes. But two friends? That is a fantastic thing.
Pitchfork: There's another scene in the film where Klara and Bobo are in the practice room at the youth center, playing their instruments for the first time. They had just been mockingly called "the prettiest girls in town" by some bullies. When they get in the practice room, Klara is hitting the bass and screaming, "The prettiest girls in town!" To me, that is so exemplary of what punk really is—having no technical idea what you're doing and just being very direct. Was there a scene that you felt was especially important in that sense?
LM: When I was making the film, I was listening to a song that is not very punk at all. It's by Morrissey, called "Sing Your Life". He sings about how you should step up to the microphone and name all the things you love, and name all the things you hate. It's that kind of direct approach—it's very touching and moving and also very true. Unfortunately punk wasn't really full of people who stepped up to the microphone and talked about things they loved. It was mostly what they hated. [laughs]
That's why I kept in the scene where they're walking on the street, and they find these big bags full of some kind of trash. They need to bring it home and find out what it is. It was important that they are so curious. It was something I discuseed with Mira Grosin, who plays Klara—she felt it was a really bad scene. [laughs] "What's this scene doing in this film? It's stupid, nothing happens." But that was very much the way I remembered growing up. You found something and brought it home. I'm not sure if young people do that as much these days because you have everything in your computer. I remember walking aimlessly on the streets, and you would get happy if you found an old shoe or something. That is also some kind of punk attitude: walking around, looking for something, not knowing what, finding something, and being really happy if you found not one shoe, but two shoes, and then you put them on, and they might not look punk, but at least you found them somewhere. [laughs]
Pitchfork: It's like relying on yourself to create your own fun.
LM: Exactly.
Pitchfork: Over the past few years, at least in America, there has been a resurgence of interest in riot grrrl and punk-feminism from the 90s. You started writing We Are the Best! before that, but were conscious of it?
LM: Not really. I like a lot of American music and culture, but for me, growing up, "U.S." and "punk" didn't match. We never listened to American punk except maybe Dead Kennedys, but they were a bit exotic. It was only about Swedish music and British music. So, the Clash. Everything American was seen with a little skepticism. I have nothing negative to say about the movement that came 10 years later, but it wasn't something I related to a lot. It was funny that, by coincidence, Pussy Riot was in Russia at the same time that I was writing this. Pussy Riot was really taking some kind of punk to an extreme. They've done some interesting things; I've read a lot about them. At the same time, I have this feeling that political protest should stay out of churches [laughs] because I'm a bit religious. Of course, I didn't think they should go to jail. It's really good that they protest against Putin because of course he's crazy.
Pitchfork: I feel like We Are the Best! could be a part of this conversation surrounding Pussy Riot, the resurgence of riot grrrl, and current punk-feminism.
LM: At the same time, We Are the Best! is about people who are very young. They have a lot of strong ideas, but they don't really have any ideologies. They don't have an agenda of what they want. They have a lot of things they are against instinctively. I actually wrote a lot of other scenes, which are in the book, but didn't fit into the film. We would have to make a TV series to find room for everything. They were quite anti-porn and breaking windows of a porn shop, or trying to, but failing, of course.
Pitchfork: There's a scene where Klara and Bobo are considering asking Hedvig, who is a Christian but also clearly an outsider, to be in the band. And they go, "It would be political of us to hang out with her." It's hilarious, but also shows how punks and alternative-minded people can be so self-important.
LM: They say they'll kick her out of the band if she doesn't stop believing in god. Alternative groups can be very un-alternative.
Pitchfork: Your 10-year-old daughter plays the role of Hedvig's younger sister in the film. What did she think of it?
LM: She felt it was funny. She's the person in my family who is most outgoing; she wants to be an actress and a superstar, and she has a lot of friends. All the others have been a bit awkward at first. [laughs] While we were making that scene, she was looking with big eyes at these older girls. I think she was very impressed and felt they were really cool and had a fun attitude. Afterwards, driving home in the car, she was silent and thinking. And she said, "I want to be older." [laughs]
Pitchfork: Most Americans would probably think of pop like Robyn or Lykke Li when considering contemporary Swedish music. Who is the best Swedish punk band?
LM: Everybody would agree on Ebba Grön, but they were also the most successful. They have a lot of songs in the film. They are the best. The band split up, but the singer is still around. He sings in Swedish, but it's really good music. It's not punk at all—it's closer to Lykke Li than punk. Lykke Li's parents come from that sort of background. Her father played in a band.
Pitchfork: I read somewhere that Eminem is your hero.
LM: I really like Eminem as someone who stops at nothing, but my hero is actually Rihanna.
Pitchfork: What about Rihanna is heroic to you?
LM: I was having a depressed time last summer, and I needed something to take me up again. I started listening to her instead of all this sad, lonely music I was listening to before. It was exactly what I needed. I get a bit tired of music or films that are only vulnerable. At the same time, I am really skeptical of music that is only about power or energy. She's capable of both—all the energy in her voice is vulnerable and strong. The combination of those two things is what I am always looking for in everything.