MOVIES: FROM A SURVIVOR TO THE SCREAMERS
Los Angeles Times, CA
Dec 6 2006
For System of a Down, a documentary on the Armenian genocide began
with their own history.
To understand the new documentary "Screamers," you have to understand,
first, about the 97-year-old man who lives in an Armenian old
folk’s home in Mission Hills. His name is Stepan Haytayan; he is the
grandfather of Serj Tankian, the lead singer of System of a Down,
one of the world’s most critically acclaimed rock bands.
Haytayan is a survivor of the first genocide of the 20th century –
the extermination by Turks of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians
– which was the granddaddy, if you will, of all modern genocides,
cited sometimes by historians as direct inspiration for Adolf Hitler
and indirectly for Pol Pot, Slobodan Milosevic, and the murderers of
Rwanda and Darfur. This is the inescapable reality that informs the
music and activism of System of a Down, a Los Angeles band whose
four Armenian American members are all grandchildren of genocide
survivors. Haytayan’s moving accounts of the destruction visited on
his family and Tankian’s tender interactions with his frail grandfather
lend a hopeful poignancy to the film, helping balance both the images
of human annihilation and the band’s hard-edged vibe.
The film’s title has a double meaning: "Screamers" refers both to
the band’s propulsive musical style and, as used by Harvard professor
Samantha Power, who is interviewed in the film, to people who force
the world to acknowledge atrocities that it would often rather ignore.
System of a Down is well known for its activism – using its
performances to educate fans, appearing at annual demonstrations
in front of the Turkish consulate in Los Angeles and supporting a
congressional resolution to officially designate as genocide the
atrocities visited upon Armenians around 1915 in the waning days of
the Ottoman Empire. In their concerts, Tankian also demands onstage
that the Turkish government acknowledge that what happened was genocide
(which it has so far refused to do).
The movie comes at a time when these events, nearly a century old,
are back in focus on the global stage, as Turkey attempts to gain
admission to the European Union. In October, the French National
Assembly passed a measure making it a crime to deny that Armenians had
suffered a "genocide." Also in October, Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk,
who had been charged with "public denigrating of Turkish identity"
for publicly discussing the massacre of Armenians, won the Nobel
Prize for literature.
It was the band’s outspoken stance that inspired a pair of veteran
filmmakers – producer Peter McAlevey and director Carla Garapedian –
to approach the group about making "Screamers," which opens Friday
in Glendale, Woodland Hills, Santa Monica and Irvine. To get to the
band, however, the filmmakers had to penetrate the powerful force
field that screens rock stars from unwanted intrusions – the layers
of managers, publicists and other representatives that make it hard
to be heard by them. It was not until McAlevey got the pitch into the
hands of Lindsay Chase, assistant to Rick Rubin, the legendary music
producer who heads the group’s label, American Recordings, that he
and Garapedian got the band’s attention – mostly, they said, because
Chase understood that Tankian would probably want to be involved.
"If this movie ends up doing anything – changes a couple of peoples’
minds, helps inspire a new generation of activists," McAlevey said,
"it’s all owed to an assistant."
The documentary makes the case – using concert footage, interviews,
historical photographs and a rocking soundtrack with seven of the
band’s best-known songs, including their No. 1 hit "B.Y.O.B." – that
all genocides of the last 100 years were known about by governments
and individuals who could have stopped the carnage but chose not
to, usually for reasons of political expedience. One subplot of the
movie involves attempts by Tankian and his bandmate, drummer John
Dolmayan, to confront House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who
is responsible for keeping the Armenian genocide resolution bottled
up in committee. When they do meet him, quite by accident in the
Capitol rotunda, his brushoff is a classic.
McAlevey and Garapedian had a different direction in mind when
they conceived the project. McAlevey ("Radio Flyer," "Naked Movie")
initially suggested to Garapedian ("Children of the Secret State,"
"Iran Undercover") that they might want to consider a documentary about
the Armenian genocide using System of a Down. She thought it might be a
powerful way to tell the story of how Armenian plaintiffs successfully
fought to recover benefits for policies written before 1915 by New
York Life Insurance Co. (Garapedian’s uncle was a plaintiff; attorney
Mark Geragos was a lead attorney in the lawsuit, which was settled
on behalf of the beneficiaries for $20 million in January 2004.)
But when Garapedian, a former BBC news anchor who grew up in Los
Angeles, met with Tankian in April 2005, the singer had other ideas.
"My concern was that I wanted to be a part of a modern story of denial,
of hypocrisy in today’s world," said the 39-year-old Tankian, who is
surprisingly soft-spoken, "and she agreed that would be more the focus
and the theme of the film." Tankian, who called from his car last
week on his way to see his grandfather, was getting ready to leave
L.A. for New Zealand, where he is hoping to establish residency in
order to buy coastal property and build a recording studio. "I think
Carla is very ballsy, quite a direct filmmaker. She gets down to the
core of it. She is a truth teller. She is a screamer herself."
Garapedian first encountered System of a Down in 2004 at the Greek
Theatre, when she was working a table set up by the Armenian Film
Foundation. "I saw Serj Tankian walk by," she said. "He has this way of
walking – he sort of floats along…. He has this amazing profile and
this shock of hair. He waved a little like the queen, and I thought,
‘Who is this person?’ "
She read up on him, listened to the music and started to worry. "I
said, ‘Oh, my God, what am I going to do? I don’t understand this
music.’ I would turn it down when they were screaming, then I would
hear these crazy lyrics and Serj’s voice, which has a certain Armenian
quality to it, like a church liturgy, and I was very taken in."
They met to discuss the film in London in April 2005. "He said, ‘We
will let you film us on tour if you can get the money together for the
film,’ " said Garapedian, 45, who won an Emmy for "Behind the Veil,"
her film on Afghan women. "They had never allowed anyone to film their
performances. They want their songs to speak for themselves. They
don’t really want to be seen only as a political band."
Tankian’s bandmates had to be persuaded, particularly guitarist Daron
Malakian. "I tried to get the band involved," Tankian said. "Everyone
has their own concern about how things are rendered, but everyone
supported it." As for the disruptions of a film crew, he added,
"It was pretty basic. We were doing what we had to do whether there
was a camera rolling or not."
The film’s budget, less than $1 million, was provided by BBC
Television and a private benefactor, Raffy Manoukian, a London-based
philanthropist. The BBC will air the film in March. The marketing
budget, naturally, is minimal. Although McAlevey and Garapedian are
fairly certain the Armenian community will come out in support, they
are worried about getting the word out to a wider audience. Which is
why they plan to rendezvous on Friday at a Kinko’s on the Westside.
They will copy a bunch of fliers for the movie, then hit Santa Monica’s
Third Street Promenade, targeting younger people with a simple pitch:
"Come see a System of a Down movie!"