The Men Behind SHUT UP, LITTLE MAN Tell the Tale of the Tapes

The Matthew Bate-directed documentary is entering limited release around the U.S. this week, and two of the film's subjects--Eddie Lee Sausage and Mitch Deprey--were kind enough to speak with ScreenAnarchy about the experiences which lead to the film.

For those of you unfamiliar with the "Shut Up, Little Man" phenomenon (I know I was before watching the movie), it involved a series of recordings created by Mitch and Eddie when they lived in a sketchy apartment on the rough side of town in San Francisco back in the late 80's. Soon after moving into their new place, Mitch and Eddie discovered that through the thin walls, they could hear the constant, drunken arguments between their neighbors Pete and Ray, who engage in bouts of sustains, loud profanity that could only be described as "thorough."

Mitch and Eddie recorded their neighbors--clandestinely--and the tapes began circulating among their friends. It wasn't too long after that that other creators began remixing and reinterpreting the tapes in their own ways, culminating in multiple attempts to create films based on them. Here's where it gets complicated: the film takes a look at the various claims to the contents of the tape: who "owns" clandestine recordings and who should be allowed to profit from them?

Obviously, each of the men that Bate speaks to in the documentary stakes out some sort of claim on the property--whether as a piece of art, a bit of comic nostalgia, or a potentially profitable IP--but it never feels like any of them see the tapes in the same way. Let this serve as a mini-review of the film: you should definitely check it out when you get a chance to take in a story that never ever falls into the realm of black and white.

ScreenAnarchy: How were you both approached for the film?

Eddie Lee Sausage: I received a phone call from Matthew Bates, the director, and he said that somebody had stuck a bag in his hand at a record shop with the words "Shut Up, Little Man," written on it, saying "You need to check this out." One of those classic underground maven people who knows all things hip.

And so Matt called me and said, "Hey, I want to do a documentary," and I said, "Please send me some stuff that you've done." And he sent me two of his films which I found to be excellent, both in terms of content and particularly in the style of the films. And I thought this might make a really good film.

ScreenAnarchy: And what was his pitch for the documentary that sold you on participating?

Mitch Deprey: You'd be more appropriate to answer--he asked you.

Eddie: He was just sort of probing around about [if] the rights were available to do a documentary. And I told him that we'd been approached several times to make a documentary, but it never came to the point where I said, "Please send me something you've done." You know, we got a lot of really bad filmmakers [laughs] looking to make the film.

And when I saw where he was coming from, I thought, "Okay, he's got the right sensibility, he seems to be in the same tribe as us." I really loved his aesthetic, and so I talked to Mitchell and we agreed to do it.

Mitch: When Matt approached us--he approached Ed initially, and then I became involved--I said "How in the world are you ever going to make a film out of this audio material?" He had some really great ideas and that was part of the impetus for me--based on his input and his treatment of the material.

Any time that you expose yourself so nakedly--because we were very genuine, we were very sincere, we answered everything they asked and we gave them a lot of really raw material. And the end result was, when you're filmed for 30 hours, you end up in a film for 17 minutes, [and] it can be manipulated in various directions.

ScreenAnarchy: When you were approached about the documentary, did you have any trepidation about dredging up all of the history and baggage that came with it?

Mitch: Yeah, of course. I was skeptical, of course. I wasn't--I wouldn't say "resistant," I'd say "concerned."

Eddie: Let me add that we certainly had fundamentally good reasons for being less than trusting of anyone [laughs]. Based on our past experience, you know?

ScreenAnarchy: Are there still any grudges there with some of the other guys fighting for the rights to Shut Up, Little Man?

Mitch: I don't know if it was ever really hostility. It was frustration, if anything. When someone like my friend at the time, if you've seen the film, David Stein, when his high-powered entertainment attorney in San Francisco contacts Johannes Kuppleberg, who is sort of the overseer of our CD production--it had just began its production back in New York--they sent him a cease and desist letter. So when that kind of thing happens, of course it's upsetting.

But hostility, I don't know if it was hostility. It was just--it was really hard to fathom that people were becoming so predatory about the material. Clearly, we had made the recordings, and other people were trying to get a piece of it. It was frustrating.

Eddie: I think I would add to that [that] the film, because of the way film works, it sort of accentuates and magnifies things. The moment in time where Greg Goetz was doing his thing and Stein was doing his thing and we were trying to make a film: it was just a moment. I mean it was maybe like a four month period, and we're talking about 20 years of history.

So, I think because conflict is what drives every narrative, and naturally, Matt as a narrative filmmaker went towards that. But it was a moment--it came and went and in fact, Greg and I have made up and we e-mail each other back and forth and it's not really a big deal. I don't--I'm not embittered towards him.

ScreenAnarchy: So it sounds like if you had the chance to do it all over again, there's not much you would have changed. You wouldn't have told Eddie and Mitch from 20 years ago to take the mic out of the window?

Mitchell: I don't have any regrets. I don't have any regrets whatsoever. At the time--one thing that I have said in the past and in other interviews, it's easy to judge us when you watch 90 minutes, the way the material is manipulated in the film. But we lived next to them for 20 months and it was incredibly invasive and horribly obnoxious. So was it retaliation? No it wasn't retaliation, we weren't try to get back at them, but our lives were tremendously disrupted because of those guys and this was an outlet. This was a way to deal with the frustration, the anxiety, and the abuse that we dealt with [from] those guys. We could have called the police, we could have moved, but we didn't.

Eddie: Mitch is right. It was a coping mechanism for making something that was intolerable tolerable. And I think the thing that I would say is, all in all, it built a really beautiful bridge between Mitchell and I and our experience with Shut Up, Little Man turning into what it turned into. And that's the kind of stuff you can't buy or sell at a market. So I value that.

And I also really value that people who really inspired me as a creative person my life--people like Devo and Daniel Clowes, and Ivan Brunetti, all of who I cherish as artists and creative people--the sign that they took something that we brought into the world and it inspired them to make more art, that is deeply satisfying. 

Shut Up, Little Man enters limited release around the country on September 16.