In 2012, I was backstage at a Cro-Mags gig at the Highline Ballroom in New York City when filmmaker Drew Stone approached me and reintroduced himself. I had not seen Drew in a couple of years since the Misfits European tour. Like myself, Drew is a born and raised New Yorker, who grew up with a passion for music.
Drew had directed a movie that year called xxx ALL AGES xxx The Boston Hardcore Film, which was about a small, explosive hardcore music scene in the early eighties. I saw the documentary during its world premiere at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as part of the Boston International Film festival. I loved that it centered on the community and culture and used a lot of vintage footage revealing unknown facts about the bands featured in the movie.
In a review, the writer stated that “xxx ALL AGES–The Boston Hardcore Film feels like a flashback to vibrant memories to anyone that experienced the early Boston scene, and gives a vivid insight . . . that was created in the eighties to all youngsters. It educates on the rise of a highly influential scene that still leaves its marks today.”1
That night at the Cro-Mags gig, Drew said to me, “I’ve been thinking about making a new film. Would you like to get together one of these days and have a talk about an idea I have?”
“Sure!” I said, and a few days later, we met at my apartment.
“I think you have an interesting story,” he began. “And I believe I’m the right person to tell it. How do you feel about me making a documentary film about your life?”
What?
I didn’t know what to say. It sounded really exciting, and of course, my ego got the best of me. Seeing his Boston Hardcore film again helped move my thought process along. Since Drew loved music as much as I did, I figured he would do a very good job, and I started to like the whole idea.
Then came the filmmaking process, which was all very new to me. Drew was an independent filmmaker living in the city, and he didn’t have the money to finance the film, so we launched a crowdfunding campaign. Many people stepped up and supported the film, including such dear friends as Rob Zombie, Jesse Malin, Gillian McCain, and Cyndi Lauper. Even some of Drew’s friends who were involved with his extreme sports films contributed in a big way. We initially raised $30,000, which got us moving in the right direction. Michael Alex was brought in to produce and soon we began to shoot the documentary.
Drew had the idea of introducing some animation into the film in order to move the story along and infuse some humor. That added to budgetary costs, but he thought animating scenes throughout the film was important because it would break it up the rhythm in an entertaining way, as there were a lot of “talking heads” doing interviews and telling stories.
Drew found an animator on Craig’s List from Toronto, Canada, named Tim Thomson. He liked Tim’s back-to-basics animation work and he sent pictures to him of those of us in the film. Tim sent back drafts of his initial graphics and I had to admit, his illustrations were very close. By the time he sent his second round, he had nailed it. I was totally sold. To this day, I love the animation, and those who have seen it say it’s one of the film’s highlights.
There were many production delays, the largest of which was scheduling musicians while they were on tour. As a result, filming took nearly four years. Metallica, Rob Zombie, Philip Anselmo, Cyndi Lauper, John Lydon, Mina Caputo, Doyle from the Misfits, and many more were asked to participate. When they agreed I was truly grateful.
Although the working title was “The Michael Alago Documentary,” we knew we wanted something more provocative. As we worked more and more on the film, Drew realized that the first thing he remembered about me was when he used to go out to nightclubs during the eighties and nineties—my face was the one constant he saw everywhere he went, and he always thought to himself, “Who the fuck is that guy?”
When he suggested that as the title, I knew that was it. Since the film was a journey through my life, we eventually settled on “Who the Fuck Is That Guy? The Fabulous Journey of Michael Alago.”
As the film neared completion, we did a few “work in progress” screenings, one of which drew the attention of filmmaker Peter Spirer. Spirer and Drew had a history of making music videos together back in the eighties, and now his company Rugged Entertainment had a deal with Hollywood distribution company XLrator Media. Spirer absolutely loved the film and a deal was struck for his company to distribute it.
The film debuted on June 8, 2017, at Theater 80 on St. Mark’s Place in Manhattan. This was the perfect place for the film to premier because so much of my life took place and was portrayed in that area of the Lower East Side. After a limited theatrical release and a V.O.D. (Video On Demand) run, it was added to Amazon and iTunes. Then, in September, we were ecstatic when it went up on Netflix.
If the histories of Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre warrant four hours of prime HBO real estate in ”The Defiant Ones,” then certainly Michael Alago, the flamboyant New York punk habitué who signed Metallica to Elektra and White Zombie to Geffen during his stints as an A&R executive, deserves his 77 minutes of recognition.2
Netflix was a game changer, because worldwide, everyone has Netflix. We were getting messages, texts, and emails from all over the world about the film—social media was exploding. It was an exhilarating feeling. The beauty of it was that viewers came away with a lot of different experiences—from: “Dude, you signed Metallica; that changed the way I listened to music!” to many young people contacting me about their struggle with addiction, recovery and their sexual identity. One message, from a young kid in Colombia, read: “I’m 21 years old, I live in Colombia, I’m HIV-positive. I live with my dad and if I ever told him, I think he would murder me.” You can’t just reply to an email like that with: “Dude, I’m glad you liked the film.” I always wrote back about keeping the faith and taking care of oneself.
I would say to them: “If you’re abusing yourself with drugs and alcohol, stop it. If your symptoms are acting up, and it’s time to take medications, take them. What’s extraordinary about the times we’re living in is, if you take care of yourself, and you take your medications, HIV is a treatable disease and you can live a long, healthy life. No matter what the issues are, remember, always ask for help.”
That week of September 1, I got twelve hundred emails. So I made an extra cup of tea, sat down, and answered every single one of them.