New documentary on King Loser: Love, loss and chaos

Picture this: You are living away from home for the first time and head to an Orientation gig at the University of Otago alongside hundreds of unsuspecting first-year students.

Within a few minutes you have heard a southern squall of feedback unleashed by two guitarists, a kung fu kicking bass player, and then somehow the drummer’s kit goes on fire.

That was King Loser. And I was in love.

It was the mid-1990s and everyone I knew was into grunge and smelling like teen spirit, but King Loser chose the path less travelled – they chose chaos.

That was centred around the aforementioned kung-fu kicking bass player, who I once saw skull a bottle of beer before using that same bottle to play slide bass, the late and certainly great Celia Mancini, and her co-pilot in chaos: Chris Heazlewood, who had a penchant for secondhand suits and cheap guitars.

That dynamic duo, alongside King Loser bandmates, guitarist Sean O’Reilly and drummer Lance Strickland aka Tribal Thunder, feature in a new documentary King Loser, by Cushla Dillon and Andrew Moore.

I mention the uni gig to Heazlewood, who said you could still smoke inside in those days, and it was ‘’an incredibly stupid thing to do’’.

‘’However, sometimes needs must.’’

Heazlewood brings-up another memory, from possibly the same Otago gig, about a boorish punter who started chanting at Mancini to ‘’get it off, get it off, get it all off’’, after she removed her cardigan.

The band retaliated by getting the lighting guy to illuminate the startled first-year, quite possibly giving him his first lesson at university: ‘’he found out you shouldn’t yell out at some bands’’.

That spontaneity, whether it be talking with the audience, or how they approached their music dictated a lot of the ‘’rough and ready’’ attributes of the band, Heazlewood said.

‘’There is no such thing as demos with this band.’’

By the late 90s the band had flamed out as quickly as it had lit stages around the country.

‘’We were all fairly wrecked,’’ Heazlewood, who along with Mancini, battled a drug addiction and mental health issues.

Moore said he was always interested in making a documentary of a New Zealand band.

“I knew with King Loser they were interesting people and extreme personalities and would make a good documentary’’.

That came to pass when the band, which recorded several albums for Flying Nun, announced it would be reforming for a 2016 tour.

‘’I thought, hell yeah, that will be good footage,’’ said Moore, who shot some of the band’s videos, including Surf’s Up in Malibu. As an aside the YouTube clip of that video includes one of the greatest comments I have ever read: ‘’This is like finding a faded Polaroid of an old lover…’’.

That is a relatable comment, particularly as only two of the King Loser albums were on Spotify while the physical albums were long since sold-out.

“Which two are available?’’ Heazlewood asks (the first and a third, for those playing at home).

Dillon, who directed the kick-ass 76’ Comeback video, said the band were famously ahead of the curve, playing surf guitar long before it was popularised by Quentin Tarantino in Pulp Fiction.

‘’That was the music we loved, and it just so happened that is when that film came out,’’ Heazlewood said.

Dillon said King Loser always put on a show, but whether that was going to be a good or a bad gig was often the great unknown.

‘’If it was good, it was mind-blowing.’’

The famously raucous band were ‘’kicking arse’’ from the first practice on their 2016 comeback tour.

‘’People had sort of forgotten what they were like, and they were coming back possibly even better than what they used to sound like.’’

His favourite gig was at Dunedin’s Crown Hotel, and ‘’was one of the best gigs I have ever seen’’.

The death of Mancini a year after that tour ‘’still bites’’, Heazlewood said.

Heazlewood said the film was ‘’about my buddies and made by my buddies, it is just great.’’

He wanted the film to be more than just a ‘’victory lap’’, and instead ‘’make something special to accompany the special film’’.

With the film touring as part of the International Film Festival, Heazlewood and his band Cash Guitar would also perform, as they did at the premiere at Auckland’s Hollywood Theatre last Friday.

That packed theatre included Mancini’s family, and ‘’It was a hard watch in places, but they were really glad we had done it,’’ Moore said.

The only thing missing from the premiere was Mancini herself, who would have loved the occasion, he said.

Meanwhile, Heazlewood was looking forward to the mini-tour and performing after the doco screening, which will include gracing the stage of Dunedin’s Regent Theatre for the first time.

Mancini once graced that very stage, performing backing vocals for The Puddle who performed in a Telethon.

“Thankyou very much for your kind donation,’’ he sings, before delivering in his deadpan tone that the gig would be a ‘’gateway to the next world’’.

‘’This is the trajectory we are following, and the ramp should be ready by Dunedin.’’

You have been warned.

King Loser will screen as part of the Whānau Mārama: NZ International Film Festival, which includes Wellington (August 5, 6), Christchurch (August 12, 17, 23), and Dunedin (August 19).