‘This Is Gwar’ Director Scott Barber on Unmasking Legendary Metal Band and Capturing More Than ‘Blood and Guts’ (Exclusive)

This is Gwar is a brand new documentary film detailing the legendary band’s rise, which finds the members unmasking and sharing stories from their many decades together. The film is directed by documentary filmmaker Scott Barber, who uses the movie to perfectly capture the band’s raw humanity in both more aught and tears. Recently, PopCulture.com had a chance to chat with Barber about the “blood and guts” of the project, and what it was like for the band to give up so much of their anonymity.

Notably, Gwar has already wanted to make a documentary about their history, as shared with us by lead vocalist Mike Bishop (Blöthar the Berserker, formerly Beefcake the Mighty). Coincidentally, so did Barber. “Everything just came together so perfectly,” the filmmaker told us. “I wanted to do a documentary, and I wanted to do a documentary on Gwar. And one of my good friends, named Rocky Moon who plays in a band called American Sharks, had just toured with them. So he was like, ‘Well, I mean I’m really close with them,’ because it was the first tour they had done after Odorous had passed. So it was really a raw time there, and he’s just the most lovable dude ever. So he hooked me up with a meeting.”

Barber continued, “The first person I talked to was Bob Gorman (Bonesnapper, vocals) and he was like, ‘Yeah. We’d actually been working on a doc, so this is perfect. We want to do it.’ So then it was just kind of working out, okay, how is this going to go because it’s a doc about Gwar, but if I’m going to make it? Are we going to make it together? And we both decided that docs that are created by the subject are not usually as good. They don’t quite have the street cred because it’s like, is this just a commercial? Are we just making a commercial for ourselves?”

He went on to share, “So Bob actually, it was really a documentary’s dream, he wanted it to be from me. He was like, ‘I want you to do it.’ And he’s like, ‘I think that’s what we need is an outsider’s perspective about us. We’re so close to it, we can’t see it.’ And so, yeah, that’s kind of how it happened. And it took them a while. I had to sell them on me. Because they’ve had so many people approach them to try to do projects because, I mean, it almost kind of sells itself. You show that crazy-looking stuff on the screen, and it’s immediately intriguing. So I just worked with them. I filmed some interviews, I edited it together and showed them, ‘Hey, this is kind of what I want to do.’ And they were like, ‘Okay. Yeah. Let’s do it.’

This is Gwar reveals a number of things about the band that even some of their most dedicated fans wouldn’t have known about, and Barber explained that a nig part of this is because they’ve rarely done interviews out of their on-stage characters. “I tried to do as much research as I could. I watched all the interviews I could. But for the longest time, they did interviews in character. The idea of them doing interviews as their human selves is relatively new.”

He noted that even Gwar’s late frontman/co-founder Dave Brockie never did it, and for the longest time he had the most visibility of any of the members. “I always laugh when you watch the old interviews. When you watch interviews with Dave Brockie, not Oderus Urungus, he never admits that he is Oderus. He always says that Oderus Urungus is Human Butt Boy or something like that. So it’s relatively new.” Barber resumed his initial thought, saying, “I watched as much as I could. I did as much research as I could. And there’s actually a really great book that Bob Gorman wrote called Let There Be Gwar. And that was really cool to look through that. But still, there was so much that I had no idea.”

Barber then shared what he felt was the most compelling aspect of conducting interviews with the band, sharing, “One of my favorite parts of the documentary… the relationships between the different people. They all have these unique relationships. This person has a weird relationship with this person. This person has a different relationship with this person. And I think that’s really what makes the documentary so good is the human element of it, which is funny. It’s about monsters from space and the human element is kind of what makes it so good.

One of the most shocking stories that is elaborated on in This Is Gwar is when the band was victim to gun violence while driving down the highway, by would-be criminals whom it’s believed wanted to rob them. Former guitarist Pete Lee (Flattus Maximus 2) was shit during the incident, changing his lie forever. “That was another one, the whole shooting in DC was one that I knew happened because I can remember even seeing, there’s interviews with Pete Lee talking about it,” Barber said. “But it’s so simple, and they kind of make jokes of it because that’s kind of how they do. They’re Gwar. They’re not going to talk about how serious it was. And this dude almost died, and it changed everything.”

He added, “But it was really beautiful, and I was very grateful that they went there with me, because we kind of knew what we wanted to do when we were making this documentary. But, really, probably about halfway through filming it, we’re like, the documentary is just letting these guys talk. That’s what it is. There’s no need to be fancy or cute with our editing, try to come up with, oh, what’s the structure? Do we do this? Do we do this? Do we actually start later in time and go backwards? It’s like, no.”

“These guys,” Barber continued, “I mean one, their story is crazy just by themselves. And then hearing them talk as artists; they’re all artists. And then…the family dynamic of it all just, we wanted it to feel like you’re just having a beer and listening to a really cool person talk. Because that’s how it was with me. I wanted people to experience what I experienced. And the moment they started opening up like that, it was like, oh, this is the doc, this is it, and this is what’s going to get people.”

The filmmaker made a point to note that the insanity and bizarre spectacle that is “Gwar the stage show” was not a dynamic they needed to capture for This Is Gwar. “That’s one thing we always said, this is not the documentary that you expect when you hear Gwar doc. It’s not blood and guts. That’s in there, but it’s a much more emotional, serious thing than you think it’s going to be. It was wonderful.”

Referencing two of the band’s late members — Brockie and late lead guitarist Cory Smoot (Flattus Maximus 5) — Barber said, “There were certainly moments that I knew were going to tear them up, were going to tear me up. Obviously Dave Brockie, that’s a big one, and Corey Smoot. But then you see in the documentary, there’s a lot of other tear-jerking moments too that I wasn’t quite expecting, particularly some of the things that don’t involve death. And to me, in some ways that’s more powerful because death is a part of life, and it’s sad.”

Barber continued, “Particularly in this era that we live in, and particularly metal musicians that are in a very tough band, to see them bear their heart for another man, not that they died, just how they feel about another man in a metal band, to me was really special. And I think that a lot of men don’t share their feelings and that’s why we have a much higher suicide rate than females. And maybe that’s why, but maybe not. But I think that it’s imperative that men don’t bottle that stuff up. Talk to your friend. You’re not going to look like a crybaby. It’s better than getting a call that your friend isn’t here with us. Anyway, it was special to… And I’m eternally grateful for them opening up to me the way that they did.”

Barber revealed that he’d just recently seen the band again after finishing the documentary, and joked about how the tours they’ve done over the past few months have made them realize how much of their anonymity they’ve lost since the movie was first released on Shudder and VOD.  “The first time I saw Brad [Roberts, drummer Jizmak Da Gusha], he said, ‘Thank you. The doc came out really well. I think it was so good. Thanks for telling our story. However, thanks to you, everyone knows who I am. I knew it.’ He said, he’d sit outside, and if someone’s like, ‘Hey, are you guys with one of the bands?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah. We’re the roadies,’ or, ‘We’re Gwar’s crew.’ And he said he tried to pull that and someone said, ‘No, you’re not. I saw the movie. You’re the drummer. You’re Jizmak.’”

“That was a big thing, because that’s something that they’ve done for decades,” Barber explained. “Like I said, it’s really funny, they deny that they are Gwar. If you see an interview with Mike Derks [rhythm guitarist Balsac the Jaws of Death], or Brent [Purgason, lead guitarist Pustulus Maximus], or Dave when he was still alive, they would never say, ‘I am Balsac, the Jaws of Death.’ They would say, ‘I’m his human slave’ or something like that. But it was kind of a decision they were kind of starting to make anyway. You’ll see now, not just with the documentary, but you’ll see interviews with them. Mike Bishop did a TED talk, which is fantastic to see.

Barber went on to note that, even though Gwar may not have been aware how much more recognizable they’d become, “It was a decision that they kind of already made, and it was a decision that we talked about in the documentary.” He continued, “I thought one thing that was fascinating, they have a term called ‘half in, half out.’ That is when you’re half in your costume. They said, ‘That’s one thing that we’ve never let anyone photograph.’ They’ve done interviews as humans; they’ve done interviews as monsters. They had said, that’s the only thing for the doc, ‘Don’t get us half in and half out.’ I said, ‘Okay. Let’s do that. Let’s keep that alive where no one sees.”

He added, “Originally, I had these shots of them getting into their costumes, almost like the way you see the old movie star females in front of the lights with all the bulbs putting their makeup on, but Mike Bishop putting the makeup on… I just thought that would be hilarious. But we didn’t do that, and I think it’s a lot better. There’s that division. There’s that ‘this is the monsters, these are the people.’ Both are pretty cool stories in their own way.” 

This Is Gwar is now available to own on Blu-Ray and DVD. Click here to pick up a copy from Amazon, and stay locked to PopCulture.com for more music news, exclusives, and interviews!