TITLE: EX DRUMMER
YEAR: 2008
DIRECTOR: KOEN MORTIER
ACTORS: DRIES VANHEGEN, SAM LOUWYCK, NORMAN BAERT
MUSIC: ARNO, MILLIONAIRE, FLIP KOWLIER & GUY VAN NUETEN
DISTRIBUTION: L’ALTROFILM
SYNOPSIS
“Ex Drummer” is the debut film from Koen Mortier. A deaf guitar player, a stiff-armed bassist and a psychopath guitarist-vocalist with a lisp form a rock band for a one-off performance. The trio lacks a drummer so they seek the services of a celebrity author, who also has a reputation as a drummer, to fill the role. The author joins the band so he can exploit the band for source material and his own sadistic pleasure. Out of this mess is born The Feminists, a quasi-disabled punk rock band (Flemish band Millionaire provide the music) whose journey towards its only gig drags almost everybody involved down a black hole of abuse, exploitation and death. Ex-Drummer is adapted from a novel of the same name by Herman Brusselmans, and the film has drawn comparisons to Trainspotting. But the film’s non-stop barrage of clever visuals, vulgar humor, random violence, and high energy music (The Feminists tackle a solid cover of Devo’s Mongoloid and tracks from Lightning Bolt, Isis, Mogwai and others also appear on the soundtrack) places Ex-Drummer in an entirely different cultural and aesthetic space than any possibly comparable film. Ex-Drummer seems to take a stab at offending every possible segment of society: men, women, majorities, minorities, homosexuals, kids, punks, politicians, the abused, the aged and the infirm are all the subjects of the film’s ridicule.
Ex-Drummer is angry, funny and entertainingly foul from beginning to end. (Rodney Perkins, Aphanisis)
