“Like most people, I’ve just stumbled into things,” says local filmmaker Russ Forster, whose most recent project, the tribute-band documentary Tributary, just came out on DVD. Before stumbling into filmmaking, he played music, ran a label, and published a popular zine. Throughout all these endeavors, Forster, who turns 40 this week, has stubbornly planted himself as far outside mainstream consumer culture as he can manage. In 2000 he pulled the plug on what was arguably his best-known project, 8-Track Mind, a decade-old zine dedicated to eight-track tapes–it had become too successful, he says.
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Forster developed his contempt for consumerism as an economics student at the University of Chicago. “I think I learned what I did not want to do with my life, both as a job and a mind-set,” he says. He played in a couple of bands, including a new-wave cover act called the Generics and an original pop outfit called the Clay Midgets (which later changed its name to American Slang). Forster envisioned himself emulating Elvis Costello, recording a professional-sounding demo and signing with a major label.
Good fortune smiled upon Forster in 1986: he inherited a considerable amount of money (he won’t say how much) that would fund his many future projects. (He’s remained thrifty in his day-to-day life, however, paying the bills by doing odd jobs–working in a copy shop, say, or videotaping weddings.) He started his first business, Underdog Records, that year. The label released music by his own combos (Fudge Tunnel and, later, Spongetunnel) as well as local punk bands like Impulse Manslaughter, I.D. Under, and Friends of Betty–the band that would become Red Red Meat and featured drummer John Rowan, aka Urge Overkill’s Blackie Onassis. The first Screeching Weasel LP also came out on Underdog.
The film won the prize for best feature-length documentary at the 1995 Chicago Underground Film Festival. But Forster decided that working only the festival circuit would limit his audience, so he returned to his punk roots, touring the country in a van and showing the film himself in rock clubs, microtheaters, even homes when necessary. In 1997 it was released on video by Provisional, the company owned by Joe Carducci, author of Rock and the Pop Narcotic, and it’s sold a few hundred copies.
