Nearly three decades after its release, The Electric Urn continues to resonate with audiences drawn to cult cinema, underground music culture, and surreal storytelling. Now streaming on Night Flight Plus, the film has found a new generation of viewers discovering its chaotic charm and psychedelic energy. In this exclusive interview with About Insider, filmmaker Dean Bivens reflects on the inspirations behind The Electric Urn, the East Village scene that shaped it, and why the film still connects with audiences today.
HEY DEAN, WELCOME TO ABOUT INSIDER! TO BEGIN, COULD YOU INTRODUCE YOURSELF TO OUR READERS AND TELL US HOW THE ELECTRIC URN FIRST CAME TO LIFE?
The Electric Urn started as an idea to create a narrative that was not only about musicians, but where the tone and tempo of the story mirrored a specific scene in New York City’s east village where bands that started playing at CBGB’s in the late 1970’s, like the Ramones and Blondie, when the scene was genuine and organic, had gone into a state of decline and decadence, where local club owners who were musicians promoting their own bands that never succeeded on a national level, started to coop the scene and turn it into a brand name where the vibe was about the celebration of degeneration, and succumbing to the negative forces of an anti-establishment subculture that disappeared at the end of the century. The strange and elusive characters that were part of that scene resonated for me as a writer. During that time I kept a journal where the ideas for characters began to evolve eventually into a screenplay.
THE ELECTRIC URN HAS RETURNED AS A CULT FAVORITE ON NIGHT FLIGHT PLUS NEARLY THREE DECADES AFTER ITS RELEASE. HOW DOES IT FEEL TO SEE THE FILM FIND A NEW AUDIENCE TODAY?
Yes, The Electric Urn was, is, and will always be a cult film. It feels great that The Electric Urn is now available on a streaming service that apparently is becoming more popular with the mainstream. The various cities in the United States that are considered “music towns”, like New Orleans, Chicago, Nashville, LA and San Francisco, Austin and Dallas Texas, Detroit and New York City, are places where stories and sounds were created that are intricately connected to our culture, as well as the expression of values and ideas that transform us. The Electric Urn is about this world.
THE FILM BLENDS ROAD-TRIP COMEDY, MUSIC CULTURE, SURREAL FANTASY, AND PSYCHEDELIC ELEMENTS. WHAT INSPIRED THIS UNIQUE MIX OF STORYTELLING STYLES?
Yes, it’s true, the road trip comedy aspect was partly inspired by reading Jack Kerouac when I was growing up. Kerouac’s novels, like On the Road, are considered poetic masterpieces that capture the post war era of the 1950’s where the young generation (often referred to as the Beat Generation) were rebelling against the values of what was viewed by them as a culture of conformity, which in some ways is a serious subject that deals with themes of disenfranchisement, and alienation from society due to forces that are beyond the control of the individual, such as ethnicity, social status, and sexual orientation. But at the same time, a lot of people fail to see the humor in Jack Kerouac’s novels, where the non-conformist characters he wrote about were very comedic. The surreal and psychedelic tone of The Electric Urn really just organically came from the people whom my characters were based on; they were rebellious souls who were experimenting with psychedelic drugs to deal with many issues in their lives, such as PTSD from having grown up in homes where many forms of abuse were the norm (alcoholism being a main one), and with some of these people, the psychedelic drug use sometimes led to more extreme forms of degenerative and self-destructive behavior, like heroin and suicide, but I chose not to focus on the tragic side of the world of musicians, rock and roll, and literature, and chose to emphasize the more comedic elements of the rock and roll counter culture, and of course Cheech and Chong movies like Up In Smoke were definitely some of my inspirations. I guess in some ways The Electric Urn falls into that sub-genre of comedies known as the stoner movie, like the Harold and Kumar movies, which started really with Cheech and Chong.
JIM AND JOHNNY ARE DREAMERS CHASING FAME WHILE RUNNING FROM DANGER. WHAT DID YOU WANT THEIR JOURNEY TO REPRESENT BENEATH THE DARK COMEDY AND CHAOS?
The point of view and narrative style of The Electric Urn, was inspired by a very old fashioned, traditional form of storytelling that originated on 16th century Spain with the stories of Miguel Cervantes. This narrative form is referred to by academics as the Picaresque novel; these stories usually followed the adventures of roguish, lowborn outsiders in society, known in Spanish as the Picaro, who survive in a corrupt society by their wits. These stories are typically episodic, realistic as well as satirical. The Spaniards seem to have a flair for the satirical, like the famous filmmaker from Spain, Luis Bunuel, who collaborated on one of his films with the famous surrealist painter Salvador Dali. In The Electric Urn, Jim and Johnny, the duel protagonists, are what they would call in 16th century Spain, The Picaro (or in modern American terms- a Hippie, a Beatnik, or a Slacker), who live on the fringes of society. Jim and Johnny could also be called anti-heroes, who are really motivated mainly by hunger and greed (in which their desire for fame as rock stars plays an integral part in their point of view), and, in order to survive, they rely on deceit and cleverness rather than honorable work. These picaresque novels involve a series of loosely connected adventures, that the protagonist(s) gets through by his wits, which sometimes involves less than honorable behavior, but at the same time, Jim and Johnny are not violent criminal types, but their tactics of survival, which could be called the tactics of street hustlers, often involve wandering through various social hierarchies, where they inadvertently expose the hypocrisy, corruption, and moral decay of the world around them. But bear on mind that these stories are comedies that involve social satire, so the protagonist, or as in The Electric Urn (as in Cheech and Chong and Harold and Kumar movies), with the dual protagonists, there is minimal character growth (in terms of moral and intellectual enlightenment, or even the possibility of making practical choices, like getting a real job), but instead, these characters usually start out as adaptable opportunists from the beginning to the end of the story.
THE MOVIE CAPTURES THE ENERGY OF NEW YORK CITY’S EAST VILLAGE ART SCENE. HOW IMPORTANT WAS THAT CULTURAL BACKDROP IN SHAPING THE FILM’S ATMOSPHERE?
During the 1980’s and 1990’s when I lived in New York City and was working in an office job in midtown for a publishing firm, I often felt, like a lot of people, that my day job lacked any excitement, creativity, or artistic expression, so like a lot of other working stiffs like me, I very often drifted into downtown Manhattan, where the vibrant art and music scene at the time provided an exciting escape from my existence as someone who was living in a cubicle most of the time.
QUENTIN CRISP’S APPEARANCE IN THE FILM REMAINS ONE OF ITS STANDOUT ELEMENTS. WHAT WAS IT LIKE WORKING WITH SUCH AN ICONIC PERSONALITY?
Quentin Crisp was an icon in western culture, not only to LGBT rights activists, but to individuals from various backgrounds and sexual orientations. A famous rock musician I hung out with one time said, “If it wasn’t for Quentin Crisp, there would have been no David Bowie.” And as far working with Crisp, he was a wonderful, delightful English gentleman, soft spoken and very witty in that dry British sort of way, like a dry Gin martini you might say.
MUSIC PLAYS A MAJOR ROLE THROUGHOUT THE ELECTRIC URN. HOW DID ARTISTS LIKE CARON BERNSTEIN AND THE CYCLE SLUTS FROM HELL HELP SHAPE THE FILM’S IDENTITY?
The rock bands as well as the soundtrack for The Electric Urn just grew organically from a short story I was writing at the time that I later developed into a screenplay. I had always been a huge fan of The Cycle Sluts from Hell, from the time the band formed in the 1980’s, they were just this very beautiful and spectacular display of both feminine beauty, as well as feminine power and anger, but always shaped into songs and performances that had loads of wit and irony to them. They were an incredible band. And Caron Bernstein to me was like a female version of an up and coming folk singer like Bob Dylan. Her songs are dark and haunting, which worked well for my vision as a director.
OVER THE YEARS, THE ELECTRIC URN HAS DEVELOPED A LOYAL CULT FOLLOWING. WHY DO YOU THINK THE FILM CONTINUES TO RESONATE WITH AUDIENCES LOOKING FOR UNCONVENTIONAL CINEMA?
I think The Electric Urn still resonates to movie audiences today, and has developed a following over the years, because for one, it is a classic and eternal story, set in a world that was very iconic in the last century (the 20th century), and in a world which no longer exists today.
NOW THAT THE FILM IS STREAMING ON NIGHT FLIGHT PLUS, WHAT DO YOU HOPE FIRST-TIME VIEWERS DISCOVER OR TAKE AWAY FROM WATCHING THE ELECTRIC URN TODAY?
Now that The Electric Urn is available for streaming on Night Flight Plus, I think movie audiences will enjoy it as a timepiece for those who either experienced this aspect of American culture, and are nostalgic for it, or for movie goers and history buffs who want to look into what the world was like at the end of the 20th century in downtown Manhattan.
