Margin Rockers: We Are Twisted F***ing Sister! (2014, dir. Andrew Horn, US)
by Matt Olsen
To any reader who has been paying even the faintest scintilla of attention to previous chapters in this series of essays on alternate approaches to the rock biography film: Yes, you’re right to pointedly clear your throat. This film is not even semi-fictionalized. It is, in fact, a documentary. (More on that in a moment.) Also, it must be mentioned, that while the initial concept was to highlight films about left-of-center, unmassive artists and performers within the rock music sphere – hence the title, Margin Rockers – Twisted Sister has sold millions of records and boasts at least one bona fide hit single, “We’re Not Gonna Take It”. However, there is an aspect to their story that I contend qualifies them for inclusion, though I’m almost certainly the only one who really cares about this kind of fussy rule-keeping.
But, to the immediate point that this is a documentary, that’s undeniable. Still, it ultimately reaches a different destination than the usual rock bio, so Q.E.D. There are, of course, literally hundreds of music documentaries out there with their own well-worn cliches and WATFS is no outlier there. It ticks all the boxes: the band forms, loses members, gains members, finds it sound, lots of rock and roll hero stories, missed opportunities, breakthrough, and eventual success. The story is told through interviews with people in and around the band accompanied by a wealth of archival performance footage and photographs. In other words, it’s not breaking acres of new ground here. It simply tells an interesting and entertaining tale over two hours and fifteen minutes. Which, typically, is on the longer side for a band documentary. Especially, one about a band that not very many people ever cared about including, yes, the author of this article.
Honestly, Twisted Sister is unlikely to be counted among the greatest rock bands of all time. (Possibly not even within their sub-genre of, I don’t know, “glam-metal”?) Their songs generally revolve around indistinguishable riffs and hew to narrow topics such as Bad Boys and Rock and Roll. Still, as this documentary ably illustrates, the group worked extremely hard and earned an intensely loyal fanbase. That’s beyond dispute. One of the significantly atypical approaches this documentary takes is including several interview bits with a few of the band’s longtime non-celebrity fans. (If you love broad Long Island character types, these bits will be a feast for you.) Hearing the perspective of the Regular People is a tactic that reinforces the band’s identity as suburban New York heroes and is the thing which most defines them as outsiders despite their renown.
In the second half of the 1970s, Manhattan was the American epicenter of two new forms of music, rap and punk, each of which would evolve to become major cultural influences over the next several decades. Meanwhile, twenty miles away, Twisted Sister was playing big, dumb rock five nights a week to capacity crowds across the inlands of Long Island and New Jersey. Some of these venues held as many as 3000 customers, many of whom would return night after night. The band was a regional phenomenon completely outside anything that the music industry and cultural critics wanted to hear. With no record deal, radio airplay, or national awareness, Twisted Sister once attracted an audience of 22,000 people at a free show in a New Jersey amusement park. Yet, they remained an anathema to the music industry at large.
As mentioned above, the band did eventually find its way onto one of the major record labels and achieved success well beyond their peers. In the world of normal rock bio stories this would begin the second or third act. In this film, it’s a few, throwaway words appearing onscreen before the end credits. This film is entirely based in the band’s early, pre-victory days. It takes an astronomical degree of hubris to tell a hard road story and omit the grand finale where all the labor and love finally pays off but that is the very reason why this film belongs in this series. I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d voluntarily choose to listen to the music of Twisted Sister – though if you love it, I support you – but as a result of this film, I now feel a inextricable kinship with the people behind it and I never would have expected that.
Matt Olsen is a largely unemployed part-time writer and even more part-time commercial actor living once again in Seattle after escaping from Los Angeles like Kurt Russell in that movie about the guy who escapes from Los Angeles.