Last night (October 30), Meet Me In The Bathroom premiered at New York City’s Webster Hall with performances from Adam Green and Wah Together as well as a conversation with the people behind the documentary. View footage and check out moments from the film discussion below.
Meet Me In The Bathroom, Lizzy Goodman’s 600-page oral history detailing the ’00s New York music scene was released in 2017. The film version of the book, directed by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace – creators of LCD Soundsystem‘s Shut Up And Play The Hits documentary and concert movie – first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
Featuring interviews and never-before-seen archival footage of The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, Interpol and more, Meet Me In The Bathroom focuses on how a new batch of rock bands impacted and transformed not only the New York City music scene but went on to receive national and international acclaim.
Following a screening of the film, there was an acoustic set from Green (where at one moment he slipped in the refrain of The Strokes’ track ‘Under Control’) and WAH Together (featuring Phil Mossman of LCD Soundsystem and Vito Roccoforte of The Rapture). After the acts left the stage there was a panel discussion with Goodman, Green, Lovelace and Southern.
#meetmeinthebathroom the film version of @lizzydgoodman’s 600-page oral history of the 00’s New York music scene officially premiered in its hometown of Manhattan last night
here’s a thread of moments from the premiere pic.twitter.com/KE6lmNjKel
— Erica Campbell (@ericacxmpbell) October 31, 2022
Wah Together (which features Vito Roccoforte of @ITSTHERAPTURE & Phil Mossman who used to be @lcdsoundsystem) riling up the crowd pic.twitter.com/ftwKpvAQue
— Erica Campbell (@ericacxmpbell) October 31, 2022
“[The film] drops you into that time, it’s a time capsule really,” Lovelace said, pointing to their decision to not include “talking heads” in the documentary. “[We wanted] to keep it in the moment, and make it feel like it was back then, to feel what it was like to be in New York during that time.”
The directors also discussed having “no idea” about what archival footage existed before they started the film, calling it a “dangerous way to start”.
“We wrote the film before we made it and hoped that the archive was out there to tell the story that we wrote,” Southern added.
Speaking about how they pulled the film together, the directors pointed to the “amazing” footage they found at the eleventh hour, including never-before-seen clips of LCD Soundsystem and Paul Banks of Interpol.
Goodman also talked about moments in the film that feature Karen O and Julian Casablancas struggling with the weight of fame and “the feeling of a coming of age while the world is disappearing beneath your feet. It’s the defining sense of that error, a sense of anxiety mixed with jubilation, whatever the word is for the merging of those two feelings”.
Goodman continued: “[It’s] the feeling of recognizing you’re in the middle of the thing you came to find and also knowing it’s ending before you’re going to be able to process that fact, is a recurring theme in all the interviews that were done for the book.
“The path in front of you disappearing as you’re walking it is pretty foundational to this period of time.”
The documentary is previewed on November 4 in both New York and Los Angeles before opening across the US on November 8. The film will then be available to stream on Showtime starting November 25. Details of a UK and European release are yet to be revealed.
Last week (October 27), The Moldy Peaches reunited for their first live show in over a decade during the film’s Los Angeles premiere.