-Who is Hudley Flipside?
Hudley Flipside is a pseudonym. The name was given to me as a young punk in the early Los Angeles punk rock scene. My last name was Hudson. It was originally “HUD,” and I added the “ley” because many of the punk rock bands, music promoters, fanzines and record labels, and people who corresponded with me back through Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine in the late 1970 and throughout the 1980s, thought I was a guy. Yet my name is symbolic of the more androgynous tendencies or equality for the male and female within myself. It is my punk, author, publisher, and now documentary filmmaker name. I am an anarchist wildflower that grows in the cracks in the city made of stone.
-What inspired you to become a Filmmaker?
It was a progression of my punk rock roots as a natural D.I.Y (DO it yourself) creator that inspired me towards the process of making a documentary film. I did research while in the process of achieving creative momentum as a filmmaker, or how I wished to share the Flipside Fanzine creation narrative. I got a little advice studying my protagonist American film director maker Michael Moore, and even a tidbit from my nemesis, American singer, writer, and spoken word artist Henry Rollins. Michael said you begin your film with what you have around you and Henry said, once in a documentary, that a lot of us original punks did not keep or preserve our stuff and that upset him. I started this narrative creation story film with Michale’s advice, and I was happy to disappoint Henry with a positive to his negative. I have a lot of preserved stuff from my “youthful rebellion days” as a fanatical fanzine punk rock journalist. Hallelujah. The details are not as important, but I worked with Zoom, Adobe Premiere Pro, and many other little willy-nilly D.I.Y and learning as you go was my inspiration to create and become a filmmaker.
-Do you think the cinema can bring a change in the society?
Along with my wild nature I also later went to college and took a film course. The book presented to us students was jammed with a history of creative philosophies applied to film perspectives. How can I say this in a positive way, I chose to forget all of that history. I went back to an intimate place where I used to be with punk bands. When we interviewed and taped live shows. I wanted to share the simple voice of someone who was there at the beginning. Books, plays, art and the cinema all share the common truth of “good or bad” storytelling. It does not matter; a story is a story. As any story can inspire, so can the cinema. Now we can sit around our electrical computer fires and create films. The cinema is already changing societies globally.
-What would you change in the world?
I do not want to change anything in the world but myself and how I respond to my environment. By not giving up hope in lieu of the fire of creativity and inspiration.
-Where do you see the film industry going in the next 100 years?
I have gotten so tired of superhero action films. I have gone back to film noirs, biographies, and simple Perry Mason episodes on TV. I would like to see books stores, big screen theaters and buttered popcorn come back. We live in a world that craves film intimacy that is cheaply priced. An escape from reality for a brief time. That is where I hope the film industry goes in the next one hundred years. I had a dream once where I was in a small house with a hallway leading to doors. I assumed small bedrooms and such. I opened one of the doors to look in and was amazed to find a large theater with a stage. The room was filled with people cheering, crying, and laughing. I walked up the side aisle and found behind the stage a rough, rocky hole that led down into the underworld. It held all those creative feelings of the theater. Mystery, aah and wonder. This is the world of the cinema as well.
I have entered the world of filmmaking, and it is amazing what I am finding, the experience is changing my life in a positive and profound manner.