by Lisa Butterworth

The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Who, Prince — there are very few bands who have successfully pulled off the making of a concept album and an accompanying film. But with the recent release of “Free LSD” in theaters, the visual manifestation of their 2022 album of the same name, the band OFF! joins these esteemed ranks. Fans and newbies alike will get a chance to see the movie at the Laemmle Claremont 5 theater at 7:30 on Tuesday, August 6, followed by a Q&A with OFF! guitarist/songwriter, “Free LSD” writer/director, and Claremont resident Dimitri Coats and the band’s vocalist Keith Morris, moderated by Claremont musician, songwriter, and author Dennis Callaci.

When OFF! formed in 2009 they were hailed as a hardcore punk supergroup thanks to their stellar lineup: vocalist Morris (founding singer for Black Flag and Circle Jerks frontman), guitarist Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides), bassist Steven McDonald (Redd Kross), and drummer Mario Rubalcaba (Rocket from the Crypt/Hot Snakes). For their first three albums, that’s exactly what they were. Then they decided to shake things up.

“All three albums up to that point had black and white artwork, and they were what you would expect from this band — we were sort of stuck in a box,” said Coats. “I remember talking to Raymond Pettibon, our artist, and saying, this fourth record we’re going to need your artwork to be in color for the first time, and we’re going to do all the things that a punk band isn’t supposed to do.”

Claremont resident and filmmaker Dimitri Coats’ “Free LSD,” screens at the Laemmle Claremont 5 theater at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, August 6. Coats wrote and directed the film, his first, which stars Jack Black and a litany of musical icons from the American punk rock scene. Courier photo/Charles Coats

To do that though would take a major mindset shift. The band took a cue from the way the Beatles had filtered their creativity through the fictitious Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band. “We thought, ‘Hey, let’s think of this album as a soundtrack to this weird sci-fi film we want to do. And by doing so, we’re going to free ourselves creatively,’” Coats said. “We purposefully at every creative fork in the road went the way we normally wouldn’t go.” Coats began tuning his guitar “in weird ways” and drew inspiration from musicians he’s met in town, local post-industrial noise legends like Henry Barnes from Amps for Christ, Skott Rusch from Hunting Lodge, and Eric Wood and W.T. Nelson from Bastard Noise—“all these people who I guess worked at Some Crust Bakery at one point or another,” he said with a laugh.

This experimentation lent itself to Morris’s lyric writing as well. “We talked about our fascination with UFOs and extraterrestrial life, and we just started filtering everything through the idea that the album and the film would be completely connected,” said Coats, who started writing the “Free LSD” script back in 2016. The songs were written in 2018 and in 2022 (after a lineup change that saw the addition of And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead bassist Autry Fulbright II and Thundercat jazz drummer Justin Brown) “Free LSD,” OFF!’s final album, was released. They began filming the movie the same year.

“Anybody who’s coming to the film, having already been a fan of the album, is going to have this pleasant experience where they’re going to find all these Easter eggs,” Coats said. “And then somebody who might find out about the movie first, and doesn’t even realize that OFF! is a real band and that they can go buy ‘Free LSD’ the album, is going to understand that these two projects are completely glued together.”

“Free LSD” the movie lives up to the band’s “weird sci-fi” ambitions. It takes place in multiple dimensions — one in which the bandmates are strangers living non-musical lives, and another in which they’ve formed the band OFF! It also features an erectile dysfunction doctor, an experimental drug, and an advanced AI species that wants to stop the band from awakening human consciousness with their new album. The movie is a veritable smorgasbord of punk icon cameos including David Yow from the Jesus Lizard, Chris D. from the Flesh Eaters, and the Dead Kennedys’ D. H. Peligro, who died of a drug overdose just a few months after filming wrapped.

Starring in the film was not a stretch for Coats, who was studying acting at Juilliard in New York City before he dropped out to make music. Writing and directing came naturally too. “It was the greatest experience of my life,” he said. “And it made me realize that in many ways, all roads have led to this point.” But getting “Free LSD” the movie made was a challenge that at times seemed almost insurmountable.

“I remember a moment where Keith and I had lunch. It just really didn’t seem like it was going to happen. And I said, ‘Well, Keith, at least thinking of the album as a soundtrack to the movie opened up our minds creatively in a way that is so profound. And look, we have all these amazing songs to show for it,’” said Coats. “His eyes filled up with tears and in a shaky voice, he said, ‘Dimitri, we have to make the movie.’ That’s when I realized how important the movie was for him as well.”

After many “failed starts,” the production finally came together thanks to a few key players who came on board, including Jonathan P. Shaw (one of David Lynch’s long-standing editors), veteran producer Kurt Kittleson, director of photography Christopher Raymond, whose camera credits include “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” and actor Jack Black.

“It’s a miracle that the film was finished, and not only that it was finished, that it ended up exceeding everyone’s expectations,” Coats said. “I love going to these screenings and sitting in the dark eating popcorn and just feeling the audience’s reactions to all the hard work we put into it. I think we really hit the bullseye in terms of what our goal was, which was to make a proper midnight movie — the kind of films that I would go rent as a kid at the video store in the cult section.”

For all its weirdness, “Free LSD” the movie also boasts a sincere underlying theme: “The film is about following your dreams,” said Coats. “And I think it’s hopefully a message for people to do that in their lives.”

OFF! may have played their final show as a band — July 26 at the Belasco in Los Angeles — but the life of this film, and what comes next for Coats creatively, marks a new beginning. “I feel like we raised the bar so high for ourselves with this project that there’s just nowhere else left for us to go,” Coats said. “And so I’m ready. It’s not a sad thing for me. It’s a celebration.”