Iris Berry

In the mid-1980's the coffeehouse movement in Los Angeles was beginning with wild promise. A tattered Hollywood storefront called The Pikme-up became the prototype for a new subculture that started as an unruly rebellion and exploded into a national phenomenon. The place was a bohemian revolution, a happening of ideas, poetry, music, and performance where a motley group of outcasts formed a unique community and an enduring family. Our documentary on The Pikme-up utilizes an amazing wealth of materials--more than 5000 photographs, over 200 video hours of performances, hundreds of print elements, and intimate interviews with friends, employees, and performers. We hope our experimentation with the materials and how memory is represented in film is true to the spirit of this amazing moment in Los Angeles cultural history.

Attractive and sexy 1960's era suburban housewives, all dressed in mid-century modern pitch-perfect styles, are hell bent on one-upping each other as "Hostess with the Mostess." They hold dinner parties that become increasingly boozy, flirtatious and wild -- and soon more than recipes get swapped.

Trouble comes to a family while trying to sell their house, not only does the kids try their best to keep the house from selling . One of the real estate agents is a deranged serial killer.

A young musician recovers from the loss of his girlfriend with the help of his female filmmaker friend, and even forms a friendship with the rival who stole her.

At its core, “Punks and Poseurs” is a narration-free concert film, but it’s cut with terrific interview footage that explores the changing nature of punk, from insider and outsider perspectives. There’s a lot of great footage with writer/performers Pleasant Gehman and Iris Berry, torpedoing the influx into the music scene of neophyte phonies who just didn’t get it, explaining title of the program. (After this first aired in 1985, a bunch of the new waver/Durannie chicks at my high school—which is to say all the girls who were trying their suburban Ohio best to look like Gehman and Berry—started calling everyone “poseurs,” which was pretty funny.) There’s also a hilarious interview with employees at a store called “Poseur,” which sold punk fashions and accessories—people had to get that shit somewhere before Hot Topic forever banished punk to the mall, no? Also keep an eye out for the kid giving a primer on how to fashion liberty spikes with Knox gelatine.