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February 11, 2025 16 mins
Pirate radio takes center stage as The Projection Booth tunes into 40 Watts from Nowhere (2025), the riveting true story of an underground FM station broadcasting from the shadows of 1990s Los Angeles. Host Mike White sits down with the film’s director, Sue Franklin, to explore the rebellious spirit behind the airwaves, the challenges of bringing this real-life outlaw operation to the screen, and the cultural impact of independent radio in the pre-internet era.

Catch it at the Slamdance 2025 film festival.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh is it show time?

Speaker 2 (00:08):
People say, good money to see this movie.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas,
pop popcorn, and no monsters.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
In the Protection Booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Boring at off.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
How do you feel about.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Pyra Radio and if Sam Fringe and y B FCC.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
What I like is that we're able to play whatever
we want to play, We're able to say whatever we
want to say, and nobody dicks with us.

Speaker 4 (00:57):
In fire radio, It's just like a weird urban legend,
and then you'd hear it and realize.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
It was real. Kind of this like mysterious thing that exists.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Able people knew there was an illegal radio station, so
we're like, no, we knew what it was.

Speaker 5 (01:16):
Adot Applyvate radio stage last eight month signal across five
entire city blocks. My message for those pirates out there
that are saying that we're going to get away with
this was, uh, don't get too comfortable.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth.
I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking
with Sue Carpenter. She is the writer and director of
the new documentary forty Watts from Nowhere that is playing
over at the slam Dance Film Festival coming up pretty
darn soon. Miss Carpenter was a DJ and founder at

(01:57):
an underground slash pirate radio station back in the mid
nineties into the early two thousands. Had a great time
talking with her about the station as well as why
she decided to make this movie right now. Thank you
so much for listening, and I hope you enjoyed the interview.
Before this was a documentary, it was a book. Can
you tell me a little bit about how the book

(02:18):
came about.

Speaker 6 (02:19):
Yeah, the book came about because I have a horrible memory,
So shortly after the station was busted, I decided that
I should chronicle it when I had everything fresh in
my brain, and so the book came out in two
thousand and four. I started to write it, and I
think I got the deal in nineteen ninety nine or

(02:42):
two thousand, so I started to write it probably a
year after the station went under and that's why that exists.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
And then why the documentary.

Speaker 6 (02:52):
Now, Because I've found that there was all this vintage
footage that I didn't know existed or hadn't remembered. To
the point about me having a horrible memory because I
did a sit down interview in nineteen ninety eight with
the person who had all this footage. I don't remember doing.
I only found out that this footage existed two years ago,
and I thought as a journalist, I had worked in print,

(03:16):
I'd worked in radio, worked in television, and I figured, Okay,
I have all this experience. I know how to tell
a story. Now I have this footage, I'm just going
to give it a shot. So that's how that happened.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
This project came together pretty quick.

Speaker 6 (03:33):
I am not somebody who likes to go slowly. I
know that if I just dragged this out, I would
hate it. I had a very tight deadline. I wanted
it to premiere in twenty twenty five because that's the
thirty year anniversary of when I went on air, and
so for us to meet the deadlines for all the
film fests, it meant that we had to have our

(03:56):
first cut together last summer and then massage. So in
earnest it probably took seven months, and then it was
like three months of dialing things in. It was locked,
but we had to upgrade some of the photos in
the video and music and get all that license and
all that mambo jumbo.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
Just gathering all the people must have been quite an ordeal.
I work in daily news.

Speaker 6 (04:19):
I'm a breaking news reporters on used to working pretty
quickly getting in touch with people. And also this is
self financed, and I couldn't afford to drag it out either,
you know what I mean. So I'm just lucky that
people came on board and I could set up the
interviews and make sure those were happening and delegating. Once

(04:43):
you find your people to do certain things and they're
off and running while you're doing your thing, and it
really worked out.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
Were you still in contact with all of these folks.

Speaker 6 (04:52):
No, I really was not, and I was re entering
their lives cold and funnily, Quasar in the movie, who
seemed a little hesitant to be interviewed at first, sat
for an interview, and then we got the film together,
the first cut, and then I somehow shared it with
him and he liked it so much that he wanted

(05:15):
to be involved as a producer. And he just is
one of these people who continues to know everybody. So
he was able to take a lot of the really
tough things off my plate, like trying to clear the
Mazzie Star footage or get certain pieces of music because
he knows those bands. That was great.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
Why the hesitation was it because this was inherently an
illegal activity.

Speaker 6 (05:41):
I don't know. I think that some people just they
moved on to their lives, so why do they need
to revisit it. But I don't think that was most people.
And it was a slight hesitation. It wasn't you have
to convince me. It was like pushed me over with
a feather, But it was just like, why are you
doing this? And I think there was also some that

(06:01):
it was going to be a vanity project. Look at
what I did, look at how cool I was back
in the day, and I really did not want that
to be what it was. And I was very careful
working with the editor to make sure that it just
didn't seem like I was blowing my own horn.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Well, it is interesting that so many of the interview
subjects address you and are speaking directly to you, and
that's a nice touch.

Speaker 6 (06:27):
Yeah, that's because I was doing all the interviews. The
original interviews from back in nineteen ninety eight were done
by one of the DJ's, Robert Sullivan, and a little
bit by me too, But the ones that were done
in over the last year were done by me, and
I think that really helped because they knew that I
knew the story and they knew the story, and I

(06:48):
think that it got different answers from them that seemed
warmer and made the film seem more intimate. And he's
watching it feel like they're part of it too.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Yeah, it feels like they're in the living room with
you when you're interviewing them.

Speaker 6 (07:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yeah, you mentioned the rights and clearances and I couldn't
believe just how much music you had in there. What
kind of hoops did you have to jump through for this?

Speaker 6 (07:13):
We have an amazing music supervisor, Maria Koog, who came
to me through Quasar Brandon, the guy who knows everybody.
He was like, you should be working with Mara on this,
and she just worked her magic. We got stuff I
never would have expected us to get. I would not
have expected us to be able to clear Red Hot

(07:36):
Chili Peppers, Rage against the Machine, and I'm pulling out
the biggest bands, which is obviously not what KBLT or
Pira radiumid Station was really about, but they do play
a role in the station's history, and then Fugazi, who
apparently does not license their music anywhere, Bikini Kill, John Spencer,
Blues Explosion, some of the local bands like Touch Candy,

(07:58):
which was really one of my favorites from back of
the day, Pop Defect. The animator was also in a
band called the Abe Lincoln Story, so there's some footage
of that band in there. A lot of it was
the local scene. Everybody has moved on with their lives,
and weirdly they moved into areas that were very helpful

(08:19):
for the making of this movie. Animation, music, supervision, music composing.
So I just feel like I was really lucky.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Would having Tom Morello in the movie help with the
licensing a breach against the machine?

Speaker 6 (08:35):
I think that it did, And that was weird that
I even got to interview him. I was doing a
story for broadcast television and I normally never even do
those stories, and for some reason, his people reached out
to me and said, hey, do you want to do
the story with Tom, and so I did, and then
at the end of that interview, I just said, Hey,

(08:56):
I'm working on this documentary. Can I ask you a
couple questions for the documentary? Have you heard of the station,
and he had he was never involved with the station,
and answer those two questions. I of course then had
to get approval to include them in the documentary, and
then those people we had to reach out to through
the music supervisor. But I feel like the movie really

(09:17):
syncs up with who he is as a person. It's
very socialist, it's very like power to the people. And
also that song Gorilla Radio is like so completely on point,
which is why I wanted to use it. I think
it was all of those things. And even though we
were offering like almost no money, they don't need it,

(09:39):
so I think that worked in our favor too. Yeah,
but I was shocked that we got almost every single
song that we wanted.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
You've been that sweet spot talking about ninety five, where
there are some independent bands that have already signed with
the majors, your Nirvana, your Pearl Jams, but there are
bands that are still out there born independently, and dealing
with them, I imagine has to be way easier than
dealing with the big boys.

Speaker 6 (10:04):
We knew that we wouldn't be able to get any
universal bands just because they wouldn't play with us for
our price point. That we were offering or offering everybody
the exact same money, whether it was a band that
nobody had heard of or fro the band that everybody
had heard of. So some were easier than others, but some,
like multiple bands were on that same level, and so
she was dealing with the or same label, and then

(10:27):
she was dealing with the same person, and once somebody
had said yes, then it was just like, so that
was great.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
I also have a very bad memory. So were there
times while you were making this documentary where you're hearing
stories about yourself and you're just like, I don't remember
this at all.

Speaker 6 (10:44):
I don't know if I was really hearing stories about myself.
I was trying to get them to fill in gaps
of the story, just to be able to tell the
story cleanly through other people's words and how people misremember
so their stories might not completely sync up. And I

(11:04):
had that in a few different situations. Mike Watt didn't
remember how he came into the station, but I did,
and somebody else did. Oh yeah, I did hear one
new story, which it's when a spiritualize came into the
radio station just for a really quick interview. I didn't
realize that Hope sand of Baal from Mazzie Starr was
with him. Obviously I was not there because I don't

(11:24):
remember that. But there were just so many bands that
had come into the station, huge bands that I should
have been informed of that I it was just so normal.
I guess at the point Beth, people didn't feel like
they needed to tell me that my favorite artist was
just in my house.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
How big was the studio before you put in all
the equipment maybe.

Speaker 6 (11:48):
Five feet wide and it was like the size of
a queen size mattress.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
So have you seen this with an audience yet?

Speaker 6 (11:58):
I did a friends and family screening in August. It
was just a little screening room that only sat thirty
people at a time, so we did three in a
row and it was a lot of the DJs and
my son and it was really level. It's so fun
when people that you know who were part of it

(12:19):
like react and just I loved that they loved it.
That was different that I got. I felt like it
wasn't just see you later on their way out the door,
tried to avoid. I felt like they genuinely liked it.
So that was good.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Wow, look forward to you being able to see it
now at slam Dance. This should be fantastic.

Speaker 6 (12:39):
The premiere I just found out yesterday is going to
be in a theater with four hundred seats. I am
hoping that we fill them, and then if it is
fold then I'm hoping that it is just like rowdy
and laughter and yeah, the whole emotional roller coaster that
I hope everybody who watches it feels.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
Thank you so much and thank you for the film.
Like I said, I really enjoyed it and it was
great talking with you.

Speaker 6 (13:06):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 7 (13:19):
I could never say my way to the job because
my love what always lets me right up. And since
my options I've been with other way asked at a
bargain with my ready here DJ, I said, I'd like
the song to be number one. He said, I'd really
really love to help you, Madison, And then I knew.

Speaker 5 (13:36):
That I would have him to thank because he asked
me how much I had in the bank.

Speaker 8 (13:41):
He said that they.

Speaker 5 (13:42):
Love him investment, and then all the others I've been
giving them sounds. He said, then you are would justify
the guys. Any line, he said, the record wouldn't have
to be happy, and I want everything to hear if
it's not. It was the event that I got, and
that the other one they're giving is a shot.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
Let's you know, mind there is some girl cheating.

Speaker 5 (14:06):
Man you name, and they were giving the sun because
then the reward it just just fine to gons edit
the line name. Mister d J, I thought you said
we had a day. I thought she said you scratched
my back end, I'll scratch you, reckon.

Speaker 8 (14:24):
And I thought you said we had a day.

Speaker 5 (14:38):
Well, I talked you about the world of Suddress.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
I wonder whinning in the freedom this?

Speaker 8 (14:43):
You know, the rabbits had.

Speaker 5 (14:44):
To spit tween him, just be space patient must be
wearing them because.

Speaker 8 (14:49):
They haven't made a sign. Not did anyone to meet him?
Came and the chuckie is mood out of town.

Speaker 5 (14:58):
The diacono said, didn't know. I did be He said
the theme was not serve investment. And then all the
others have for given the sound, he said, and then
we are justified the gossom.

Speaker 8 (15:10):
As a man of the line in mister Gid, I thought.

Speaker 5 (15:14):
You said we have a d I thought she said
you scratch my back and I'll scratch you. And I
thought you said we had a day.
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