Matt Pizzolo (born on Long Island, New York) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, bestselling comic book writer, playwright, and entrepreneur, best known for his work as writer of the speculative politics comic books Calexit, Rogue State, and Young Terrorists, creator of the transmedia franchise Godkiller, writer-director of the "punk classic" indie movie Threat, and director of music videos for Atari Teenage Riot."Atari Teenage Riot- Rage (WTO)," YouTube. Accessed Nov. 30, 2011.
He co-founded and runs indie film studio HALO 8 Entertainment with producing partner Brian Giberson and comic book publisher Black Mask Studios with partner Brett Gurewitz and creative director Steve Niles.
In 2012 Pizzolo was selected by Wired as "World's Most Wired Comics Creator" for his work synthesizing genre media with street politics ("anticorporate DIY production") and innovating new storytelling technologies ("engineering the transmedia spine that will take comics into the future").
Pizzolo became involved in political organizing in 2017, leveraging the momentum of his comic book series Calexit. He formed the political action committee "Become The Government" to support first time political candidates in the 2018 midterm elections (initially funded by his Calexit royalties), ran interviews with first-time candidates and grassroots organizers in the non-fiction backmatter of Calexit, and hosted Indivisible to run voter registration at his booth on the showfloor of San Diego Comic-Con.
Career Threat
Pizzolo was 19 years old, living out of a backpack in New York City's Lower East Side and working at Kim's Video and Tower Records when he wrote the screenplay for Threat, a radical, transgressive story of class struggle and youth violence.
He intended to shoot Hi8 footage of the principal characters and cut their dialogue and reaction shots against footage stolen from obscure films, creating a unique project built on film sampling (a common practice in the indie rock music of the time). As the project developed, Pizzolo discarded the sampling format and instead directed it on 16mm film as a traditional independent film despite the fact that its massive scope of location and action was quite ambitious for no-budget indies of the time which generally focused on a single-location, talking-heads format.Handelman, Jon. "All Hell Breaks Loose On The Lower East Side ". McGill Daily. February 3, 2006.Campion, Chris. "The Sundance Survivors". London Daily Telegraph Saturday Magazine. February 5, 2000.Manley, Brendan. "Culture Clash: NY Filmmakers Tackle Race, Politics, Sex and Social Unrest With 'Threat'". Long Island Press. January 12, 2006.Young, Dylan. "Itty bitty Indie ". Hour Weekly. February 2, 2006.Null, Christopher. "Threat" . Film Critic. January 24, 2006.Kulkarni, Neil. "Threat review 9 out of 10". Terrorizer Magazine. Issue 144 2006.Jones, Preston. "Threat". DVD Talk. January 24, 2006.Mitchell, Wendy. "Threat Of A Deal". IndieWire. September 2004.
Writing in Film Threat, T.W. Anderson rated Threat 4.5 out 5, saying "This film works on every conceivable level; it holds court not only as a historical document of time and place, but also as a window into the soul of American adolescence... The film is a revelation partly because of the subject matter, partly because of the DiY ethic but most importantly because the performances ring so true. The cast of mostly non-professional actors extract remarkable performances that frighten and stir the audience throughout this epic battle of cinematic creativity... Great art should assail the status quo, and that is what Pizzolo and Nisa’s film has skillfully accomplished."Anderson, T.W. "Threat review 4.5 out of 5". Film Threat. March 17, 2006.
Threat attracted controversy for allegedly glorifying violence and class conflict. When Threat premiered in US theaters, SuicideGirls commented, "Matt Pizzolo shook up Hollywood with his indie movie Threat and the guerrilla tactics he used to produce and distribute it. A defiant and confrontational movie about class war and unbridled youth violence, Threat is not exactly the type of film you might expect to earn its writer-director a multi-picture deal with Sony, but that's exactly what Pizzolo managed to accomplish along with his filmmaking partner Katie Nisa and their Kings Mob multimedia militia."Jihad, Vegan (May 5, 2006). "Matt Pizzolo, director of Threat". Suicide Girls.
Writing in DVD Talk, Preston Jones said "A raw blast of visceral anger, Threat explodes off the screen eliciting comparisons to early Martin Scorsese, Abel Ferrara and Larry Clark's nihilistic masterpiece Kids. Pretty heady company and it's to director Matt Pizzolo's credit that when Threat works, it's more than worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as those films... Undeniably compelling, Threat grabs you by the throat and holds tight for 90 minutes."
In his 9 out of 10 review for Terrorizer Magazine, Neil Kulkarni called Threat "Genuinely unsettling, thrillingly chaotic, a tale of a cross-cultural riot that takes in philosophy, polemic and politics without taking a breath… it’s a morally complex, beautifully acted, occasionally sickeningly violent portrayal of the underground."
Threat has been called a cult-classic and a "punk classic," winning multiple film festival awards, and touring punk and hip-hop venues across the U.S. and Europe, including over 100 dates on the Van's Warped Tour.Orvis, Ryan "Just a Minor Threat: New York Punks Attack Hollywood". Entertainment Today. 2005. Threat garnered a theatrical release and wide distribution after its appearance at Coachella.
Ray Gun called Threat "important... special and different from everything else out there,""Ray Gun". Ray Gun Magazine. 1999. The Village Voice's Long Island Voice called it a "triumph,"Friedman, Andrew "Through A Suburban Lens, Darkly". The Long Island Voice. 1999. Earcandy said "Threat is simply the voice of this generation's youth... it is easily one of the most important films of the decade," Entertainment Today called it "brutal yet fascinating," the McGill Daily said "Visionary director Matt Pizzolo takes a harsh look at what it means to be a disaffected youth, showing that the promised land of opportunity and the American dream are relics of the past," and Urb Magazine said Threat "makes Kids look like an after-school special.""Urb Magazine News". Urb Magazine. 1999.
After tour screenings, Pizzolo and filmmaking partner Katie Nisa taught DiY Filmmaking Workshops for aspiring guerrilla filmmakers. Over time, the filmmaking workshops became a focus of the events and Pizzolo invited local independent media-makers to teach various DiY-instructional workshops.Flick, Larry (August 25, 2000). "Do It Yourself" . Billboard.
DiY-Fest These workshops developed into DiY-Fest, the "touring carnival of Do-it-Yourself mediamaking" with contributions from notable independent artists including Ian MacKaye, Ani Difranco, Howard Zinn, Jello Biafra, Jim Jarmusch, Jem Cohen, Sarah Jacobson, Abel Ferrara, and many more.Rogers, Stanley (August 3, 2001). "Fest Shows You Don't Have To Go It Alone to Do-it-Yourself" . The Times of Trenton.
"Rage" Pizzolo was invited to give a lecture on DiY media at 2600 Magazine's H.O.P.E.: Hackers On Planet Earth conference. He titled the lecture "Open Source Mediamaking" and articulated the need for independent media by contrasting the relatively tepid news coverage of the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle against the provocative and incendiary documentary footage shot independently by activists on the ground inside the protests. The radical band Atari Teenage Riot invited Pizzolo to create a video for their song "Rage" and utilize the documentary footage in the hopes of spreading it to a wider audience. Pizzolo incorporated footage from the WTO protests in Seattle, the World Bank protests in Washington DC, and the May Day protests in Berlin where members of Atari Teenage Riot were arrested (footage was provided by pickAxe Productions, Big Noise Films, Re:Generation TV, and Philipp Virus). The video played numerous festivals including the Chicago Underground Film Festival and was later included in Buddyhead's Punk Is Dead music video compilation DVD.
HALO 8 Entertainment
In 2005, Pizzolo formed HALO 8 Entertainment, a production, distribution, and marketing company devoted to counterculture films, punk rock cinema, and alt-lifestyle videos. Although the company was partly devised as a distribution infrastructure for Kings Mob's productions, HALO-8 quickly grew into a thriving indie studio with various shingles including horror movie/cult film sub-label UnitShifter Films and alt-lifestyle sub-label DiY-Fest Video.Weise, Becky. "". 941 Theater Journal. October 21, 2008.
One of the first films Pizzolo championed at HALO-8 was the controversial and embattled Your Mommy Kills Animals, a critically acclaimed documentary about the animal rights movement. Although widely praised for its unbiased approach, the film drew the ire of Washington lobbying firm Center for Consumer Freedom, who waged a costly legal campaign to block release of the film. Despite Amazon.com, Netflix, and numerous other retailers, film festivals, and movie theaters' decision to drop the film when faced with legal threats and intimidation, Pizzolo stood by the film and continued its distribution despite fierce, ongoing opposition.Hays, Matthew. "Dealmakers Scouting Fantasia". Playback Magazine.July 11, 2007.Goldstein, Gregg. "Halo-8 Lettings 'Animals' Out Of Their Cages". The Hollywood Reporter. July 13, 2007.Martin, Peter. "'Your Mommy Kills Animals' DVD Pulled by Amazon". Cinematical. November 14, 2007.Yahoo! News. "'Your Mommy Kills Animals' DVD Hits Shelves Today... Maybe". Yahoo Finance. November 13, 2007.Martin, Peter. "Indie Online: Netflix, Televandalism and Jaman". Cinematical. May 21, 2008.Rosenthal, Phil. "Halo-8 Launches Digital Movie Portal 'TELEVANDALISM.com' with Controversial Flagship ". Elites TV. May 21, 2008.
"Godkiller" In 2008, Pizzolo expanded Halo 8 into comic books by writing Godkiller. The comic book was illustrated by Anna Muckcracker and was released as limited edition print comic books at Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors, Wizard World Chicago, and WonderCon.Black Mask. "Godkiller: The Reading Order. Godkiller: The Reading Order.
Godkiller: The Illustrated Film
In February 2009, Pizzolo announced his next film would be an illustrated film called Godkiller: Walk Among Us, adapted from his graphic novel of the same name, which was illustrated by Anna Muckcracker. Set in the future after an economic collapse, a nuclear holy war and an alien invasion, Godkiller: Walk Among Us follows an orphan named Tommy as he searches for a new heart for his ill sister, Lucy. Pizzolo explained the inspiration of the story thus: "I thought it would be fun to design a new mythology for fuck-ups and misfits. My goal with it is to present heroes that don't behave heroically because it's their job to maintain the status quo or because they're bored and want to rescue a princess, they act heroically because they're regular misfits who are trying to do the best they can for each other in an unjust, fucked-up world.""The Making of "Godkiller," Full Circle Magazine (Nov. 24, 2009).
The illustrated film format Pizzolo developed with producer Brian Giberson for Godkiller merges sequential art with 3D CGI, motion graphics and dramatic voice performances in the style of a radio play.Thill, Scott. "Post-Apocalyptic Comic Godkiller Emerges as 'Illustrated Film'". Wired. October 6, 2009.Mr. Disgusting (February 24, 2009). "Cult Icons Topline Halo-8's 'Godkiller'". Bloody-Disgusting.