Modi Frank: Creating Visual Noise For Kicks And Profit

It is not hyperbole to state that director/filmmaker Modi Frank was highly instrumental in establishing the look of live rock videos as we know them.

Crucial groundbreaking clips like Jane's Addiction's “Mountain Song,” L7's “Pretend We're Dead” and “Everglade,” Rollins Band's “Starve” and “Tearing,” Fishbone's “Skank N' Go Nuts,” and The Smashing Pumpkins “Quiet” were all created by Modi. Modi’s breakaway alternative rock videos set the new standard with jump cuts and mixed formats — super 8, 16 mm, 35 mm, high 8 — alternating clarity with graininess, and crystalline with soft-focus imagery. Her jerky hand-held camera work bounced around in the pit and got right in the musicians' faces, reflecting an aesthetic of visual noise still used today to convey the excitement of raw rock. Modi’s style even influenced films like Natural Born Killers. These were all Modi's stylistic hallmarks of directing and camera work. In a rock video textbook, Modi would be chapter 1.

It was a female director who did this.

“That Jane's Addiction clip, 'Mountain Song’, was groundbreaking” Modi says today. “Music videos back then were all White Lion, Bon Jovi and Def Leppard—super fake vids. I was the first one to shoot and direct like you were there at the gig, You felt that band in your bones after watching one of my videos.”

Modi’s results were the televisual equivalent of Charles Peterson photographs of the Seattle grunge bands: onstage at a hot 'n' sweaty club, black and white or super-saturated color, elements leaping out of the frame—hi-octane and total bedlam. Modi’s work perfectly captured the excitement of the band and the live gig, and it changed everything. We would never have to see big-haired models rolling around on custom hot rods again.

Modi caught the filmmaker bug organically. Born and raised in Los Angeles, the child of Hollywood, daughter of famous character actor Ben Frank, who played a million cops and heavies on “The FBI,” “Police Story,” “The Rockford Files,”  “Baretta,” and beyond. If it was a Quinn Martin Production, Ben Frank was in it. Modi grew up on those amazing '70s sets. “He was a championship middleweight boxer who came to Hollywood from New York in the '60s. My father quit boxing to become the next Steve McQueen, then he became a famous character actor—he taught me to box at a very early age.”

A fast-living tomboy, in her teens Modi was a surf and skate rat. She lived in Malibu for a stint in the mid 70‘s as fellow teens like Tony Alva and Stacy Peralta reinvented skateboarding in the polyurethane wheels era. Being first-hand witness to and participant in this revolution helped Modi’s later work shooting interviews for Peralta's notable skate and Southern California culture documentary, Dogtown and Z-Boys.

In the '80s, Modi moved back to Hollywood and put down roots in the punk/hardcore music scene. With her apartment address down the street from the Whiskey, Modi co-ran an incarnation of the notorious after hours joint, the Zero Zero Club with SST Records aide de camp Merrill Ward. Modi and Ward appeared in a Rolling Stone feature The Zero Generation in the process. The photos from this feature can be seen in the famous book Rolling Stone: The Photographs. Modi’s photograph is along side rock greats as Madonna, David Bowie and other music icons. She can be seen in L.A. Babe, photographed by famed artist Moshe Brakha and appears in the book Whores: An Oral Biography of Perry Farrell and Jane's Addiction.

Fully embedded in the cultural revolution happening in Los Angeles, Modi next became an assistant to Penelope Spheeris, who directed the classic L.A. punk doc The Decline Of Western Civilization and Suburbia, before transitioning to high-grossing mainstream comedies like Wayne's World.  Modi got on-the-job training in her stint with Spheeris as her personal assistant, but the pupil eventually broke from the master.

Modi got her directing break with a 20-minute black and white silent Western film conceived from her friendship with X singer Exene Cervenka. Bad Day, a wayward tribute to the early silent film days of one-reel Westerns throws a saddle over the back of mid-80s and smacks the horse's ass with the anything-goes spirit of its two gifted creators.

Exene and Modi wrote Bad Day together as a salute to the roots-rock and cow-punk scenes that were flourishing in Southern California at the time. The X singer filmed and Modi directed.  The ladies put in their buddies as actors, which is a who's-who of the mid-'80s LA  music scene– X's John Doe, head Flesh Eater Chris D, Gil, T of Top Jimmy's Rhythm Pigs, and The Blasters' Dave Alvin all starred. A young Kevin Costner, who would go on to win Academy Awards with Dances With Wolves also stars.

Modi’s directing work got her representation at the newly found Propaganda Films - Foundry Division. By 1990, the company was producing almost a third of all music videos made in the US.  Modi was the only female director represented at Propaganda Films where the golden boys of directing were David Fincher, Nigel Dick, and Mark Romanek. Modi left Propaganda to form her own production company—Modivation Films.

With her new formed company, Modi brought on her producing partner Merrill Ward, who had not only had a music background but also notable industry credits. Ward served as producer, assistant director, and writer on a vast array of projects for David Lynch, Doug Liman, Moshe Brakha, The Ramones, The Beastie Boys, Megadeth, Suicidal Tendencies, CBS Television, The Disney Channel, Playboy, Bravo, and Warner Brothers Television. 

Together at Modivation Films, Modi and Ward took over the 90’s. Modi became The Alt-Rock Video Director of Choice.  It should be noted that the only other female directors working with these now iconic bands were Tamara Davis and Penelope Spheeris. The female director fishbowl at that time was very, very small,

Modi would go on to tour the world with mind blowing bands including Henry Rollins and his now formed kick ass, take no prisoners musical outfit, The Rollins Band. Modi was the official videographer and live director for The Rollins Band and every show and live gig she captured was a guerrilla warfare-type visual excursion.

Once again, Modi was capturing pure male aggression and talent, live onstage and off. She would continue to direct many projects for Rollins including two of Rollins' acclaimed spoken word, long form video releases; You Saw Me Up There and Talking From The Box—winner of boatloads of awards, including the Kennedy Film Center Honor.

Modi directed a wealth of work on the peculiarly '90s phenomenon of video magazines, as well as EPKs, rockumentaries, and of course music videos and other live televisual work. Her impressive roster of talent included Iggy Pop, Smashing Pumpkins, Stone Temple Pilots, Garth Brooks, Dwight Yoakam, Prince, Keith Richards, The Ramones, Clint Black, Pearl Jam, Ice T, Easy E, Motley Crue, Kiss, Butthole Surfers, Babes In Toyland, Alice In Chains, Anthrax, George Clinton, James Brown, Slayer, Queen, Ben Harper, Blink-182, and Lenny Kravitz.

Between directing gigs, there would also be a series of short comedy films Modi created and directed with alt comic Manny Chevrolet of the infamous lounge act Two Free Stooges.  All of her short comedy films toured the worldwide film festival circuit and earned her more film festival awards to buckle to her already weighed-down mantle. 

Working with K.D. Lang, Modi directed the anti-meat PSA Meat Stinks for PETA, a PSA so potent that the meat industry tried to ban Lang's music in her own hometown. Modi directed "Created Equal," an award-winning mini-documentary commissioned by the ACLU - The story of Cheryl Summerville, fired from her job for her sexual orientation and discovering U.S. laws would not/did not protect her. The film took 1st place at The Vermont International Film Festival for Justice and Human Rights.

Directors like Wayne Isham,  Stacy Peralta, and others would hire Modi for her smokin’ camera skills to be one of the cameramen on multi camera shoots. Modi was always the only female shooter on these packs of cameramen. 

Director Jeff Richter hired Modi to be on the camera team for Rage Against The Machine’s famous final concert at The Grand Olympic Auditorium. When Rage played before the Democratic National Convention in 2000 in LA, they managed to incite a full scale riot—Modi was there with boots on the ground capturing all the mayhem. Her skills as a shooter were heavily sought after, and are now easy to spot in those famous documentaries, concerts and riot footage.

While celebrating the Best Documentary prize with Stacy Peralta & all the Dogtown boys & crew for Dogtown and Z-Boys which won first place at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, Modi became pregnant. Seems Modi was not paying attention to awards that night. Or was she?

These were heady days.

“Napster hit Los Angeles hard,” she says now. “Anybody that was in the music business – especially us behind-the scenes people, like record producers, filmmakers, even marketing people, we got slammed. The record industry hit financial rock bottom.” Seeing Napster founder Sean Parker speaking at a huge industry conference in L.A. in the 2000s (and watching “record executives walk out crying”) was the only writing on the wall Modi needed. It may have taken eight more years for her to pack her bags, but she finally fled her beloved Los Angeles for Austin, TX in 2009, where all good rockers go to die and Modi currently lives.

“As they say,” she smiles, quoting X, “'she had to leave Los Angeles.” Truer words were never spoken.

After her years in the trenches Modi became an educator, speaking on numerous panels about digital and traditional filmmaking, directing, new media production, and distribution, and has has travelled internationally to participate in film and digital media conferences. These days, Modi is focused on her business Vntg Muscle, selling high end vintage upycled clothing goodies at hipster pops ups around Austin. Her Instagram @vntgmuscle is shot entirely by her, “Given that I have a photographer's eye, I live by the camera creed of …”always keep shooting, never get out of the boat” she laughs. @vntgmucle also features her beautiful, now an adult daughter Max modeling the vntgmuscle wares.

If you think Modi's directing/filmmaker days are over, you’re wrong. Modi is currently developing a multi-episode streaming show. Stay tuned for My War.  Her partners are fellow famed '90s director Kevin Kerslake and SST alumnus and production partner, Merrill Ward.

Will Modi change the look of streaming service content the way she permanently altered rock videos, short films, rockumentaries and feature films back in the day? One can only hope....