"No one’s been more encouraging of Screen Slate than Richard Hell, who saved its hide more than he realizes and promoted it with a missionary zeal. The first time we spoke we met at the late Café Orlin, the site of one of his most memorable scenes in the film, and then one of the last vestiges of the city that Smithereens portrays. I could have died. Smithereens was the first American indie to compete for the Palme d’Or, and it presages that whole wave we popularly associate with Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, and so on. I know life isn’t a competition, but this is the best of those debuts. And when you consider Susan Seidelman alongside Allison Anders, Sara Driver, Penelope Spheeris, Lizzie Borden, Kathleen Collins, and Joel DeMott, among so many others, women really slayed in the American indie ’80s."

"She made three in the series, this, then II and III. This one is about hardcore punk in L.A. in the early ’80s so there’s a lot of Black Flag and that whole scene. Its aesthetic was one of the main influences that Chris Blauvelt and I used for Mid90s – for the way things looked, the way the backstage in the apartment looked, for the 16 mm. It’s a remarkable and encompassing snapshot of a scene that I’m personally drawn to, and the ethics and aesthetics of the film are as fucked up and raw as what it’s depicting. The crazy thing is that Penelope Spheeris started as a punk doc maker and ended up directing broad ’90s comedies - she made Wayne’s World (1992)! She also made Suburbia (1983), which is amazing, and another influence for Blauvelt and I. The main thing I did when I became a known as a an actor and had access to people and filmmakers, was me saying, like, “Hi, I’m the kid from Superbad, can I please have all the Decline movies?” That’s how I abused fame at that time."