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TWISTED F*CKING SISTER!

A Film by Andrew Horn

 

A raucously riotous rags-to-riches record of rip-roaring rock renegades! (…) Very, very, very entertaining! – The Hollywood Reporter
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Trailer: We Are Twisted F*cking Sister!

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Press Clips

4 Weeks as #1 New Release in Documentaries on Amazon.com!

“‘W.A.T.F.S.’ is one of the most surprising movies I have seen in quite some time.(…) a film for everyone, not just fans, one which [imparts] a deeper understanding of and respect for the men who lived it.”
– Pamela Glasner, Huffington Post

“ hilarious and revealing interviews (…) as well as plenty of riotously entertaining footage from the band’s Seventies Tri-State club heyday. Immensely compelling”
– Dan Epstein, Rolling Stone

“ fascinating (…) a comprehensive and sometimes harrowing portrayal of the grind a working bar band in the 1970s had to endure to get by.”
– Glenn Kenny, NY Times

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The Movie

Dee Snider
Jay Jay French
Eddie "Fingers" Ojeda
Mark "The Animal" Mendoza
A.J. Pero

“We Are Twisted F*cking Sister!” is a rock documentary directed by Andrew Horn (“The Nomi Song”).  Whether you know Twisted Sister, love them, hate them or just couldn’t care less, it’s probably not the story you know or expect. It is, however, a story that’s both unique and universal.

The Beatles’ trial by fire was those two years playing in the bars in Hamburg. For Twisted Sister, it lasted for 10.

Back then, they were the Grand Funk of Glam and the NY Dolls of Metal. Some considered Twisted Sister a joke, others called them the greatest bar band in the world. While the microcosm of Punk and New Wave was taking over downtown New York in the mid 70s – early 80s, Twisted Sister was battling their way to the top of a vast suburban, cover-band bar scene that surrounded Manhattan in a 100 mile radius, yet existed in a parallel universe.

The film follows them from their beginnings as a cross-dressing glam band, playing cover songs for 4 shows a night, 6 nights a week – from New Jersey bowling alleys and Long Island beach bars, to the suburban mega-clubs of the late 70s/early 80s, and on to their bust-out appearance on the UK rock TV show, “The Tube”. Through it all, Twisted stood ready to do or die, not just for the music, but also “the show”. They refused to play the usual bar band role of  “human juke box for drunk and horny teens”. Every night, the band would give their all to the crowd, and mounted a full frontal attack on anyone not participating. They were going to force you to pay attention – and you were going to have fun whether you liked it or not.

They regaled their audiences with comedy rants, dragging them on stage for vomit inducing drinking games, engaging them in fits of disco record smashing and, at their most extreme, whipping them into club-destroying frenzy.

The performances were low on style and heavy on the humor and attitude – but behind it all, always smart and full of self awareness. Spinal Tap may have been clueless but Twisted Sister knew exactly what they were doing.

It was both a great living and a dead end because once you reached the peak – headlining clubs attracting audiences of 2, 3 or 5 thousand a night – there was nowhere left to go. As big as Twisted got on that circuit, in the eyes of the world, ie the music business establishment, they were nothing but a bar band.

If you’re expecting a tribute film recounting the well known events of Twisted Sister’s rock star career, be prepared for something very different. This is not about their  hit songs, the MTV videos and their massive stadium shows, rather it’s the untold story of how they became that band – one full of strange, and often hilarious, twists and turns. It’s a story of Rock ‘n Roll and the business of Rock ‘n Roll. It’s about perseverance and things blowing up in your face. It’s about finding yourself, finding your audience and doing literally anything, however wild, to connect with them. And even though we know how it ends, the roller coaster ride of getting there is what it’s really all about. A mesmerizing, and wickedly funny story of a 10 year odyssey to overnight success.

Twisted guitarist, Jay Jay French, sums it up, “the history of Twisted is really those 10 years in the clubs. The years we spent clawing our  way through the bar scene. It was learning how to make order out of chaos and how to win in bad situations. And it was unique to Twisted. I talk to hundreds of bands and nobody’s ever gone through what we went through. It’s who we are, and it’s why we are, and why we do what we do.”

Cast

(Click to open!)

The Band

Dee Snider

Dee Snider

Lead Vocals

dee snider

“The idea of the makeup and costumes and the outrageous behavior was: ‘you’re afraid to react because you think people are gonna laugh at you? Who the fuck is looking at you?!’ And you know people would go wild and I felt that was part of my job, to get people out of their shells by saying, ‘you can’t be any more embarrassing that what I’m doing up here on-stage.’”

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Jay Jay French

Jay Jay French

Guitarist

Jay Jay French

“While Twisted Sister was this heavy duty band playing, there would be people who would tell you that they came to see Twisted , not to hear the music. They would come to watch us bullshit on stage. So we brought the bullshitting to a high art.”

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Eddie ``Fingers`` Ojeda

Eddie ``Fingers`` Ojeda

Guitarist

eddie ojeda

“There were certain people who were there every night and all the girls had their favorite guy in the band that they liked. I was the cute one in the band. I mean there was always a certain amount of girls on my side who would scream and stuff. And being the cute one in Twisted wasn’t that hard a job. It’s kind of like if you want to look skinny, you hang out with fat people.”

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Mark ``The Animal`` Mendoza

Mark ``The Animal`` Mendoza

Bassist

mark mendoza

“When I first plugged in my guitar and turned my amp on – the side door on my parents’ house had these glass slats in it – and they all fell out and broke. Boom! I heard glass shattering and I went upstairs and the door had just completely broken. Yeah, so that was my first hit of unbelievable power. Of course the lights were dimming every time I hit a note…”

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A.J. Pero RIP

A.J. Pero RIP

Drummer

aj pero

“I started out early, at age 4. And I started as a jazz drummer cause my father was a jazz sax player. On my 17th birthday, my friends brought me to Snoopy’s on Staten Island and Twisted was playing and it was the most outrageous thing I ever saw in my life. And I said, wow, that’s it, I really want to be part of this!”

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The Cast

Kenny Neill

Kenny Neill

Former Bassist

Ken Neil

“I had some friends when I grew up in Monclair that we would get together were doing a wild variety of different things, very avant garde, almost jazz. [Twisted] were playing like uh, David Bowie – like Davie who?! So I was really curious…”

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Joe Gerber

Joe Gerber

Co-manager

Joe Gerber

“I was brought in initially because Jay Jay, who was not only playing guitar but did all the business for the band, was fried beyond recognition and couldn’t do it anymore. And I had to figure it out for myself. But fear is a great motivatior…”

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Mark Hitt

Mark Hitt

Guitarist – Rat Race Choir

Mark Hitt

“Our band, Rat Race Choir were the biggest fish in a little pond. And we were playing material by the best of the best. An album would be out less than a week and we could come out and play the songs – the people wouldn’t even have the damn album yet…”

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Mike Roviello

Mike Roviello

Booking Agent

mike roviello

“The first time I saw Twisted was when I became part of the agency, CTA, and had to go see all the bands we represented. There was like 30 people in this tiny little club and they walked out on-stage like they were playing Madison Sq. Garden. And I like instantly was a fan. And I wasn’t even a fan of the music. So that was my first inkling of Twisted Sister.”

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George Parente

George Parente

Club Owner – L’Amour

george parente

“The biggest Twisted Sister story was that they turned L’Amour into a complete Rock club. But as far as people, they never really changed to me. They were always the same. Dee was always Dee. Jay Jay would come and bullshit for hours with us. AJ was always the same, Mark was always wacked out, you know…except when he set my dressing room on fire.”

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Bobby Jordan

Bobby Jordan

Club Owner – Final Exam

bobby jordan

“I had no use for them at all. But you see it wasn’t my kind of thing, that’s what it was. In all fairness, they gave me a headache. But I mean you had to respect their persistence, you had to respect their work ethic and you had to respect that year after year, you know they were still there. You know how many bands I’ve seen come and go in 18 years?”

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Suzette Snider

Suzette Snider

Costume Designer, Dee’s wife

suzette snider

“The guys wanted a uniform, they wanted it to look like they were in the same band, cause in the beginning when I was only doing Dee’s clothes, Dee got so much attention, so they came to me and said could I make their clothes too. And they liked that they all looked like they were one. But for Dee I always went over the top.”

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Peter Hackett

Peter Hackett

Fan

Peter Hackett

“How many times have I seen Twisted in the clubs? I really have no way of knowing for sure, but my best educated guess would be hundreds of times. They were the Thursday night band at Speaks, and at least once a month they would play the weekend as well. So that would be three nights in a row that I would see them play, in just one week.”

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Mike Corcione

Mike Corcione

Fan

Mike Corcione

“I always liked Twisted Sister as a cover band. You know they slowly worked in they’re own material over time, but they performed the cover songs with such intensity, whether it was Johnny B. Goode or a Judas Priest song. And usually it was also a lot faster than the record, ‘cause they would play, you know, 1000 miles an hour, just blow your head off.”

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Dave Gillespie

Dave Gillespie

Fan

dave gillespie

“If you liked the band, you really loved them and if you hated them, you really hated them. And you’d get into arguments with your friends about it, you know, cause some of them loved them and some of them hated them. But you know that’s what makes it good. When you’re passionate about something either way, it makes it worthwhile.”

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Michael Wiese

Michael Wiese

Fan

Michael Wiese

“It was usually me, my buddy John, my buddy Mike, this guy Donny, Bruce, Al, and then we met a bunch of girls that we knew there. On the average we were 10 or 12, and including the girls, it was probably 17-20. We’d meet there and ended up a group, our little tight knit group. We’d meet up just about every time Twisted played.”

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Donna Boccuzzi

Donna Boccuzzi

Fan

donna

“The first time I saw them, my eyes went right to Jay Jay. And look at this guitar! Cause I love guitars, I love the shape of guitars, I don’t know, especially Les Pauls. And so there was Jay Jay, playing his Les Paul Sunburst, you know, that was all taped up in duct tape and I was like, ahhhhh…! And I kind of fell in love. And it was like…that’s where I stood every time.”

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Randy Jackson

Randy Jackson

Guitarist – Zebra

randy jackson

“Yeah, we came up here from Louisiana and started opening up for a lot of different bands and Twisted was one of them, and it kind of helped us get a following. Zebra were just like a three piece…I would call it ‘the politically correct band’, while Twisted Sister was just outrageous. Luckily we didn’t have to compete with that! “

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Mark Puma

Mark Puma

Manager

mark puma

“[As their manager] I didn’t want to be part of the club world. I said, ‘my job is to get you out of that world and if I’m caught up in discussions with club owners and booking agents and what the door count really was, or who hit who with a microphone, I’m never going to have time to get you a record deal and turn you into an international band.’”

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DJ Fingers

DJ Fingers

Fan – WBAB-FM

fingers

“Growing up in the heart of Long Island, you had a chance to get turned on to a lotta different things, quite a diversity to the musical landscape. There was Twisted, there was Zebra, Rat Race Choir, the Good Rats; we had our own music scene. And Long Island kind of laid ownership to Twisted Sister, they were our band, you know.”

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Lauri Naglieri & Sally Avellino

Lauri Naglieri & Sally Avellino

Fans

sally and lauri

Sally: You know, we were Long Island girls, so we didn’t travel further than Speaks. Not allowed. Cause we were only 16 or 17, my father forbade me to go to Nassau County, so I would have to sneak out.
Lauri: Twisted didn’t come on until 11:00 maybe? So half the time she said she sleeping at my house, I was sleeping at her house…
Sally: So we lied.
Lauri: …we were conniving…
Sally: Very…
Lauri: …just to get out
Sally: …anything.

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Jim Steen

Jim Steen

Fan

jim steen

“I’d always go with my friend George and a bunch of guys I was in a band with. We’d try to get there as early as possible so we could be as close as possible. Not the front row because that was too much. I think there was a safe Dee-distance. You didn’t want to be too close because then Dee would certainly pick on you. So if you were like 5 or 10 rows back, you’d be ok.”

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Garry Bushell

Garry Bushell

Writer – Sounds Magazine

garry bushell

“We didn’t have rock radio in the UK in those days. We had state approved Radio 1 and John Peel, but you didn’t hear rock and you didn’t hear metal. There might be only one rock show a week. So we knew about things from concerts and live shows. So we wanted to find shows, and we liked things that were loud and raucous, and that’s what Twisted Sister was.”

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Martin Hooker

Martin Hooker

Secret Records

martin hooker

“In the very early 80s I was running a label called Secret Records. It was kind of Punk second-time-around and everybody was really into it, and we charted every record that we put out. But, for my sins, my heart was always into Heavy Metal and I wanted to kinda experience that all again. And when Twisted came along it was kind of an entré back into that market.”

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Jason Flom

Jason Flom

Former CEO – Atlantic Records

Jason Flom

“I loved their music, but it didn’t matter if I loved it, cause the night I saw three thousand kids at the Mid Hudson Civic Center in Poughkeepsie throwing their fists in the air going, “Twisted Fucking Sister!” I said, ‘that’s it, we’re done! That’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen!’ And yet Atlantic records just wasn’t hearing it.”

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Phil Carson

Phil Carson

Former VP Europe – Atlantic Records

phil carson

“Everybody at Atlantic thought Twisted sucked, as did every other record company. But I thought they had something in their live performance which was rather special, and if you could get it on record, you could do quite well. But honestly, I was never expecting it to go gold, let alone platinum – I thought we’d make a bit of money, have a good time and that would be it.”

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In the Extras

Vin Healy

Vin Healy

Fan, Upstate NY

Vin Healey

“Rockland County was really boring and there was just like this one bar where, if you went to our high school, this is where you were supposed to hang out. And me and my friend kept hearing about all these Rock clubs in New Jersey and then one night we just said, the hell with it, let’s just find these places!”

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Pete Gottuso

Pete Gottuso

Fan, Long Island

Pete Gottuso

“We used to see them at Speaks constantly! And Speaks was tough to be standing in the front because the stage was so high and you’d stand up there all night long – your head was at an angle looking up, so the next day you were really sore. So we actually had a name for that condition, it was called “Speaks Neck”.”

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Danny Stanton

Danny Stanton

Fan, Long Island

Danny Stanton

“Attending high school in Queens NY, most kids were sporting Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, The Doors and Led Zeppelin on their jackets. I was sporting a custom painted Bad Boys Of Rock ‘n Roll Twisted Sister logo on the back of mine. Talk about getting your ass kicked for liking a band! It was kill or be killed time…but I ran fast at my age…”

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Gill Massey

Gill Massey

former UK Fan Club President

Gill Massey

“Twisted got signed to Atlantic in the UK so then they had a much bigger fan base here and it was obvious that they needed a fan club. And I became the fan club secretary, by default really. And it did get a bit out of hand because the postman was turning up with literally sackloads of stuff to my little apartment and I thought – oh crikey! – what do we do with this now?”

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Dante Bonutto

Dante Bonutto

Journalist, Kerrang! Magazine

Dante Bonutto

“At that time at Kerrang! magazine (in the UK), there was no competition, so we could do whatever we wanted really and we did it as fans. If I liked Twisted Sister, I put them in the magazine. It was run according to personal gut feeling, not ‘have they sold any records yet’. And we normally got it right, you know? If we liked it, why wouldn’t somebody else?”

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Twisted Moments In History

(Click to open!)

1973/74

1973/74

Jay Jay French: …so I thought here’s a good playing band and we’re gonna look like The Dolls and we’ll sound much better and we’ll get a record deal. (…) Unfortunately we didn’t have the ability to harness it, you know you kinda like hold that sucker for as long as you can before the whole thing blows up and in this case with Twisted, no one could control it and alcohol eventually dismantled the band.
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1975

1975

Jay Jay French: I was now exposed as a singer. So we used to do songs and I would berate the audience and try to get them to clap along with us, hustle them in any way I could to try to get a reaction from them because we sucked. Or I thought we sucked or I didn’t have any confidence in what we did and I figured well, if we can’t play better, I’ll beat them to death until they clap!

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1975

1975

Dee Snider: So I never heard Twisted but I knew from the ads what they did and from hearing about them, people would talk about them – Mott The Hoople, Lou Reed, David Bowie, that was their thing. I liked all that stuff, I loved all that stuff. So I was very interested in connecting with some people like who were into that.

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1976

1976

Jay Jay French: And now with the band of me and Dee and Tony and Kenny and Eddie, that band now makes the frontal assault on the Long Island bar scene.

Eddie Ojeda: I remember my father and Jay Jay’s father was at a show, and my father was pretty blunt about it – he says, ‘you guys were pretty boring till you brought [Dee] up on stage.

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1977

1977

Dee Snider: Twisted Sister was designed to overwhelm an audience. You know, other bands would be just going out with music. Well, we had music too. But how what could we do that was past the music? Well, the glam thing afforded us the costumes and then the make-up, and then if there was staging, anything we could bring to the table to throw more weight in our direction… we did it. So when other bands would go up against us…if you’re coming in and you’ve got a bat, and the other guy’s got a bat and a gun and a knife…you’re gonna lose. So whatever they could do, we would always just figure out how to outdo that.

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1978

1978

Jay Jay French: 1978 was our first really big statement summer, every place was packed, every show perfectly played. We had a huuuge line of amps to make a statement that Twisted Sister was to be reckoned with, cause we are bringing the artillery – we wanted to fit every square inch! …and by the way, most of it was plugged in.
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1979

1979

Dee Snider: To book the Palladium, sell out the Palladium, without a record deal, in the heart of NYC was basically just “fuck you”! Playing the Palladium was supposed to be the final step in the road to superstardom, the next step being major record deal, world tour, world domination. And then during dress rehearsal at the Palladium, catastrophe struck …

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1980

1980

Dee Snider: “Bad Boys of Rock ‘n Roll” was an attempt to give everybody something fresh to look at – something to motivate everybody, including the band. It was really the solidification of my creative control. That I was basically given carte blanche and the band accepted all my ideas, and seemed to welcome them and support them.
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1980

1980

Joe Gerber (Co Manager): That’s when we became record company, merch company, Twisted Incorporated, everything tied together, cause we couldn’t rely on anybody else, and really rebuilt ourselves. And that’s where we really started expanding: posters – Now Appearing! – records in the stores, radio spots, everything you would expect from a national act.
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1981

1981

Jay Jay French: If you could headline these rooms, you were the biggest bands. So by 1981 we had finally reached our goal, and not only were we headlining each of them, we were out-drawing everybody else. We were the #1 draw at the Fountain, we were the #1 draw at Glen Island, we were the #1 draw at Hammerheads, and where did that leave us? If we didn’t get out, we were gonna die.
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1982

1982

Eddie Ojeda: We got signed and out of the situation just before it all fell apart. It was just like a crumbling building and a helicopter came and picked us up and took us away.

Dee: “Six years we’ve been working… playing, busting our ass, working our balls off to get us a record deal, so we could become what we were meant to be – the biggest, heaviest, most kick-ass rock ‘n roll band in the world! And now the time has come, this is our last performance before we leave Friday night to fly to England to record our first album!”

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1982

1982

The message on this t-shirt says it all. Except that the record company went bust, the tour never happened and, well…
To find out what, why, how, and the way things finally developed, you have to see the movie.
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Contact

twistedsisterthemovie@gmail.com

List of Links

  • Like Us on Facebook
  • IMDb
  • Band Official Site
  • TS Facebook
  • Twisted Sister in the Clubs (Facebook)
  • House of Hair – Dee Snider’s Radio Show
  • Jay Jay French Official Site
  • The Nomi Song

I want to show the movie

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© 2015 All rights reserved. Andrew Horn, twistedsisterthemovie@gmail.com