Steve Moriarty finds closure with the Gits' documentary release

By Amber Drea
Published: July 11th, 2008 | 1:55pm

Fifteen years after the brutal murder of the Gits singer Mia Zapata in 1993, a definitive documentary about the band and its music was theatrically released July 7, 2008. Drummer Steve Moriarty, with the help of guitarist Andy Kessler and bassist Matt Dresdner, was instrumental in facilitating interviews with friends, family, and other musicians in the early-’90s Seattle scene, as well as in compiling footage of the Gits’ live performances. He’s also responsible for making sure the Gits’ music remains available for fans, an audience that continues to grow as each new generation discovers their timeless grunge-punk sound driven by Zapata’s biting lyrics and bluesy growl. Moriarty spoke with Venus Zine from Oakland, California, where he now lives and plays in a band called the American Professionals with Dead Kennedys guitarist Klaus Flouride.

Was it difficult for you to allow director Kerri O’Kane to shoot this documentary?
It took a long time [for us to let her] in at first. I think I warmed up to her initially before the other guys. We had done so many TV shows, like "Unsolved Mysteries" and "America’s Most Wanted." We were really tired of spilling our guts on camera just to keep the investigation going and to raise money for the private murder investigation. So we weren’t really interested in doing [the film], but she said it was only gonna be an eight-minute short film, so I was like, that would be fine. I wanted to help them out, because they seemed like nice people.

Were you like, “wait a second,” when you found out she was doing a feature-length film?
Yeah, there were a lot of different points where we were like, “Wait a second, that’s not cool.” It’s a very touchy subject when you’ve dealt with that stuff for so long, and [the filmmakers] went through a lot of different versions of the film before they arrived at what they have now. It took years for them to finish, because this was their first film and funding is difficult. In the end, I’m happy with how stuff came out, and I’m proud to put my name on it.

Had any time passed without people asking you about Zapata’s death, or is it a constant thing?
The latter. Lots of people have come to us saying, “Oh, I want to make a movie,” or “I want to write a book,” or “I’m doing this compilation album of Gits songs.” But rarely does anyone follow through with it. When [O’Kane and producer Jessica Bender] first came up, I was like, “Oh, they’re never actually gonna do anything.” I didn’t really expect that they would have so much tenacity to finish it, and they did. They never gave up.

Did you have any say in the final product?
They would finish a version, and they would send it to myself and the other two guys. Andy and I actually reviewed the films, we’d write critiques, and then they’d make adjustments. We pretty much came up with two criteria for the film that we were pretty consistent about: There has to be as much live footage as they can get away with, and it had to be funny.

Why was being funny important?
The band was always funny. It wasn’t this angst-filled goth band or something. We had a great fucking time. And everything had become so serious, and morose, and melancholy because of how the band ended. But what we wanted to do was remember the music and the band for what it was in the moment. In the moment, it was a blast. We had our whole career planned out and our whole lives ahead of us. We’d just been hitting our musical stride, and we were about to write a brand new album. We had this creative renaissance after being a band for five years, and we were just getting the recognition that we deserved. I think that we would still be a band now and making music had Mia not been murdered.

How soon did you begin playing music again after it happened?
She was killed in July, and in August we got together and we discussed whether we wanted to keep the band going without Mia, and we thought, that’s what she would want. So we auditioned about 20 singers, and nobody could really hold a torch; so it was really frustrating.

We decided that the only way to do it was if we try to sing by ourselves, so Andy took on the vocal thing, even though he had never sang before. I think we also kept the band together because we knew we needed money to pay for the private murder investigation.

When we played in Seattle, lots of people would come, and we’d be able to make a little bit of money. We did a couple U.S. tours, several West Coast tours, had an album, an EP, three or four singles. We were actually really active, but it’s because we were healing. Part of our therapy was to rock out, to get the frustration out — that’s why some of the songs were so angry, the next band after the Gits. This was like the physical soundtrack to our mission to find the guy who killed our best friend.

With the conviction of the killer and release of this film, do you feel like you can put it all behind you now?
You know what, I really do. It’s a really good feeling. I’m ready to move on and get on with my life. I’m ready to put it behind me.

The Gits Movie Web site