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When Michael Dwyer and Justin Krook started filming “Travis Barker: Louder Than Fear” in 2017, they expected it to be completed within just a few years. It took nearly a decade.
“It’s not what we planned,” Krook says. “No one would agree to filming or being filmed for almost 10 years. That’s a quarter of my life.”
The film, now streaming on Hulu and Disney+, starts with a cinematic tribute to drums and drummers, featuring interviews with peers like Questlove, Tommy Lee, Stewart Copeland and others before narrowing in on Barker, the Blink-182 drummer, and his distinctive style.
Then it settles into Barker’s story: He lost his mother as a teen, was kicked out of the house by his father for getting a tattoo, went from being a Laguna Beach trash man to a popular drummer in the Southern California punk scene to a rock superstar. He also struggled with drug addiction for years.
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But what makes Barker’s saga different from any other rock doc is that Barker also survived a plane crash that left his best friends dead and his body covered with terrible burns. He was in the hospital for months and required dozens of surgeries. That tragedy and the ensuing trauma was, naturally, the framework for the documentary.
“Travis had pulled himself back from drug addiction but the film had no ending because he hadn’t really found closure from the plane crash,” Krook says.
Barker was dissatisfied too. “He said, ‘I’m a traumatized human being who hasn’t moved on and I want some resolution,’” Krook recalls.
Travis Barker is a survivor who loves a challenge. He’s touring with Blink-182 (don’t clean the blood off his drums) and expecting a baby with Kourtney Kardashian.
So, they kept filming … and filming. Barker fell in love with and married Kourtney Kardashian, took up running as therapy and even managed to get back onto a plane.
“When we started filming he said, ‘There’s nothing on this planet that will get me on a plane again,’ so we couldn’t believe it when he finally did,” Krook says. “We got to see his recovery to the man he is today but it took almost 10 years to tell that full arc. What we found is it’s not just about how you survive that but who you survive it for and who you become through that process.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What happened when you were trying to finish the film originally?