Bill Cody likes to remind people that he’s not just one the filmmakers behind Athens, GA: Inside/Out. I can tell he’s frustrated to even talk to me about it; not too long ago, a younger director approached him and recited quotes from the film for 15 minutes straight. “What was funny, I wanted to talk to him about his film, but I never got the chance to,” he reveals. “But you know, that’s cool.”
Just before our call, Cody had been leafing through footage of his next project, Athens, GA: 30 Years On. After three years of gathering interviews and funds, the Los Angeles-based director is finally ready to premiere a few clips to the public at a fundraising bonanza tonight at Southern Brewing Company. “There’s really been a continuum [in Athens], and I think that’s what the movie’s about,” he tells me. And while Cody refers to artists like Linda Stipe and Cindy Wilson that have circled back to the Classic City, he too has joined Athens’ ever-cycling legacy.
While Cody might live another life in Highland Park, LA as a politician and sheriff, he might never live down his reputation as a director of music docs. He’s poked down to Georgia several times over the years, profiling Atlanta’s burgeoning scene back in 2009 (We Fun) and zooming in on the Black Lips in 2013. But in 1987, Cody and Tony Gayton’s Athens, GA: Inside/Out made outsiders around the country fall in love with the off-beat college town, where everyone sat on their porch steps and made crazy cool art together for the sheer hell of it. Globetrotters like R.E.M., Pylon, and the B-52s appeared next to local firebrands like Flat Duo Jets, the Kilkenny Cats, and Bar-B-Q Killers.
“We were simply trying to do Vernon, Florida with music,” says Cody with a perceived shrug, referencing Errol Morris’ landmark work. But he and Gayton accomplished more than that—suddenly, Athens realized they had a community worth nurturing. Flagpole Magazine ran its first issue later that year to keep tabs of their own scene.
Thirty years on, Cody hadn’t planned on shooting another film in Athens any time soon. But after some old friends invited him back to Athens about three years ago, one particular acquaintance cornered him to pitch the idea. “It wasn’t really a conversation, it was more like he was talking to me for 30 minutes, saying I really needed to do a new version,” he says. “And I was nodding a lot.” So Cody gathered resources, and garnered support from Georgia Public Television, the Georgia Film Academy, and the University of Georgia. By October, he launched a GoFundMe page.
Cody picked a fine time to chronicle the scene again. The Athens Popfest had just returned. Kindercore Records were launching a vinyl pressing plant. Luminaries like Vanessa Hay of Pylon, Cindy Wilson from the B-52s, and Linda Stipe from Oh OK were jumping back into gigs. (As Cody attempted to note but faltered, that’s an incredible trend for an industry that favors the youth, and especially for a society where older women used to fade much sooner from the public eye than men.) And the younger vanguard had never been so diverse, as women and people of color joined the action, including a tight-knit hip-hop network.
“For a while, Athens became about a lot of bands that had four or five dudes,” he notes. “[Now], of the bands that started in the last five to six years, almost all of them, if they’re not fronted by a young woman or an older woman, they have a guitar player or a drummer.”
Cody and his crew captured all of this. For a few nights, he stayed out at Laura Carter’s Orange Twin farm, where he hung out with Carter, Andrew Reiner of Elf Power, and all the goats. (Cody tells me that Carter once trained the goats to perform tricks, but that she hadn’t kept up the training lately. “They still mow the lawn,” he says.) Hay also graciously invited him to her house for several nights, as the two were good friends. “If she’s not the most beautiful person in town, she’s at least in the top five,” he says. Cody also attended one of Taylor Chiccoine’s Pity Party house shows, which challenged the older director somewhat. “It rained halfway through the show, and they all crammed into the living room, and it made me wish I was younger,” he remarks, before hastefully adding, “In a good way! Not an R. Kelly way!”
Granted, this was also a tense period for Athens. In the post-Trump era, civic unease has spread steadily across the nation, but as Cody pointed out in our interview, even this liberal hub has been mired by its Southern conservative roots. He points to the recent gubernatorial race between Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams as a litmus test of how the town has changed. “[Kemp] is from Athens, and he got beat 70-30 in Athens-Clarke county,” he says. “That would not have happened 30 years ago.” So, as locals called out bars and other small businesses for antiquated policies that excluded Athens’ black community, Cody shot that, too. Before long, he was following activists and holding interviews with then mayoral candidate Kelly Girtz.
In this way, 30 Years On has morphed into more than just another music biopic. Of course, fans of Inside/Out would insist that Cody’s first film was more than just a movie about Athens. As one critic wrote, “I used to sit in my house when I was teenager, and I used to look at that record album, and go, ‘see, there’s other people out there like me!'”
For his part, Cody adds, “The DIY movement didn’t strictly start in Athens, but I think, for a certain group of people, that movie showed them that they could do something, and be successful at it on their own terms.” And while he certainly hopes that 30 Years On might attain the same cult following, he hopes even more that modern viewers can still find inspiration, as he did, in Athens’ radical changes. “You can’t really make this happen,” he admits, “but going through the interview footage, I [realized I] want people to feel like they can be activists.”
The Athens, GA: 30 Years On fundraiser and screening event goes down today at the Southern Brewing Company. Bands on the bill include Pylon Reenactment Society, David Barbe, Casper & The Cookies, the Grands (a smaller incarnation of the Glands), and more. Cody will also be auctioning off 30-yr old memoranda, including original movie posters for Inside/Out. Doors open at 6 p.m. Admission is $10.
More Info
GoFundMe: @athensgathirtyyearson