Rock Opera
From Austin, “The Live Music Capital of the World” Texas comes Rock Opera, a hilariously raucous and seedy tale of drug fueled rock and roll debauchery. Rock Opera sets a fictional tale of double crossing drug deals in Austin’s real life underground music and drug scene.
Filled with great Austin bands and local scenesters, the story unfolds with Toe’s half-assed attempts to fund a road trip for his band PigPoke by selling marijuana. Rock Opera was written and directed by local Austin filmmaker and musician Bob Ray and according to Bob is “a true story that could have happened.”
Rock Opera starts off as a rambunctious stoner comedy and turns into a tense and action packed thriller as we follow Toe’s exploits through ramshackle houses, punk dives and backwater towns as he frantically scrambles to get his band on the road. A series of mishaps and dimwitted double crosses puts Toe in peril and he struggles to keep his head above bong water as chaos chases him to the frenzied climax.
Rock Opera features live performances by Nashville Pussy, Fuckemos, PigPoke, and Witchbanger, plus the music of Butthole Surfers, Fuckemos, Ed Hall, Cherubs, Phantom Creeps, El Flaco, Honky, Tallboy, Los Pinkeys, Titz, The Crack Pipes, Antebellum, Voltage, Squat Thrust, Pong, El Insecto, and an original score by 16 Deluxe.
“I like Rock Opera a lot. If every pot user out there goes to see Rock Opera, I think you’ll have a hit on your hands.”
- Richard Linklater, director of Slacker, Dazed & Confused, Waking Life
Austin Filmmaking, Ten Years After
From Slacker to Rock Opera: Richard Linklater Interviews Bob Ray
Watch the Entire Movie
"Hilarious!"
--Toronto Eye
"A hysterically funny slacker caper movie."
–Jerry Renshaw, The Austin Chronicle
"Rock Opera delivers the goods."
--Willamette Weekly
"RockOpera is damn funny."
--The Seattle Stranger
"If every pot user goes to see Rock Opera, I think you'll have a hit on your hands."
--Richard Linklater
"Tense, violent and funny, Rock Opera is solid midnight movie fare."
--Variety
"The funniest celebration of unrepentant drug ingestion since Cheech & Chong's Up In Smoke... One of the year's great finds."
-- San Francisco Independent Film Festival
"Genuinely warped...scathingly hilarious...a spot-on quasi-parody of the day-to-day existence of struggling Austin musicians and their wayward ways."
-- Marc Savlov, The Austin Chronicle
"I love Rock Opera!"
--Steve Bloom, High Times Magazine
"Hilariously seedy."
--Throttlebox.com
"Bloody funny... If you’re not easily offended, this should definitely be near the top of your to-view list."
--Grant Tait, Austin 360
"Hilarious and groovy…Rock Opera is rockin’."
--FileThirteen.com
"Rock Opera possesses that delicious sense of the absurd for which so many indie films strive for but very few achieve. Never before has the underground Austin music scene been brought onscreen to such glorious, pot-reeking life. Rock Opera could very well be the next Austin film to inherit the low-budget crown previously worn by Slacker and El Mariachi."
--SXSW
"A great film, including really fucking hilarious performances, especially the uberstoner Toe, played by the seeming unstoppable Jerry Don Clark. It's great fun."
--Terminal City Weekly
"Bob Ray is a director who rocks."
--IFC RANT
"A good old-fashioned ass kicking spectacle."
--Film Threat
"Rife with rocking energy...a hell of a time."
--New Times L.A.
"Truly suspenseful... terribly funny...Rock Opera puts Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to shame."
--San Francisco Weekly