WEB-EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: HENRY ROLLINS ON HIS NEW FILM, ‘H FOR HUNGER’

Rollins Band and onetime Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins is a proud world traveler who likes to see things from the natives’ perspective. On a trip some years ago to Antananarivo, Madagascar, he visited the city’s food stalls and was shocked to see flies covering the food, kids running around naked, and general ill health. That’s when he started thinking seriously about the hunger crisis. “It makes me mad at the situation,” he says, looking back. “The food was, for me, inedible, and it made me see that there’s no way you could drop me off in that city and go, ‘OK, here’s some money, go eat.’”

Rollins brings his outrage about the food crisis to the new film H for Hunger (Adventure), in which he portrays an enraged victim of world hunger, pulling no punches in describing both the effects of his plight and why current living conditions across the globe aren’t sustainable. Rollins also co-financed the film, which was written and directed by Neil Hollander, who previously examined China’s “one child” policy in Birds of Passage. The pair will work together again in the upcoming documentary about military dictatorship in Myanmar, Under the Radar: Burma, which the always-busy Rollins made in between his spoken-word engagements, a DJ show on KRCW, and acting in the TV biker series Sons of Anarchy. H for Hunger will be screened as part of the Royal Flush Festival in New York City on October 17 at 5:30, followed by a Q&A with Hollander. In the meantime, Rollins shares his thoughts on the film.

REVOLVER Why did you want to participate in a film addressing world hunger?
HENRY ROLLINS It is one of the most disgusting ways to die, because it is so slow and there are so many witnesses, not necessarily up close and personal, but the world is moving on and doing things and there’s this person starving to death, day after day. It’s not like, Whoops, got hit by a car. It’s on our watch, and it kind of taps into every aspect of global warming, our foreign policy, and sheer gluttony in how the West lives differently than the rest of the world. You share a planet with all of these starving people, and it really taps into, well, What do you do about it? Nothing? Something?

In the film, you have a very in-your-face approach to talking about the causes of world hunger. How much of your own personality is in that?
Well it’s Neil’s film, I mean Neil wrote it; it’s Neil’s shot. I brought the anger and the outrage that the script certainly lends itself to, but all the anger that you see is not me acting. I’m pissed. I didn’t want to act, because then you’re acting like you’re angry about hunger. I’m not acting. It’s quite real; it’s very sincere.

What did you learn during the making of the film?
Well I didn’t know about the death chain of the food at night in New York: the thrown-out food, and I didn’t know what the body goes through as it starves to death. I thought you just get hungry—I didn’t know that the body systematically shuts down things just trying to stay alive, that the body is a very efficient machine that wants to live. I learned a whole lot, but just what I learned mostly is having a real full awareness of famine, of global famine—that really did a number on me.

In America, we have lots of kids. That whole thing is coming from either not knowing how the [sexual] parts work or some weird Christian thing. Like the world needs more white people, like the Sarah Palin model, this joyless sex, where we need five or 10 kids ’cause we’re building a white Christian army! People just need to cool it. Like, stop breeding so much, which is a hard thing to tell people ’cause you come off as the antichrist. If someone has five kids, after two—so one can keep the other one company—what do you need five kids for? Are you a farmer? What are you growing? That’s five cars, that’s five cell phones, that’s, you know, five needs for the toilet, why?

What feelings do you hope and expect the movie will invoke in those who see it?
Well, hopefully a true human emotion is sparked where they go, Wow, I’m not exactly partly responsible for this, but I share a planet with these people, so I have to think bigger than my own area code and my own county line and get into that whole global village idea. Which is kind of “Kumbaya,” but it’s kind of what needs to happen and it’s truly how I consider myself.

What needs to happen is normal people need to get a clue and see themselves as part of the solution, not part of the problem. You can’t guilt someone into action, but you can encourage them to see that they can be part of a better solution for these people and that’s what I’m hoping people walk away from.

What drives you to work so much on so many diverse projects?
It’s because I come from the minimum-wage working world, I come from parking cars and serving food, and so everything I’ve got to do is kind of like this amazing ride and its been a very interesting thing so far. I’m very motivated to get up in the morning, get out there and do things, and not sit back. As I get older and older I find more and more things to be interesting, I get more and more angry and more and more curious and I also acquire the means to go more places and do more things and you think it would be disrespectful to kind of turn away from all of that.

Do you ever worry that you might be spreading yourself too thin?
That’s how I live. I live to spread too thin.

Interview by Jason Le Miere