Mia Zapata and The Gits Film

[kerri o'kane]

For over 6 years we worked on The Gits Documentary. Come check out The Gits Movie Official site on MySpace and our new website: thegitsmovie.com. Cool photos and news about the dvd and theatrical release this summer.

[stacy]

It is amazing that u are making a movie in memory of mia!!! thank u!!!

[stacy]

[Craig Wilson]

I wasn't personally a part of the early-90’s Seattle grunge-punk musical scene (though I knew all this history quite well since I've been a city resident through the entire period). When The Gits were tearing up the Seattle club scene I was a drudge working six- and seven-day weeks, 10 to 12 hours per day, unable – and too weary -- to go clubbing and see the band perform live. And too, punk’s feverish anarchism held less resonance for me at that time of my life. So it was with great curiosity that I went to Capitol Hill and attended a screening of this just-released documentary. The production was promoted as featuring video of the band performing live; I wanted to see for myself what had so distinguished Mia Zapata that she'd become a legend.

Fifteen years ago last week – 6 July, 1993 – Mia Zapata, the charismatic, young lead singer and lyricist for the legendary punk-rock band The Gits, went to Seattle’s Comet Tavern to hang out. The Comet on Capitol Hill was a favourite gathering spot for musicians. After midnight, early on the Wednesday morning of 7 July, Mia bid farewell to friends and left the bar to journey ten blocks to the “Rathouse”, which she and her band mates shared. She never reached home. In the dawn of that morning her crumpled body was discovered, raped, strangled and dumped in the middle of a street in the city’s Central District, about two miles from the Comet.

Mia Zapata’s murder extinguished a vibrant career that was just on the verge of international recognition. The energetic early 1990’s Seattle grunge-punk scene had drawn favourable global attention. The Gits were arguably the most dynamic, original and influential of all the bands emerging from that hothouse era and Mia Zapata was the driving force that gave the group its edge and unique style. Without her, the band no longer had the creative yeast that fuelled its raw, high-energy sound -- they were no longer The Gits. And equally sad in the aftermath of her murder a pall of fear and apprehension overcame the city’s indie music scene: what had been a wild, open, spirited, ebullient and free-flowing creative movement suddenly succumbed to paranoia, then broke apart and finally faded away.

Were it not for technological advances the mystery of Mia’s murder might still be unsolved. DNA taken from a criminal arrested in Florida was found to match a sample collected from her corpse and authorities were finally able to identify a suspect. That violent, menacing drifter was returned to Seattle and put on trial; he was convicted and sentenced to 36 years behind bars (effectively a life sentence).

[Given that ghoul's m.o., I wonder if he wasn't a serial killer -- someone with a history of targeting streetwalkers for predations, confident that murdering such "non-people" carried little risk since no one would waste time or shed tears over a lowly prostitute. How many similar attacks had he perpetrated here and elsewhere throughout the years? I'm disinclined to believe this was an isolated, "one-off" act on his part. It was perhaps Mia's misfortune that her blowsy punk diva appearance led this killer to assume she was a nobody he could use for his evil ends with no fear of retribution. Without DNA recognition advances and a national DNA sample database this "cold case" would still remain unsolved.]

The band -- they chose the name, “Gits,” from a Monty Python skit – wasn’t native to Seattle: they came together in the 1980’s while they were students in rural Ohio at the progressive Antioch College. At the end of their studies they'd decided to get as far from Ohio and the east coast as possible; Seattle’s nascent grunge music scene had already generated publicity so the group migrated here. They found the creative atmosphere very conducive and joined with a number of like-minded musicians to perform on the local club circuit. Together these groups shaped the Seattle grunge sound. Filmed interviews with members of these bands (and long, thoughtful conversations with the three remaining Gits) provided a context for understanding that music’s evolution and Mia Zapata’s special influence on those who knew her and those lucky enough to have seen her perform.

The documentary’s film clips of The Gits’ performances does indeed capture a sense of Mia’s incendiary flash and volatile energy – a long-legged, gawky young woman with a dishevelled mop of unruly blonde hair, she would stand knock-kneed, clutching the microphone, wildly bobbing her body in time with the loud, hard-driving, raucously wailing music emanating from her band. She'd belt out the caustic, edgy lyrics she'd written to buttress that music, snarling, shrieking, shouting the lines in a fit of fury that lifted audiences to amazing heights of frenzy. Several critics, producers and A &R reps interviewed for the film favourably compared Mia to blues icon Bessie Smith.

The black and white still photos taken of Mia in repose show an attractive young woman with fierce, searching eyes; her nose was every so slightly flattened and oversized for the proportions of her face, which prevented her from being fashion model pretty.

Her band mates (and her family members) all characterized Mia’s off-stage personality as quiet, pensive, gentle, highly intelligent and very private -- but with a microphone in hand in front of an audience she became someone else altogether: a veritable force of nature. Watching the film, I could truly understand why she had generated such excitement and why her death was such a tragedy: she was in the early stages of her evolution as an artist, on the cusp of attaining success and wide recognition; there was a palpable sense that amazing accomplishments lay before her and the band. In an instant, that enormous reservoir of potential evaporated; all that remained was a core of bittersweet memories, the lyrics she penned and a small body of recorded work. Hers was definitely a punk sensibility, but elevated and informed by a keen perception, a compassion and an acute intelligence: The words she wrote were sharp, insightful, yet raw, forceful and confrontational as well. In a particularly eerie and ominous example, she penned a song condemning violence against women – which unknowingly, almost as a premonition, described the gruesome end that befell her.

Perhaps the most disturbing image in the entire film was a still photograph made at the crime scene: taken some fifty feet away it shows Mia’s body where it had been dumped in the middle of the street at E. Yesler Way and 24th Avenue, partially covered by a blanket, a single bare foot protruding from under that cover; two policemen stand nearby assessing the surroundings, seemingly indifferent to the corpse. The ugly loneliness and brutal finality of death resonate terrifyingly from that stark black-and-white picture.

After an increasingly frantic passage of hours that July morning, Mia’s fellow band mates contacted the morgue and discovered a ‘Jane Doe’ matching her description had been found earlier in the Central District. They were able to identify her remains from the unique chicken tattoo on the calf of her leg (her wild on-stage struts and bobs had been characterized as “chicken-like” as were her long, spindly “chicken legs”).

Richard Zapata, Mia’s father, in his appearances throughout the film, lovingly recalls his daughter as a little girl growing up and then shows obvious pride over the young woman on the verge of becoming a cultural phenomenon. Yet at moments his poise and cheerfulness falter as terrible grief over his loss intrudes into his consciousness; he obviously longs to have her back as the cherished, witty, lively daughter rather than her memory as an icon that “now belongs to the ages.” Throughout, Zapata’s love for Mia and his pride in her accomplishment as an artist shines through clearly. It’s moving to hear his amazement in describing the incredible turn out of fans for Mia’s memorial service in Seattle: he and the family followed legions of admirers streaming down the street to the mortuary, those throngs all carrying single yellow roses to honour her memory.

Mia is buried in her hometown, Louisville, Kentucky. Her gravestone notes simply that she was “Cherished Daughter - Sister - Artist - Friend - Git.” She was only 27 years old at the time of her murder.

The screening of this film I'd attended was at Film Forum theatre on Capitol Hill. Fitting since that venue was in the middle of locations depicted in the documentary: the Comet Tavern was literally two blocks around the corner; the Gits’ “Rathouse” about ten blocks east; the murder scene about twenty-five blocks south and east.

Mia Zapata wasn't Ella Fitzgerald crooning a Gershwin ballad – or even Edith Piaf warbling “Non, je ne regrette rien” – but her stylings and her energy were amazing to behold (even through the refractive prism of grainy old videos). I'm not so distanced from my own youth that I can't recall the marvellous sense of possibility, wonder, anticipation and certainty that is the special province of the young. Every generation’s troubadours help provide the unique soundtrack for that replay of excitement and hope through which everyone matures as they grow older. Mia Zapata was especially gifted and a singular product of her time. Her tragic, senseless murder brings achingly to mind one of the saddest of all phrases in the language – “what might have been.”