Warped Tour 15th Anniversary Movie Showing in Theaters Tonight

Posted on Sep 17th 2009 11:30AM by Steve Baltin
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Anybody who knows Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman knows the guy is an unquestioned egalitarian. This is a man who makes his headliners sometimes play at 11 in the morning and doesn't let anybody know until the day of show what time they take the stage. So when fans complained recently that the 15th anniversary celebration Warped party would be limited to Los Angeles only, he listened. "Originally it was just going to be a one-off show and then kids were like, 'You always do all your events in L.A.,'" Lyman tells Spinner. "And I'm like, 'Well, I live here, kind of everyone's based here.' Then we had this opportunity to be able to shoot this event and then put it in to 464 movie theaters 10 days later. So we feel that gives more of the Warped fans a chance to be part of it some way."

Thursday night, Sept. 17, the filmed version of the concert held at L.A.'s Club Nokia, which featured a wide range of acts from Katy Perry and Ice-T to Bad Religion, NOFX and Rise Against, will hit theaters. For those who can't make it, there will be some future to the film. Asked if that would be DVD, Lyman answers, "Most likely, there will be an afterlife to it."

In talking about the celebration though, Lyman throws a mind-boggling statistic out there -- he estimates 3,000 bands have played the festival in its 15-year history. That brings up an obvious question -- how do you cull 3,000 bands into one night of 20 or so acts? "I just started calling friends of mine, people that I definitely wanted there -- NOFX, Bad Religion, members of Pennywise. And then there's like Ozomatli," he says. "I don't think people remember they played Warped tour, but they are such, I think, an important part of music. [Same with] Ice-T playing Warped tour."

But what about taking it down even further, picking the three or four acts who define Warped. "I would take probably someone like NOFX and Flogging Molly, who despite all the offers and all the things going on in their careers always try to make an attempt to be on some of the shows," he says. "Then I would take someone like 3OH!3, who though they were reaching all that success that they had this summer still went out there and signed autographs and DJed every backstage party they could. "

You can check for showtimes of 'Warped Tour 15th Anniversary Celebration' here.