That's why they could be purchased for next to nothing at thrift shops or yard sales, and why a legion of folks started experiencing old albums on 8-tracks for 50 cents a pop rather than on CDs for 20 or 30 times that price. A community of these naysayers to the corporate record companies' switch to higher-priced CDs gathered around the revived 8-Track Mind, and in 1994 Forster and co-director Dan Sutherland criss-crossed the country, traveling to pockets of this community for their 1995 documentary So Wrong They're Right (for some reason, both Amazon.com and the Internet Movie Database dates the movie at 1999, but that is incorrect).
The resulting movie is as fascinating a peek at a subculture as you could ever hope to find. Visiting Chicago, Seattle, New York, Boston and other hotbeds of alternative music scenes, So Wrong They're Right drops in on such interesting "characters" as author Pagan Kennedy, Dallas record store owner James "Mr. Bucks" Burnett, Arf! Arf! Records' Erik Lindgren and playful Abigail Lavine, who was a sort of den mother to the 8-track scene before her 1997 death. These people show off their favorite 8-tracks, spin many amusing anecdotes about their tapes and explain the reasons why they've embraced the forgotten format (the movie's title comes from one of these remarks). If you grew up during the 1970s, the evocation of bright Panasonic players, the clicks and ka-chunks of such players when you stuck the tape in them and the way they often split songs between two different "programs" might give So Wrong They're Right more meaning than it has for someone who's never experienced the ups and downs of 8-track first-hand. But the people in So Wrong They're Right could be talking about doorstops, and they would still be interesting (in fact, there has been an interesting documentary about doorstops).
For most of those interviewed, collecting 8-tracks has become an act of defiance against the prevailing culture of the time and against the wishes of Madison Avenue, as well as a way to experience music while steering clear of the corporate apparatus of the record industry. You don't have to read between the lines to feel this defiance. Forster highlights it immediately in his first blast of narration, saying that the community of 8-trackers has decided to "opt out of disposable consumer culture." Adding to the movie's impact, Forster and Sutherland fittingly made a 16-millimeter movie that reflects the lo-fi ethos embraced by its subjects. But So Wrong They're Right is not self-consciously unpolished, like a misguided indie film with intentionally shaky camera work. Both filmmakers were semi-experienced at best, and they fill the movie with a lot of heart. The print used for the DVD is old and worn, no doubt one of the few ever struck, and it feels just right.
In the decade since it was first shown, So Wrong They're Right has become even more of a snapshot of a subculture. To a certain extent, the Internet and eBay have changed the 8-track subculture for the worse. 8-Track Mind no longer exists, and competitively bidding on a tape you've electronically searched for on eBay doesn't have the same romance as stumbling upon it at a rock-bottom price in a Salvation Army bin. So Other Cinema's new DVD of So Wrong They're Right, arriving five years after the movie's poorly-distributed video release, captures a cool corner of 1990s pop culture. It adds a few goodies to the original film, too, including extra footage of Lavine and excerpts from both an 8-Track Mind videozine and an 8-track tribute film by Burnett, the last with a fun Tiny Tim interview. It's good to have this under-the-radar standout preserved for posterity-or at least until the entertainment powers that be come up with a new format and tell us they're replacing DVDs with a "better," more expensive format.
For more information about So Wrong They're Right or to order it, visit Other Cinema.
by Paul Sherman
