“After I take over the world, I want to learn how to play the bass,” says effervescent, long-time Kids of Widney High member Cain Fonseca. One of nine singer/songwriters, Cain is a young adult from East LA with developmental disabilities who — along with the rest of the Kids — writes, records and performs his own unique brand of rock music.
Begun in 1988 at special-education high school Joseph P. Widney High, the Kids grew out of an adaptive songwriting class that is still in operation today and continues to churn out specialized musicians and singers, some of whom have formed their own permutation of “Kids of Widney High”-esque bands.
A scene from the movie
They also boast a dedicated fanbase that includes everyone from Marilyn Manson and Fiona Apple to actor James Garner and filmmaker Spike Jonze. Playing the LA leg of the Warped Tour some years back, a prominent record producer handed to the Kids their first album — made by an earlier lineup of members — that had at one time been owned by Kurt Cobain.
In the past, the Kids have worked with musical luminaries Jackson Browne (who assisted them with the recording of the second of four albums they have out to date), Mr. Bungle/Faith No More frontman Mike Patton (who took them on their first tour along with Bungle, and who put out a Kids album on indie pioneering label Ipecac), and various producers/writers from South Park.
“Act Your Age: The Kids of Widney High Story” is a vibrant, life-affirming, funny and wholly compassionate film that explores just what happens when a specialized group of artists such as the Kids of Widney High finally take to the road as they visit new cities and peoples, teaching their fans about the changing world of the disabled community at large. Along the way, the Kids fight, they love, they grow apart and together, they party — as do all raucous rock bands on such rapid-fire tours! — and come out the other end, as Kids frontman Shelly Goodhope says of himself, “A better man.”
Supplemented by over 10 years of footage from various venues, fans, groupies, and the Kids themselves, “Act Your Age” is also a intimate portrait of a subculture that has been for far too long misunderstood and, ultimately, disenfranchised in the eyes of the general mainstream public.
To attend a FREE screening of “Act Your Age: The Kids of Widney High Story”:
Monday, October 18th, 7 p.m.
CU Boulder Campus, ATLAS 102
99 min + Q&A with filmmaker and KOWH member
Learn more about The Kids of Widney High at:
www.KidsOfWidneyHigh.com.
www.YouTube.com/ProfKlickberg
www.MySpace.com/TheKidsOfWidneyHigh