A NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR...
When 9-11 happened, I was
living in Chicago having just
gotten my MFA, in my 30s,
pursuing an acting career as I
struggled to pay my bills by
temping and waiting tables. I
woke up on the morning of
September 11, 2001, turned on
the news (like I did every
morning) and stood transfixed by
what I was seeing and hearing.
The days that followed were silent
in Chicago. No planes flying
to or from O’Hare or Midway.
No trains or buses running. No
angry horns honking. Just quiet
while the city and the country
tried to piece together what was
happening, what had happened,
and if it would happen again.
Green Day front man, Billie Joe
Armstrong, went on to say that
while the album’s story line is
fictional, its themes are
autobiographical. “I wouldn’t
consider myself an angry young
man anymore,” he says, “You
don’t have to leave the danger
behind, but what makes you
grow up is confronting the
danger. And that’s what this
record is really about confronting that self-destructive
impulse.”
That’s what Green Day’s
American Idiot is for. The
people who were kids when 9-11
happened, for the kids who are
growing up in a post 9-11 world.
The music and the lyrics speak to
them and for them. It considers
In 2004, Green Day released
the impulse to say “fuck it...why
American Idiot in the United
bother” and plays that impulse to
States. It seemed to address how the end...just like Hair did for the
the country was responding to
generation before me...and Rent
that tragedy, and Green Day was did for me...and Spring
not impressed.
Awakening did for the generation
after me.
Mike Dirnt, the bassist for Green
Day said at the time, “The world’s For a while, I felt like maybe
in a confused state. I’m pissed
I’m too old to direct this show. I
off, and I’m angry, and I feel like could hear myself thinking the
I’m not fully represented.”
same kinds of things that the