Ethan Higbee is a film director, music producer and gallerist living in Ojai California, most known for directing the film The Upsetter: The Life and Music of Lee Scratch Perry (2008) composing the music for the Lil' Wayne biopic The Carter (2009) and creating Dem Passwords art gallery in Los Angeles. Ethan was born and raised in coastal Maine ...
There was a lot of burning involved. Fire is very important to Lee. He creates things, and then burns them; he has no interest in preserving his work, or items that for most of us would be of lasting significance.
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That's why it's so grainy but we kinda like that-hey, this is Lee Perry's VHS tape. That was the most compelling stuff that I saw doing the research, and we based the film around that. We thought it captured Lee at a pivotal point in his life, after he'd burned down the studio and driven everybody away from him. His career was in flux, he was going mad. We felt that footage really captured that tension in his life, and no one had seen it before. It also showed Lee Perry doing the same things he's doing now. He's painting...Speaking Bible verses... He's been doing the same thing for 40 years. Everyone's like, "Oh, he's crazy." Well, he's pretty spot on with what he's doing. Nothing's really changed. If you decipher what he's saying, it's really beautiful. I think the last scene in our film really exemplifies how he's just a magician with words. If you think you can out-word Lee Perry, you have something coming to you. We put that in [to show] in the current day, he's still sharp as a nail.
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It's been such a blessing to get to know Lee and his family. He has a special, strange, incredible energy about him. We met him at a point in his life when he was really ready to open up. It's just been a huge gift.
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There's a lot of parallels. I've been working on the Lil B project for the last four years. We've been putting out his music on our label here, Permanent Marks, which actually produced the Lee Perry film. I met B four years ago, through Myspace. We did a track together and I got to know him. He had this whole "Based" lifestyle and mantra. I wanted to capture that. B and Lee are artists in the purest sense-they're very spontaneous in their delivery. Brandon's 21 and wise beyond his years. Like Lee, he'll work 20 hours a day, writing raps or making beats and he's on Twitter all day long. If he hasn't been on Twitter in a minute, he starts freaking out. He has to constantly reach out to his fans. That's part of the reason he's becoming so popular. He will write you back. He'll outlast you. Same with Lee-they'll outlast anybody. I escorted this Rolling Stone journalist to Switzerland. Lee definitely didn't want the dude there, and I think was pissed I brought him along. Lee started spray painting this whole room, and it was becoming so fumed out in there that you couldn't breathe. The journalist said, "I can't take it, what's going on?" and I said, "Dude, he's testing you right now. He's trying to outlast you. You have to stay and grin and bear it." B will do that with his fans. After one of his shows, he'll talk to every one of his fans until there's nobody left. They've got amazing amounts of stamina.
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He's a super fan of Lee. An acquaintance told me that Benicio had gotten him into Lee Perry. I was like, "no shit." I wanted him from jump. I respect his work.
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You can now be your own iTunes or Netflix.
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Independent filmmakers can now enjoy the same distribution apparatus that independent musicians have had for years.
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Fact
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Is the only known American to become an honorary member of the Jose Marti National Library in Havana, Cuba.
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He was commissioned by Snoop Dogg's Cashmere Agency to compose the brand jingle for Mind Gardens, a community garden initiative in Kingston Jamaica founded by Snoop Dogg after his visit to the Island.
After the end of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2011, Ethan along with Samuel Holt and Suba Sivakumaran founded KIFF, the Kandy International Film Festival, the first international film festival in Sri Lanka.
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Directed the music video for Damian Marley's song "Confrontation".
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In 2010 Higbee opened Dem Passwords art gallery in Los Angeles California. The Gallery has been described by Art News Magazine as "one of the most surreal assemblages of cultural signifiers ever encountered".
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Ethan has produced several songs for rapper Lil' B The Basedgod.
$8 Million
