Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly are total lunatics. How else to explain the ridiculously comprehensive book they authored, “Destroy All Movies: The Complete Guide to Punks on Film,” which documents — or at least attempts to — every appearance by a punk on celluloid between 1974 and 1999. As Bryan described it during our interview, “It would be a lot of just playing Where’s Waldo,” with the two editors, along with a small group of contributors, watching virtually every film released during that time period. Crazy, right? Maybe, but whether you love cinema, punk rock or both, there’s plenty to sink your teeth into in their 600 page tome, filled with blurbs on 1100 films, plus photos, interviews and fun tidbits from the people making and appearing in the films they documented. It’s a unique project with a unique perspective and it’s definitely worth checking out. Here are some highlights from our chat with the book’s authors.

On the process of compiling the book: “There would be long fifteen-hour days of fast-forwarding through hundreds of movies, most of them which would have no punks in them, but if we did find one that had a punk in it, we would stop the movie, rewind it and watch the whole movie.” – B.C.

On what’s not included in the book: “Everything except for anime, because we didn’t want to do anime.”  -B.C.

On the origin of the book’s title: “It’s a tough-sounding title. It’s fun and it doesn’t really say in a boring academic way what the book is, but I think it would make a person curious. But the main thing is that there was a song by an old punk band called The Mad called “I Hate Music.” And then The Weirdos had a 7″ called “Destroy All Music.” And I just thought that those types of titles were really fun so I’m assuming between those titles and the movie “Destroy All Monsters,” starring Godzilla, that it just kind of fell into place.” – Z.C.

On their favorite punk bands: “For me, the ultimate punk rock band is Fear. They are the best. Fear, as a band, aren’t in many movies, but they are kind of in there in “Get Crazy,” but kind of hidden and they’re definitely in “Decline of the Western Civilization.” Lee Ving himself plays a lot of parts in different movies.” – B.C.

“My favorite punk band, and I maintain that they were a punk band when they first appeared, were Devo. They were easily the most out of nowhere band, and even though their music wasn’t as aggressive as say, Black Flag, they were so intent on doing their own thing and doing it well — and they had a kind of aggression of their own, though a kind of nerdish, bookish, aggression that I really respect — so Devo’s been my favorite band since I was 14. For the first couple of records I’d say that band was punk.” – Z.C.

Favorite name of a fictional punk band they discovered: “Ivy and the Shitty Rainbows from “Jeckyl andHyde … Together Again.” I don’t think there’s a real band with a name better than that.” – Z. C.

On the best film set in a pre-punk era featuring a flying punk mammal: “Sundown. It’s a little bat that’s flying around a western town and he’s got a green Mohawk and an ear piercing and a little studded collar cuff around his ankle.” - B.C.

Favorite gem uncovered during the research process: “There’s a movie called “Madame Wangs,” which is a movie Paul Morrisey made in the ’80s, and it’s the best things he’s ever made. It’s one of the best movies to feature actual punk bands and fake punk bands. It’s about this East German spy sent to infiltrate the punk scene in L.A. in the early ’80s and it’s really nuts.” – B.C.

On their favorite punk movies: “Repo Man” and “Return of the Living Dead” are obviously really good, but I like “Surf II,” starring Eddie Deezen about garbage-eating zombie punks. It’s the ultimate ’80s party movie. It’s like everything you could want in an ’80s movie. It’s like a perfect time capsule. – B.C.

“Watching that movie is like having a 20-foot tall nerd shoot you with a shotgun full of banana peels and super balls. There are two kinds of movies, ones that made an effort to be accurate and ones that completely didn’t give a fuck about the representation of punk in a movie. For the accurate ones, the two movies I’m about to mention, were the two movies that inspired the book overall. There was one night in Seattle where we watched the Penelope Spheeris movie from ‘83, ‘84 called “Suburbia,” and I loved that movie as a teenager, but didn’t realize it was the best movie in the world until I watched it again. And that movie has everything you could ask for in a legitimate punk film. She actually cared about the subject and she hired actual punk kids to portray the characters in the film and it works. But the most fun, and most inaccurate punk movie, for me, is “Joysticks,” and none of the leads are punk, but there’s this one character who’s pretty prominent in the film named King Vidiot and its like if you took the zany party punks from 20 boner comedies and pressed them into one guy and then set him of fire, it’d be this guy. And the way he acted was completely anti-human and so entertaining.” –Z.C.

On why they stopped at 1999: “It would have been nice to stop in 1989, but we figured there was a lot of people that watched some of the stuff in the ’90s. The ’90s already were like the worst movies in our book, like the worst portrayals of punks. And when “alternative” music and grunge became popular and rap metal and Lollapalooza and all that stuff, like grandmas started having pierced noses and blue hair and it didn’t really mean anything so it started to get hazy as to what was actually punk and what was not.” – B.C.

It’s just a matter of it losing its potency. People started to figure out what it was and it became accessible and didn’t have any reason to exist. What’s really entertaining about the first 15 years of punk and its documentation and depiction in movies is that people were either making a real effort to figure out what it was — and you had these really great documentaries like “The Slog Movie” and “Squat Punk in London” — or people were completely missing the boat and coming up with the punks in “The Road Warrior” or “Class of 1984,” which are two great movies, but the punks are not behaving like any human being you’ve ever met. Once it became marketable and understood, it lost it appeal and its reason for being in a lot of ways. – Z.C.

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