Las Vegas Weekly

July 21, 2009 · 1:03 AM

Blink 182 reunion to be the subject of a documentary film

By Sarah Feldberg

Attention, wardrobe? Blue is definitely Mark Hoppus' color. Well, that or flesh tone, as in skin.

Photo: Megan Thompson

“Be warned,” reads the bio section on Blink 182 bassist Mark Hoppus’ Twitter page, “I tweet a LOT.”

He lives up to the warning, tweeting about everything from keyboard lines (“Which has catchiest keyboard line: MGMT "Kids" or Jay-Z "Brush Your Shoudlers [sic] Off?"), to attending movie premieres (recently for Dare starring Emmy Rossum) to rehearsals for Blink 182’s reunion tour, which kicks off this Thursday at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. Hoppus blogs, too, at himynameismark.com. In fact, it seems the 37-year-old musician has a thing for documentation, and lots of it.

Not only will Hoppus and his bandmates, singer and guitarist Tom DeLonge and drummer Travis Barker, have photographer Cobrasnake accompanying them to capture the mayhem on their 52-date North American reunion tour, but Hoppus let the Weekly in on a little secret Monday afternoon: The band is also going to be the subject of an upcoming documentary film.

“We’ve been filming it for a couple months now,” Hoppus said, “throughout the rehearsal, and getting ready for tour, and on tour, and when we get back home and get in the studio.”

“It’s cool,” he continued, “because the people who are putting the movie together are really good friends of ours and they’re really talented.”

Having friends on the job certainly has its benefits. The band is known for antics like playing naked both live and in music videos like the one for “What’s My Age Again?”, and friends and nudity go together better than, well, not friends and nudity.

Of course, you might assume that after a four-year hiatus Blink 182 will have matured past stripping to their socks on stage.

“We’re all in our 30s now, so you would expect that we’d have grown up, but that’s not really the case,” Hoppus assured the Weekly. “I’m kind of ashamed/delighted to know that I’m 37 and still laughing at stuff that I did when I was in high school.”

Having familiar hands working the cameras can also mean getting a little breathing room.

“When we ask them, ‘Yo, dude. I don’t feel like having a camera in my face right now,’ they’re pretty respectful. And they’re really, really talented, so you couldn’t ask for much more.”

Blink 182 already has some documentary experience under their black leather belts.

In 1999, the band released the anatomically titled DVD The Urethra Chronicles, which took a behind-the-scenes look at the California-based pop punk threesome. They followed in 2002 with the aptly named The Urethra Chronicles II: Harder, Faster. Faster, Harder.

On October 9, six days after wrapping up their tour in Atlantic City, Hoppus and DeLonge will get some more screen time among the musicians and industry vets featured in One Nine Nine Four, a documentary film about punk rock in the ’90s by filmmaker Jai Al-Attas and narrated by Tony Hawk.

For now, however, it’s all about putting the finishing touches on a tour five years in the making that will sound its first notes at the The Joint on Thursday and come back for a second show Friday night. Whether the Blink boys keep their clothes on or decide to ditch them altogether, the cameras, we hope, will be rolling.

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