Jack Black signs on as an executive producer for new film about pirate radio

Jack Black has signed on as an executive producer for a new film about pirate radio.

The 56-year-old actor’s documentary 40 Watts From Nowhere will chart the rise and fall of 1990s Los Angeles station KBLT and the wider low-power FM movement of the era.

Directed by Sue Carpenter, the film recounts the story of how a small, 40-watt FM station run from an apartment closet in Silver Lake became an underground hub for punk and alternative music before it was eventually shut down by the Federal Communications Commission in 1998.

The project combines original footage shot during KBLT’s heyday with new interviews recorded in 2023.

Announcing his involvement in a characteristically energetic video posted online, Jack said: “Back in the day, corporate rock radio stations only played what they wanted you to hear.

“But in the mid-‘90s a group of punk rock legends and local kids from an L.A. neighborhood took matters into their own hands, took over the airwaves and played whatever the hell they wanted.

“It was against the law, it was against the grain, and it was run out of an apartment closet — but it was the best goddamn music you could hear on the FM dial!… until the FCC shut it down.

“I’ll be bringing you this story in a new documentary, ‘40 Watts From Nowhere,’ broadcasting into your brain sometime soon!”

Sue Carpenter founded KBLT in 1995 after a legal ruling led to a surge of low-power – though technically illegal – radio operators across the United States.

Operating 24 hours a day from her apartment, the station drew the attention of musicians and fans across Los Angeles.

Local acts supported the project, with the group Mazzy Star performing a benefit concert and the Red Hot Chili Peppers playing live from Carpenter’s living room.

The station’s DJs included punk veterans such as Keith Morris of the Circle Jerks, Mike Watt of Minutemen and Firehose and Don Bolles of the Germs.

Guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine also features in the film’s recent interviews.

Sue added: “40 Watts From Nowhere would not exist if I hadn’t discovered 12 hours of footage from 1998 that I never even knew existed until early 2023.

“One of the DJs started filming the station, thinking he would make a documentary about it because he had never heard of anyone running a pirate radio station in L.A. before. Instead of making the movie, he threw the mini DV tapes in a box.”

She continued: “I hadn’t spoken to that DJ in 25 years when he reached out to me in early 2023 to say he had just found them in his garage and asked if I wanted them.

“Of course, I said yes. Going through the footage, I saw he had captured the entire arc of the story, from its full-tilt heyday in the summer of 1998 when the station was operating 24 hours a day with a different DJ every two hours to its shutdown by the Federal Communications Commission later that year.

“I approached the film the same way I approached the radio station. I had no idea what I was doing, but I felt very strongly that I needed to make it happen. So I did.”

The documentary, produced in association with Jack’s company Electric Dynamite, is expected to premiere in 2026, according to Warner Bros. Discovery.