The Butthole Surfers have been in retrospective mode this year, which both makes sense and doesn’t compute. The band’s brand of dangerous dirtbag chaos is not congruent with reverential nostalgia, but it’s also exactly the kind of unrepeatable phenomenon that deserves to be preserved by history. Their legend is tied in with their live show more than their studio output; they are the kind of band that lends itself to archival footage and wild anecdotes from talking heads. So although Matador’s recent album reissue campaign is honorable and necessary, what I’m really excited for is the movie.

The forthcoming documentary The Hole Truth And Nothing Butt comes from a team led by Hollywood director Tom Stern (this guy, not this guy), who first collaborated with Butthole Surfers on the short film Cherub way back in 1987. Stern writes the following about the project:

I started documenting the Butthole Surfers in 1986 at CBGB’s as a film student when I checked out a camera from NYU, and I have been collaborating with them ever since on various projects, like the short Entering Texas, the feature film Freaked, and his recent video for Paul Leary – Do You Like to Eat a Cow.

This movie, produced with the full collaboration of the band, will be the culmination of my close relationship with the Butthole Surfers – a comprehensive look at this groundbreaking band and its continuing impact on culture at large. It’s a story I’m uniquely capable of telling because of the trust the band and I have built over the years.

Through exhaustive interviews, archival footage, cutting-edge animation and graphics, surreal reenactments, and more, we will make a film in the anarchic spirit of the band. It will be irreverent and funny, but also sincere and heartfelt at times as we get these post-punk rock legends to look back on their strange and extraordinary lives.

This won’t be a hagiography. We will present the hole truth and nothing butt, warts and all: Sex, drugs, rock and roll, the beautiful, the ugly, and the weird.

A whole lot of famous people appear in the teaser, starting with director Richard Linklater, who explains, “There is kind of a before and after. When you wander into a Butthole Surfers show, that is a changing point in your life. It’s like, ‘Holy fuck!'” We then hear from Dean Ween, Eric Andre, Flea, Thurston Moore, Larry Tee, Dave Grohl, Ice T, Henry Rollins, King Buzzo, Al Jourgensen, and the late Steve Albini, who completes the teaser by announcing, with a straight face, “I regret being involved with them because I don’t want to be associated with people who are that awful.”

The teaser also features band members Gibby Haynes, Paul Leary, King Coffey, Kramer, Kathleen Lynch, and the late Teresa Taylor, who passed away last summer. Watch below, and visit the film’s official website, where they’re seeking further financial backing to complete the project.