OUT OF FRAME: COLIN MOEN HATES THE INTERNET — Marquee | Film & Video Production

“I seriously hate this thing. I don’t want to need it, but I do. I already want to throw it out the window.”

Colin was referring to his new smartphone. He was laying on the floor of his living room, already exhausted by the thought of socializing that day when he heard it chime with an innocuous alert somewhere in the apartment. This one was a Samsung or something maybe, it seems like he has a different one every time I see him. Sometimes they get lost, sometimes they get broken, but mostly, their impermanence in his life speaks volumes about how much he cares about them...which is not at all.

*Colin Moen and Kim Deal the Pit Bull outside of his apartment in Louisville, shot by the author on Kodak Tri-X 400 Professional Black and White Film for Marquee Louisville, June 2021*

It was one of the first things I liked about Colin. He doesn’t talk about hating social media while spending his whole day on it. Colin uses his Instagram to share his art, the pit bull terrier that he named Kim Deal after the bassist of Pixies, and the portraits of him taken by the friends he’s made since moving to Louisville a handful of years ago. “I like how I look to other people better than how I see myself.”

RIP IT UP AND START AGAIN

Colin is a human tumbleweed and I mean that in the nicest possible way.

He blew into town from Dallas, TX with a bramble of red hair, boxes of his zines, and Kim Deal in tow. Colin was in love then, following a girl to Kentucky, where he stayed even after she left. He’s quiet and contemplative like most of the artists I’ve loved in my life. When I see him at the bar, he’s usually absorbing the conversations and interactions around him rather than dominating them. It takes a lot to get Colin to open up, but everything you really need to know about how he got here has already been drawn.

*Selections from Colin Moen’s sketchbooks, 2006-2014*

For all the obvious discomfort talking about his life causes, his work is incredibly vulnerable. You can see that skateboarding gave him a family when he felt lost after the death of his father and how much he resented the chokehold Christianity has over the citizens of Texas. You can almost pinpoint the moment that his friends stopped submitting photography to his zine and started posting it on Instagram instead. Growing up is hard enough, harder still when your biggest creative outlet begins to run dry and is replaced by screens bloated with forgettable distractions.

In some ways, I see the Colin I know in those old issues. Whether he admits it or not, he’s a phenomenal writer with a sharp observational wit and dark cynicism towards the endless barrage of bad news and bad memes bombarding everyone at all times. But, I know he’s changed a lot too.

Most notably, Colin has lost his confidence in what he does. It just doesn’t seem relevant to him anymore and he thinks he’s lost his ability to create anything meaningful as the years have worn on.

I’ve saved every scrap of paper he doodled on for me when I would pick up food from the bakery where he worked. I commissioned him to draw my favorite photograph of my dad after he died and did the same for a friend when his dad followed suit. As we sat in his living room digging through his archives one day, I asked him what more I needed to say to make him realize that he’s still got it.

He laughed and said, “Shut up and pick out a VHS for us to watch.”

“WHO IS GOING TO DO OUR LOGO?”

Neon Bites came first. We hit the ground running in the food and beverage world and the name itself just sounds like it’s focused on food. So, what do we do with everything else? First, we argue about it. Calmly, respectfully and realistically, we wrestled with the inevitable decision to make a second brand that could be more agnostic and agile.

I wanted the name to be relevant to Neon Bites, another nod to shining a light on the people and projects we value. My first suggestion was Marquee and it stuck. The name made the whole plan feel better. Even though Tommy is our de facto Creative Director, he looked at me and said, “You should run with the branding on this. We should get going soon. So, who is going to do our logo?”

*Colin Moen very annoyed with the author on the floor of his apartment in Louisville, June 2021*

*Marquee Louisville Branding Flash Sheet with Commentary, Colin Moen 2020*

The answer for me was Colin. He and I had bonded over our shared history in creating zines and how much we missed working on DIY media. My career has been dominated by digital media and my conversations with Colin always bring me back to myself, in a way.

One of his more regular gigs is doing the art and lettering for The Flea Off Market along with other local spots like The Wiltshire Bakery & Cafe, Monnik, and Home Skateshop. That body of work in combination with what I had seen from his zines and more technical pieces that utilized pointillism and collage techniques made him the obvious choice for what I really wanted to convey about Marquee.
One of our core values is to tell the whole story. I don’t know about you, but if I’m going to spend my few precious extra dollars or moments of free time on something, I want to really know it- the history, the faces, the places, the whole story of how something came to be-and luckily, I found myself starting this venture with people who felt exactly the same way.

When I got in my car to leave the meeting, my shuffled playlist served me a song by Goldfinger that I had nearly forgotten about called “Spokesman.” I loved that song in the way that any middle schooler getting into punk music would. It’s poppy, anti-establishment, and was featured in a Tony Hawk Pro-Skater game that I would watch boys play for hours on end hoping that one of them would think I was cool.

In a weird way, on that particular day, the lyrics felt more like a clarified mission statement for a media company that was barely an hour old.

...when I want to hear about life, don’t wanna hear a spokesman…

I turned it over and over in my head and asked Colin to meet me for a drink the next day.

*Colin Moen will get off the floor when he damn well pleases, June 2021*

To commission a doodle, flyer, t-shirt or the entire visual identity for your new business email colinmoen@gmail.com or send him a DM on Instagram @colinmoen and pray that he hasn’t thrown his phone out the window