A struggling rock band blows up amps, short-circuits breakers and starts fires when they play their music.

The Privates is a science fiction rock-and-roll comedy about the absurd frustrations and minor triumphs of an everyday rock band with a radioactive energy in their music they can’t control. Though talented, driven and full of promise, The Privates are haunted by a mysterious power that blows up amps, shorts circuit breakers and liquefies tape recorders when they attempt to play their own music. On the eve of their first (and possibly last) show, they have to decide whether to risk life, limb, and legacy for a 1:00 am slot on a Tuesday that could change everything (or nothing at all).

Conceived in the nostalgic spirit of the original-concept adventures of our youth, The Privates offers a unique blend of genres and conceits, combining the attitude and energy of a rock and roll movie with the spectacle of a science fiction adventure. The film explores themes of ambition, perfectionism, popularity, personal safety, compromise and the subjectivity of success. It has respiration masks, electrical fires, jumpsuits, geiger counters, lightning, and guitars. It is also funny.

The film is inspired by and features the music of the Nashville-based band of the same name. Though the characters, story, and world are fictional, this film is the eventual result of a late-night basement show in 2005.