There’s a new music documentary around, and it’s not your usual concert footage or biopic. ‘No Cameras Allowed’, by James Marcus Haney, follows the tribulations of an avid music fan who managed to sneak into the world’s biggest music festivals such as Coachella and Glastonbury and even managed to hang out backstage with Mumford and Sons, Skrillex, or Jay Z… How is this possible? Where is the security?
James Marcus is described as a photographer renegade, jumping fences, hanging from trees, sneaking past security lines, taking risks just to be able to take pictures of his favorite bands and artists. To a very very very small extend, I can relate as I have done this kind of stuff (not the tree hanging), but I have either sneaked a camera when it wasn’t allowed or went down to the pit when I had a ticket for a nose bleed seat. It’s a question of chance, trying something that security guards won’t see. Thus James Marcus Haney is a sort of dream fantasy for me, as he has done it at a completely different level, getting into Coachella in 2010 by hopping a fence, using fake bracelets around his wrist and spending a night in a porta-potty – when you know how these things smell, this is award-worthy. I don’t know how he did it but he ended up on stage with Muse and Jay Z, and of course this was not his only feat. This music festival rebel did it again at famous festivals like Ultra, Bonnaroo, and Austin City Limits.
Released by MTV, ‘No Cameras Allowed’ is a documentary that captures some unique adventures in the life of this die-hard music fan. Mumford & Sons and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros loved his work so much that they asked him to be part of their Railroad Revival Tour, and I guess that, starting now, he won’t have to sneak into festivals without press pass anymore.
There will be a screening of ‘No Cameras Allowed’ at the Wiltern on July 23rd, with a special guest performance. Here is a quote from the movie that sums up this daredevil’s free spirit: ‘Life is what you make it. We only get one go, don’t waste it working, don’t get a mortgage, get an RV’.
