David Cross: Let America Laugh

Lance Bangs (born September 8, 1972) is an American filmmaker, documentarian, and music video director who has created videos for Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Green Day, the Arcade Fire, the Shins, The Thermals, Belle & Sebastian, Menomena, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, R.E.M., Mike Watt, Death Cab for Cutie, The Black Keys, Kanye West, and Pavement. He directed the David Cross film Let America Laugh. Bangs has also been heavily involved in the filming and production of MTV’s Jackass television series and its subsequent movies.

Bangs was born in Sacramento, California. He founded Flicker, a series of Super8mm and 16mm film screenings while in Athens, GA in 1990 along with Michael Lachowski and Angie Grass.

As a commercial director he has worked with UPS, Nike, Subway, Rock Band and Volvo for several campaigns, including the Titanium Lion winning Life on Board campaign from the 2005 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

He produced DVDs for the Directors Label Series, covering the work of Chris Cunningham, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Mark Romanek, Stéphane Sednaoui, Jonathan Glazer and Anton Corbijn. He has also been involved with Spike Jonze on a number of occasions, recently being one of the cinematographers for Jackass: The Movie, Jackass Number Two and Jackass 3D. He also was a part of the Jackassworld.com: 24 Hour Takeover, filming behind the scenes material. In 2009 they were shortlisted for an Academy Award for “Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak.”

He has aired an ongoing series of short (often music-related) documentaries on VBS.TV since 2007 in the form of his show “Bangs”.

Bangs is married to Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney and together they have two children. He has performed musically as well, both with his wife and with Canadian indie rock group The Dudes. There were plans for a west coast summer 2009 tour, billed as Lance Bangs w/ The Dudes. —Wikipedia