Jeff Krulik is a director of independent films and a former Discovery Channel producer. Krulik's work frequently explores the fringes of popular culture from an enthusiastic and appreciative point of view. He is best known for his 1986 documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot, co-produced by John Heyn, a gently disturbing look into hard-rock fandom recorded at the Capital Centreparking lot in Landover, Maryland, before a Judas Priest concert. Most of the fans appear drunken and drugged, with "bare feet, muscle shirts, bare-chested, bleach blonde frizzy perms, mullets from hell, big hair, bad teeth, scar tissue, and by far the largest collection of late '70s Camaros ever seen in one location." Cult director John Waters said of the film, "It gave me the creeps."
Background
Heavy Metal Parking Lot, for a decade or more, circulated through word-of-mouth, via the internet and on second-to-nth-generation bootlegged copies. A 20th-anniversary DVD edition with sequels, outtakes, where-are-they-now bonus footage and other inspirations is now available for sale. In his first professional position, Krulik served as the Metrovision Public-access televisioncable TV channel coordinator for the southern portion of Prince George's County, Maryland, a community that has inspired several of his films, including Public Access Gibberish, a "greatest hits" montage of the most bizarre acts during his tenure at the cable access channel. Other films are Neil Diamond Parking Lot, about the fans before a Neil Diamond concert at the same stadium as Heavy Metal Parking Lot, one decade later; and Ernest Borgnine on the Bus, a documentary about actor Ernest Borgnine, his son and his custom RV; a compilation of many of the director's short films titled Heavy Metal Parking Lot: The Films of Jeff Krulik was released several years ago. Most of these films, along with films made by Krulik's friends and some additional found footage, are viewable for free in streaming formats on his official website. In 2004, the Trio cable channel began broadcasting a show by Krulik titled Parking Lot, which expanded on the "parking lot" documentary series started in the 1980s. Created & co-produced by Jeff Krulik and John Heyn, eight episodes were filmed, although it is unclear as to how many of them were actually broadcast. It does not appear that the program will be shown again on the channel. In 2010 Jeff released Heavy Metal Picnic, edited by Greg DeLiso, a feature-length, semi-follow-up to Parking Lot. Picnic chronicles the goings on at a weekend-long field party in Potomac, Maryland in 1985. The party was captured on video by a few of the patrons wielding a VHS camcorder and a stolen CBS microphone. Jeff interviews the men behind the camera, the party's organizer and some of the attendees, who had not previously seen the footage. Heavy Metal Picnic was released on August 6, 2010. Krulik also directed Led Zeppelin Played Here, about a Maryland youth center where Led Zeppelin supposedly performed on its first US tour.
