Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge Channeled His “Broken” Childhood and Love for Punk Rock Into New “Amblin on Meth” Sci-Fi Movie

“Hi, it’s Tom.”

That’s Tom DeLonge, of Blink-182 fame, calling Decider from Portugal, mere hours before he’s set to perform with the band. No assistant connecting him and no PR agents listening in — just punk legend and newly-minted feature film director DeLonge, ready to chat about his new movie Monsters of California.

Despite his world tour, the movie, and the Blink-182 album set to release later this month, DeLonge remains as humble as ever. Though, he doesn’t have to be.

DeLonge was only 23 years old when Blink-182, of which he co-founded, released their breakthrough album Enema of the State, which explores themes of childhood trauma, suburban woes, and UFO conspiracy theories. In the 24 years that have passed, not much has changed. 

Through his company To the Stars… Academy of Arts & Sciences, and other pursuits, DeLonge continues to create art on those topics. Now, he’s releasing Monsters of California, a punk rock science-fiction drama that feels like E.T. meets Pump Up The Volume meets Stranger Things, but also exists in its own realm.

Or perhaps in its own universe, since there are, you know, aliens involved. 

Beyond the movie, DeLonge has his mind on other things, like his reunion with Blink-182 after nearly 10 years, their ongoing world tour, and his general fascination with space and extraterrestrials, which saw his company leaking three “UFO” videos that were later declassified and released by the Pentagon.

In other words, DeLonge is changing lives for misfits on, and off, this planet.

“It’s wild,” he says about navigating the movie’s release during the countdown for the new album. “It was not planned that way. I started doing movies years ago. I started developing stories and books to go down this path, and then Blink just happened to get back together because Mark [Hoppus] was going through cancer treatments.”

Directed and co-written by DeLonge, Monsters of California follows high schooler Dallas Edwards and his misfit group of friends as they uncover a paranormal conspiracy after a government agent goes missing. DeLonge says it took “a couple of years to get the script ready and to find the right partners.” Ultimately, the movie got off the ground during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

“As usual, I’m juggling lots of things but I’m excited. My goal is to put some things out there like any other artists, and hopefully, it resonates.”

Despite the long production process, DeLonge is “super happy” with the final product, and the final script, which went through multiple rounds of rewrites. “You have such little time to squeeze in so many ideas and themes, and whatever, and we were moving so fast. I was cutting things and issues, and we had very limited resources. To think that we were able to put all of this in a film is insane. I’ve never seen a movie that has this much in it for as little as what we had.”

DeLonge drew inspiration from Steven Spielberg, the influential filmmaker behind E.T., calling Monsters of California, “Amblin on meth.” The musician continued, “Spielberg always captured broken families really well, and I think that shows like Stranger Things and other movies built off of what Spielberg does.” With his movie, DeLonge wanted to channel something “real” and he tapped into his experience growing up in a “broken suburban family.” 

“I was kicked out of high school, I was in a tribe of skateboarders, and I was out all night doing weird shit. When I would watch these old movies, I never related to the kids that were in them. But if the kids looked and acted, and talked and joked, the way they do in Monsters of California, I would’ve been like, ‘Well, that’s my tribe,'” DeLonge said. “Those are themes that everyone can relate to. It’s not like I have some monopoly on a broken home. I think all of us have gone through versions of that and even people that have perfect homes can find things that really went wrong in our life pretty easily.”

In some ways, penning the script was healing for DeLonge, who never went to college or worked “a normal job,” and felt that he had to forge his own path in life. “Going through the script and remembering how my friends were, and remembering my escape from the bad things in my life at the age when I was with them, really made me value everything I was going through, and everything that led me to where I’m at now,” he shared.

That being said, everything about the Monsters of California screams punk rock: The set shows messy teenage bedrooms littered with band posters, unconventional memorabilia, and stickers. As the production’s resources were limited, DeLonge recieved a lot of the items from local friends, which was a given way to channel punk on screen. He also signaled the community by paraphrasing the hit song “Institutionalized” by Suicidal Tendencies in the movie’s script during a scene where one of the characters argues with his conventional mother. “I already went to your schools, I went to your churches,” the character yells at his parent, “And now you think I’m crazy!”

“I grew up with Suicidal Tendencies, and my brother and I would run around saying, ‘But all I wanted was a Pepsi and she wouldn’t give it to me!’ So, I fit the spirit of those lyrics in the movie because that’s so much of what suburban kids go through,” DeLonge explained. “I grew up as a troubled youth, getting kicked out of high school and all that stuff, and you have your parents coming down on you and you’re like, ‘I’m literally living the life that you told me to live and you’re mad at me for how I’m turning out.’ That’s what’s beautiful about that song – and that’s what’s great about punk rock music in general.”

There’s no way to end the call without picking DeLonge’s mind about aliens, which is woven into the backdrop of the movie in a crucial, yet respectable, manner as the teenagers work to uncover the conspiracy, and later find answers in a former government employee, played by Richard Kind. As punk culture is known for accepting the “other,” the same ideology is often applied to the “unknown.” But on the other hand, the government has historically reacted differently — with fear — in situations as such, thus creating the common archetype of villainous government agents looking to kill and dissect extraterrestrials in their own self-interest.

According to DeLonge, Monsters of California takes a different — albeit similar — approach. “People need to realize that the government has a big weight on their shoulders with this subject and they can come off like they have ill intentions, but it’s really that their point of view is to avoid chaos and to create order out of something that they can’t control,” he said. “They know a lot more about certain aspects of it than we do. But at the same time, we’re all in this together. This is nature, and there are good things that can come from this in many different ways.”

As the movie nears its end, there are still many questions left unanswered, which reflects our real-life understanding of extraterrestrials. “It’s meant to let people understand that your thoughts create reality,” he said about the movie’s ending. “If you don’t have the right thoughts to create your own physical reality, something else will come in and try to create the reality for you.”

Monsters of California releases in theaters and on-demand on October 6, 2023.