Blank Generation

Richard Hell's music is fantastic but this movie sucks. Boring and uninteresting. The only thing good about it is the music. The female lead is pretentious and the rest of the acting is flat.

How much you enjoy Blank Generation will depend on how big a fan of Richard Hell you are. If, like me, you think he was the coolest, most talented, most intelligent, and most charismatic 70s punk, then this movie is a must see! Hell does what he does best, being MR COOL, Carole Bouquet is stunningly beautiful, and Warhol puts in a brief but memorable appearance. To top it all off the film is full of the music of Hell and The Voidoids (Robert Quine, Ivan Julian and Mark Bell) who are really on fire. Their live performances are sensational and are worth watching this for alone. A forgotten punk classic.

Underknown document from the early 1980s covering New York City's burgeoning punk scene with the underrated, now appreciated and legendary punk songwriter and bassist extraordinaire Sir Richard Hell in the lead role. The film, suffering from pretentious dialogue more than a few moments, is nevertheless rewarding in spots, with great natural acting by Hell and tepid chemistry between he and the phenomenally sensual actress Carole Bouquet. Besides occasional smoldering interactions between these two, the most engaging aspect of this film are several live music sets of Hell's band The Voidoids,either on stage or in the studio. Definitely worth a watch for those songs and, if for nothing else, then to glimpse the futility of being a musician in NYC's gritty streets. [PS: Sir Richard Lives! In 2004, Hell was persuaded by the Fales Library at New York University to part with his archives that are now apparently available for punk scrawl-ars: "In pristine surroundings, scholars will soon be able to pore over old set lists, posters, videotapes, audiotapes, drafts of lyrics, manuscripts and erotic drawings. The papers will be part of the library's extensive collection of documents from the downtown art scene of the 1970's and 1980's. They will not go unvisited, said Marvin Taylor, director of the library, who paid Hell $50,000 for the materials. Though the library has tweedier stuff, including papers of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Erich Maria Remarque, it is material like Hell's that draws a crowd.

Bad acting. Next to no script or plot. An uninteresting cameo from Warhol. Pretence turned up to 11. If you don't like the album this exploits, it's an expensive student film style disaster. I would sell it to you only on the condition you never press Play. It would have been interesting as a late 70s postcard of New York but it's shot so tight, that you see precious little of it. Abominable.

I was glad when it was over. It went surprisingly quickly for a dull film. Gives you scenes of a lovey-dovey/i'm leaving you romance between a new wave musician and his French TV documentary interviewer/filmer in New York. It has the atmosphere of the dreary New York streets. No particularly interesting characters save for the two leads, and another filmmaker girl. I personally like the music of Richard Hell and the Voidoids which is the band performing a few songs, staged right in the CBGB's club. Overall it's a dreary, blase' show; the lead character doesn't seem to really care about anything. The real-life character was a heroin user, but no mention of drugs is made. The last surprise at the end was the high-point.