Gimme Danger

If you're expecting another quirky, brooding Jim Jarmusch film, or even that Jarmusch signature here and there, you will be disappointed. Gimme Danger is still a great film, but Jarmusch doesn't do what he usually does - show that the conventional can be really far out if you excavate a little - because he gets that Iggy and the Stooges are already supremely avante-garde; they are already Jim Jarmuschy. So Jarmusch does the opposite - he brings that down to earth, and just showcases what's already naturally there rather than try to create something. Still, documentary filmmaking turns out to be well suited for at least a couple of Jarmusch creative sensibilities. There's a charming, amiable leading man (Iggy), and when Iggy speaks there's a subtly comedic element, and subtle comedy is essential in all Jarmusch films. When Iggy tells the story of contacting Moe Howard of The Three Stooges, there's no need for direction with a magic touch. Just let it be.

Ultimately, Jarmusch forgoes being a director with a Jarmusch vision in Gimme Danger other than maybe hoping to convince the viewer to believe, after watching this film, that Iggy and the Stooges are the greatest rock and roll band of all time. He made Gimme Danger as a fan more than as Jim Jarmusch the auteur director, and it ends up being a "normal" kind of rock and roll doc/tribute, with plenty of great music and great footage, history, and lots of interviewing.

So to repeat, don't expect Gimme Danger to be a typical Jim Jarmusch film. But if you expect it to be a loving and intelligent tribute to a rock and roll band that "reinvented music as we know it" according to their former manager, a band that wiped out the 60s according to Iggy, you won't be disappointed.

So what is this? A quite conventional musical documentary embedding a bands history within a bigger history of society and musical appearances and hereby constantly arguing the uniqueness, the coolness and the relevance of The Stooges and their professional anti-professionalism. It has the same sort of bohemian snobbish feeling to it I already found disgusting in ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE: all this bitter mystifying praise of the „real", „authentic", „good", „true", etc., artistic stuff within a devilish sell-out Disneyland world is just soo much emphasized that it's actually ridiculing itself.

But at the same time it is a fanboy work and a work of friendship, a film not only about the band, but a film in dedication for the band, a gift, an openly political and explicitly personal attempt to immortalize the musicians, communists, existentialists, drug users and drug abusers around Iggy Pop: „The Stooges Forever!", it says on the gong starting and finishing the film. And this is basically the sole purpose the film is made for and this is what adds quite a bit of intimidating intimacy to it, making it more like a letter to Iggy only masked as this educational musical documentary it is trying to be at its surface. This is no offense: The naive and sincere face under the mask is what turns the film into touching cinema, after all. And the sound, well, the sound made me heart jump around hard every once in a while.

Having read (re-read actually) 'Please Kill Me", and having read a lot about Iggy Pop and the Stooges over the years, I didn't expect I'd maybe learn too much about them from this doc. Little did I know not only I would, but that I would be laughing much of the way (the story where Ron Asheton asks Moe Howard's permission to use the name 'Stoooges' kills, but not as much as Iggy's dead serious response when he is told he *willl* play Peter Pan on Broadway by David Bowie's seemingly scummy manager).

It's also at times dark, at times harrowing, and the most welcome thing to me is how Jarmusch starts with the Stooges at their (first) end in 1973, when they were broke, Iggy was missing gigs and often showing up so wasted on heroin he could "sometimes sing, sometimes not", and it changes up how we usually see these kind of rock documentaries. It often will start with the adulatory remarks. Here, Iggy Pop in the 1973 footage looks like he's about ready to puke all over himself... while stage diving... while probably slathering himself with some substance of unknown origin... maybe genitals out too, who knows(!)

This was an entirely fearless band, and they created art simply by virtue of only doing what *they* liked. F*** popular taste. Hell, if one follows Pop by his word (and how can you not?) there were many, many manufactured acts (Including CSNY? please not them) and that if nothing else the Stooges acted as a counterpoint to so much of what was going on in the late 60's and early 70's while being one of the hardest bands of the era. Jarmusch does an excellent job of showing us through Pop, the late Scott Asheton and other interviews, plus plenty of stock footage and, not unlike Julien Temple with Filth & the Fury, clips from old shows, movies and other rock acts (Soupy Sayles being one of them of course) that make joke of what we're seeing, or at least reference.

Even as someone who thought he knew the Stooges, or at least Iggy Pop (real name Jim Osterberg), this gives as full a picture as you can get while, at the very end, showing us just how massive an influence they had. Think about it: they couldn't play (at first anyway, they got better as they went), and yet they changed things simply by the force of what rock and roll could do and has done when it's at its most pure. The film reflects the aggression, the commitment to absurdity, and Pop's own madness in performance, which was an act depending on the night (or it was all of a piece).

FUN! And I never thought I'd see (or think about) the day when a Jim Jarmusch movie had animated sequences. Bonus!

Gimme Danger: Gimme Iggy

Gimme Danger is about Iggy Pop and the Stooges, the unruly, undisciplined band of post-hippy rockers that, "killed the sixties" as Iggy says in one interview. There are several directorial and artistic choices made in the film that prevent "Gimme Danger" from being a spectacular film and places it in the middle of the list of good biopics, but not spectacular. In summary, I would rate the parts of the film thusly:

First half: A+ Third Quarter: B End: C-

The film doesn't address Iggy Pop's career from 1975 to 2003. What was happening during those years? What was happening is Iggy Pop was recording his successful solo album "Lust for Life" with the cult hit The Passenger on it.

Why exclude this? Did the record label refuse permission? Did Iggy or Jarmusch insist on only including Stooges music? What about Pop's other solo music and his dabbling into acting? What about his lifestyle transformation from drug addiction to clean living? No, the film buried the real story: Iggy Pop. It was a poor choice and I wonder why they did it? Why not more about Iggy? Was he trying to "Share the credits evenly?"

Why not interview some of the musicians Iggy and The Stooges influenced like Henry Rollins, Billy Joe Armstrong, among others? I would love hear what Neil Young thought of the Stooges, or Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth. Why not interview the family or others around the scene. Why not quote Bowie who produced some Iggy Pop music after the Stooges? Why take out the most interesting subject of the film? That was a bad choice, and even if Iggy Pop insisted, insist harder to include more about him. Perhaps that was a condition of filming, or otherwise, Pop would have refused? If it wasn't, Jarmusch did us a disservice.

That said, they did include his early career as a drummer, the development of the band, growing up in a progressive town, Ann Arbor, and how that influenced them, their drug addiction and issues staying clean, his travels to record music from Detroit to Chicago to New York to London and finally L.A.

Iggy is far more interesting, his transformation is more interesting, than the band. Imagine a Bourne movie spending half the film talking about Nicky Parsons. She's an important character, but you would be rightfully disappointed. That's how it is with Gimme Danger. Iggy is the attraction.

Rating: Matinée, accrued score. First half: Pay full price, see it twice. Second Half: Rent it.

The first half had me laughing and intrigued, the second half of the film was a big let down.

Peace, Tex Shelters

I just saw this at Melbourne International Film Festival in my home town, and It completely lived up to my expectations. I am a big Stooges fan and first heard of this documentary collaboration between Iggy Pop and Director Jim Jarmusch a few years back and could not wait to see it. As a fan of the band and some of the Director's work, they are the perfect marriage to tell this tale. The documentary, told by most of the band themselves but primarily Iggy, covers the bands early inception and up to the 2003 reunion. Iggy is a fascinating interview subject, as are all The Stooges that offer insight,wit and humour in recreating the journey they shared. There is a definite brotherhood between these guys, that was at times as destructive as it was touching. The tributes paid to the fallen Stooges are moving in its unique way, and the documentary as a whole really captures the lasting impact this band has had on music and their influence they have left in their wake. Any fan of this incredible band, that were a statement that pre-dated punk and shocked so many at the time, will love this film. If you aren't a fan, then it also serves as a very entertaining document on a band that are unmistakable in their impact,the fascinating characters and is a chronicle of a turbulent time in music and the world that The Stooges so brilliantly encapsulated in their sound.