Have you seen the three “Decline of Western Civilization” movies? There’s also a doco about the Minutemen called “We Jam Econo” that I highly recommend.
I own Hated; this thread isn’t about documentaries tho.
Yes, I own all of them. I’ve had the first one since it was released on VHS. And Minutemen are one of my all-time favorite bands; I’ve written about them here on the Dope many times. D.'s death was, for me, one of the most tragic and heartbreaking celebrity mishaps ever.
I have many, many punk rock and heavy metal documentaries (EDM, jazz and other genres too; I’m kind of into music).
I think with Iggy Pop you’d have to end on the movie on the high note of him recording Lust For Life in Berlin.
For brevity, yeah. Otherwise you need to go all the way thru today, and the doc Gimme Danger already did that. Plus, it’s always good to end a movie on a triumphant high note, isn’t it?
One movie was supposed to star Elijah Wood but it seems to be in development hell.
Aye; that project has been dead for almost 10 years now.
I’ve always been a big Creedence Clearwater Revival fan. Their star burned extremely brightly for a couple of years, then fizzled due to the prickly relationships between the band members. Throw in John Fogerty’s adversarial dealings with Saul Zaentz and Fantasy Records, and I would watch that movie for sure.
It’s got a built in climax/ending with his Centerfield album putting him back on top of the charts again (and you could even bring it down again by noting the new lawsuits Zaentz filed) and then go back up by noting that Fogerty won everything, even attorneys fees (from the Supreme Court, no less, in a precedent setting case).
Velvet Goldmine, which managed the remarkable feat of making early 70s rock look dull and constipated*, had Ewan MacGregor as Kurt Wilde, the film’s Iggy Pop facsimile. He looked adequate in silver leather trousers, but his performance was too timid and polite to capture Iggy’s raw physical lunacy.
*Great soundtrack, though.
I know Iggy initially had signed off on Wood playing the role, but I think it would have been a disaster of a movie. After Iggy saw the script, he thought so too.
I’ll keep an eye out for it, thanks!
An unrelated entry:
“Road to Billie Joe: The Bobbie Gentry Story” would be something I’d enjoy.
In the summer of 1993, I worked with a guy who had lived in Austin, Texas for a while. We were all talking about concerts we’d attended, and he sheepishly said, “I saw GG Allin.” I was the only one who’d heard of him, and replied, “All I know about GG Allin is that every time he performs, he always ends up getting arrested. What does he do onstage, or do I want to know?”
“Oh, he shits onstage…”
Other CWs: “You are lying!”
“…he sticks his microphone up his butt…”
“You are making this up!”
When asked why he went to something like this, he replied, “I just wanted to find out if the guy was for real.” Yep, he was.
This man got another job, and the day after he quit, I read in Rolling Stone that Allin was dead. Too bad; I would have loved to have been the one to tell him myself.
(I’m probably exaggerating when I say that he always got arrested, but not by a long shot.)
p.s. This was during the “Shit Happens” era, and we had a very minimal dress code at this closed-door pharmacy. One day, he showed up wearing a t-shirt with the F word on it in foot-high letters; he was told not to wear it again, and the code was amended to say “no profanity on clothing.”
I can affirm that he did not get arrested every time he performed. I can also affirm that yes, he did do everything you ever heard about him doing.
ETA: Which reminds me, I think movie about Tesco Vee (The Meatmen) would be a fantastic film, or about Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat, Fugazi).
Oh OH! How about a Blowfly movie! That would totally fucking rock!
Not A Pretty Girl: The Ani DiFranco Story would be a good biopic. Eighteen year old singer-songwriter turns down record deals to found her own label, out lesbian when that was still a rarity in showbiz, collaborates with Prince (and gets him to sing backup on one of her albums!), has multi-decade career and becomes indie and feminist icon almost purely by word-of-mouth. One of the greatest lyricists working today. And she fucking rocks.
Not one word about David Bowie? Am I missing something?
He produced consistently interesting work in a number of fields for many years and knew and worked with lots of similarly talented and colorful people, true. But there isn’t a lot of drama in his life story, is there? Even his Berlin phase and drug problems didn’t cause him to ever hit rock-bottom, so there’s no redemption arc. No adversary to overcome, not even himself, really.
So I’m not sure how you’d keep people engaged.
Scarlet, no. McNamara would be a good call. She’s got the cheekbones to pull it off.
Maybe The Brothers McLeod could do an animated Bowie biopic. I know I’ve posted this before, but it’s pretty funny if you haven’t seen it: David Bowie, Brian Eno And Tony Visconti Record ‘Warszawa’