Gimme Danger

Gimme Danger

source: Gimme Danger

One of the recent music documentaries I eagerly and excitedly looked forward to viewing, "Gimme Danger" delivers just like The Stooges at their best: lively and loud. Kickstarting with Iggy Pop's trailer park background to his musical forays to his meeting with the other band members the film takes the viewer to a musical odyssey of drugs, bad luck, violence, mayhem and of course, ripping great music. Priceless footage (many I haven't seen before), great photos, amusing toons and snippets of various films to complement the story and interviews with the band and their affiliates round up a generally quiet and pretty sedate but nonetheless highly-charged tribute. If there are complaints I have on the doc it's the failure to highlight the music and the importance and influence the band had on Rock and Popular music as a whole. Brief musical interludes pop out throughout the film and there's a cool segment of great bands performing Stooges songs with classic albums the band influenced shown but more music and interviews with acts and individuals the band influenced would have hit like a power chord on why the band matters. Well-written and directed by Jim Jarmusch (who looks like a punk himself) this is a compelling memorial to a great and innovative band who altered the face and substance of Rock music to a bracing and more riveting degree. "Search and Destroy"!

I am a big music fan and like some of Iggy's solo stuff but haven't really ever gone back to source and listened extensively to the stooges. Despite that, I found this a really interesting documentary focusing on the stooges from the band members meeting, through to their original demise in 1973 through to their reformation starting in 2003. For a band notorious for some crazy antics, there is a lot of warmth not only from Jaramusch but more importantly from the band about their time as a group and a fondness for each other which comes across as very genuine. It doesn't get more than an 8 though as sometimes things come across a bit messy, with interviews not making a lot of sense or occasionally seeming to lack context. Overall though I really enjoyed it and will be putting my wrong in not vesting time in the stooges, right in the very near future.

If you know little or nothing about The Stooges, this will fill you in. If you're a Stooges fan, this is as great a documentary as you could want. If you're not a Stooges fan, why are you reading this?

If you're a fan of any hard rock since....1973 either you're a fan of The Stooges or your favorite musicians are.

I've seen the movie two times within 3 weeks with two friends of mine who didn't know much about The Stooges but they were like "well OK, whatever". After the movie they had bright eyes and were totally excited and happy that I invited them. That says it all. I enjoyed it the second time even more. I'll start with a few of the negatives: I really missed some details about Iggy's time with Bowie in Berlin. I think it was a really productive and important part of Iggy's life and had an influence not only on him but on the band. On the other hand there were some scenes which I would have left out: for example the part with John Wayne or some stories about the trailer. They didn't add anything to the story. The music wasn't really in focus here so someone who doesn't know them, won't love their music after this nor will know anything about the process of making music, except a few details. Now the positive side: I love the fact that this is a documentary about The Stooges and not about Iggy Pop. He is a unique, eccentric figure, but he doesn't steal the show. Every member of the band share their stories and I was really happy to see and hear the Ashtons before they passed away. Jarmusch focuses on the history of the era, the history of The Stooges and the personal stories behind the stage and on stage. I adore him for not asking 200 critics and some distanced relatives to talk about them. He asks only people who were either in the band or in a close relationship with the band. I love The Stooges and I knew some things about them besides their music but Gimme Danger had some new information to share, it does a great job in organizing 40 years in 2 Hours, which is not a walk in the park, it was genuinely funny and sometimes also touching. The parts in the second half where the band comes together were like that. It was moving to see 50-60 year olds, some of them in a bad condition to be happy as a child because the band is together again. It was heartwarming watching Ashton play the drums for the last time. These guys didn't care much about the big money, they just wanted to play music. It doesn't matter that their lost their way, they always find a path somehow to play again. Overall Gimme Danger has some weaknesses but I would watch it over and over again, because it does justice in portraying The Stooges. It is also unique, because most of them are not with us and it would have been a huge missed opportunity to not interview them for the last time.

Captured raw and not produced, this should be required, pre-requisite course material for any group of individuals who want to create music together for anything other than after-school jazz band, full stop. This documentary and The Stooges are about those who feel music not those who play music. "Music is life and life is not a business... all the poor people who actually started rock and roll music are cool... I don't want to belong to none of it. I just want to be." "...There is nothing left to life but a pair of glassy eyes, raze my feelings one more time."

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.

For who is involved, this should have been amazing. It's not. It's nothing more than the Stooges Wikipedia page except with moving pictures. No new info, no newly discovered footage, nothing. Don't waste your time.