Call me crazy, but I found this movie utterly charming. Obnoxious, phlegm-ridden racist teenagers bashing each other in the head for no reason and making (and listening to) utterly horrible music. . .I dunno. . .it all just felt so scrappy. And Spheeris’ ultra low budget 16 mm filming style. . . it’s a nice time capsule. I couldn’t, though, for the life of me figure out how a punk scene could thrive in a place like Los Angeles. I mean, the weather is too nice to be pissed off . . .and to wear all that black makeup! London, New York. . .maybe Detroit. . .but Los Angeles? What a bunch of jokers. Also amusing was seeing one or two faces that later became something. The lead singer of Fear. . .man, he looks familiar. Only after looking him up do I realize — he played Mr. Boddy in Clue!!! Also, the ur-Ani DiFranco, Phranc, is here looking like a man and playing dreadful music in an awful band I’ve already forgotten the name of. The music of X is the only thing on display I’d ever consider listening to. . .and that’s if the second singer Exene Cervenka (ex-wife of Viggo Mortenson, I just learned — how did she ever land him?) ever shut up. At first I was giving the other bands the benefit of the doubt, thinking maybe Spheeris’ crew was too rag tag to record good sound. But John Doe actually has a singing voice and some of X’s songs are actual songs. I’ve seen the follow-up to this, The Metal Years, many times — and I’ve tried to see this before. I even rented it one time, only to find the VHS tape had been recorded over. I wish I could tell you it was recorded over with homemade porn or clues to a murder, but I think it was a baseball game or something. Lame.
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Welcome
Jordan Hoffman is a New York-based writer and film critic working for The Guardian, Vanity Fair, Thrillist, Times of Israel, NY Daily News and elsewhere.
He is the host of ENGAGE: The Official Star Trek Podcast, a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and challenges you to a game of backgammon.
You’ve lost your mind. Charming? This movie made me realize the rise of Loverboy was the key event of the early 80s. Why? Because those guys KNEW HOW TO BE HAPPY. It’s something ingrained in most teenagers from their childhood … which they spend copious amounts of times trying to refute or kill. (This is one of the great tragedies of our time … how deeply fucked-up children/teenagers are.) I now appreciate more some guy in red leather pants and matching head band “working for the weekend,” as opposed to this punk rock shit … which, in the infamous words of that one kid from Heavy Metal Parking Lot … belongs on FUCKING MARS, MAN!
Really, this movie was like one long, bad bowel movement — no offense to Spheeris, she got what she set out for, which was to present the most nihilistic image possible of the LA punk scene. I have an oral history of this time (called, I think, “We Have the Neutron Bomb” or something like that) in which a lot of the people in the movie (like John Doe) nail her for employing obvious tactics to catch people and only film them at their lowest moments. And I guess when you’re some punk rock kid living in squalor in a bad neighborhood in Hollywood, there are plenty of lowest moments.
Strangely enough, I also have an oral history on heavy metal (the name escapes me now), in which people from the Metal Years documentary she followed up with level the same accusations. (As you may recall, there’s one scene where some long-forgotten metal guy sits on an inflatable device in a pool, drunk and stoned off his ass, discussing suicide with his mother.)
I hardly think you have to stack the deck with kids who have their hearts set on self destruction — but she did. These things are worth watching, but I’d employ the caveat that many of the people she was filming felt they got a raw deal and a misrepresentation of who they were at the time. But again — I’ve noted to you my problems with documentarians becoming heavy-handed editorialists as opposed to anyone seriously interested in finding the truth of the matter. When thousands of hours of footage representing a minor fraction of people’s real lives become a 1:20 movie, it’s hard enough to find the truth without dealing from a stacked deck.
X is hands-down the best band to come out of the L.A. scene, which yes, paled in comparison to the NYC and London scenes (though the Germs and Weirdos were pretty good too). But I would rank X up with the Ramones and the Pistols. Give their album “Los Angeles” a listen for a starter, then decide.
This movie is one of the VHS I won’t be letting go of simply for the reason you said, it’s hard to find an uncorrupted copy.