Serious Movie Lover

 WHAT WE DO IS SECRET (2007/DVD)

To: Nestle Crush (Brian)
From: Fig Newtron Bomb (Kimberly)

Thank you, Nestle, for watching this silly, shallow biopic with me. It is so much more fun to be appalled with a pal! So WWDIS tells a much abbreviated version of the Germs story (a seminal hardcore punk band that played in LA in the late ‘70s), focusing on Darby Crash, the singer/songwriter. What a lame, spineless tribute to someone who, while presumably pretentious and insufferable (because duh, he was the songwriter/singer in a hardcore punk band) was surely a little more multidimensional than he is portrayed? The deepest we get is in an unintentionally comical flashback: a 10-ish-year-old Crash being shooed away by his mother as she gets drunk in a diner, then sitting down to read Nietzsche. Baby genius alert!

Movies like this make the “punk lifestyle” seem totally achievable and palatable—just dye your hair, say a few positive things about Hitler, abuse some instruments, and you’re in! What a glamorous way for a bored teen to spend a few years. I am sure the people portrayed had it a little rougher than the well-pressed clothing and fashionably messy hair (OK, hilarious wigs) in WWDIS suggest.

On the positive side, the characters’ frequent use of the words suck, random, and like sent me to the good old Oxford etymology dictionary—I was convinced a lazy screenwriter used them without considering the time period—but they all checked out. You win this round, WWDIS. But shame on you for noodling with the timeline for dramz—the screenplay implies that Crash decided to kill himself after the final Germs show, when no one showed up at his favorite hot dog stand to celebrate with him. “Boo hoo hoo, I’ll show them!” But the final show was on December 3, 1980, and Crash died a few days later.

Director: "OK, now make your punk faces...perfect!"

Now that I mention it, they played fast and loose with a lot of the facts, and I’m not sure why. When guitarist Pat Smear recently described their first show he said that “Darby stuck the mic in a jar of peanut butter…Lorna wore her pants inside out, and Darby covered himself in red licorice…We made noise for five minutes until they threw us off.” That sounds neat! Why is the movie version so tame? Bassist Lorna Doom fearbarfs before the gig and Crash douses the crowd with flour, done. And there’s a much richer, more homophobic story about drummer Dan Bolles getting kicked out—it’s inexplicably reimagined. And Crash killed himself in a garage, not at an acquaintance’s parents’ pool house… I could go on—this is just info I gleaned from a few short interviews with Germs members. Why change so many details? It casts a shadow of doubt over every moment in the movie and makes is seem more artificial than the crooked teeth in Shane West’s mouth.

Speaking of! A lot of this could be forgiven by a magnetic portrayal of our main character, but West just doesn’t have the charisma to make the audience want to know more about Crash. Maybe someone with the manic intensity of JGL would have been better? (Have you heard of my new company, Hindsight Casting? We point you in the right direction years after the fact.) He has the onstage poses and the look right, but he can’t hide the gait of a cocky suburban teen athlete. It’s all artifice.

Director: "Now let's try the scene with your punk hat...perfect!"

And please give me one scene in which we see why all these people are willing to let Crash bully and talk down to them. One moment of charm or a glimmer of a great mind! Just having other characters read his lyrics aloud and exclaim, “These are a-MAY-zing!” a few times doesn’t convey why Crash could have won over (at least for a while) the LA punk audience and, decades later, inspired a fawning movie. Viewing Germs footage from the documentary The Decline of Western Civilization helped me come to terms—I recommend it.

Fun Fact: The remaining Germs have toured and are recording with West (who also produced the movie) “playing” Darby—and are receiving a world of shit for it.

Anyhoo! I’m really looking forward to hearing what you thought as a musician and as, I think, a greater appreciator of the biopic genre than I am.

Grade: O (It’s a circle, just like Darby likes!)

Take it easy on the ketamine,

Fig

PS, My sincere apologies for looking at you and repeating every ridiculous line of dialogue as we watched this movie. It could not be helped.

PPS, HA!

PPPS, Punks are jerks.

To: WestHata69 (Kimmer)
From: GooglyEyesUpInHere (Brian)

Director: "Now make your dead punk face...perfect!"

I couldn’t be more on-board with you on this one, Kimberly—what a shallow, pointless, and BORING biopic.

You pretty much covered the essential bullet points (with great and furious panache, I must say), but I wanted to reiterate just how horrible the WWDIS wigs get. It’s fitting to see (a way hotter) movie-world Penelope Spheeris in this stupid film, shooting The Germs for her seminal Decline of Western Civilization punk rock doc, considering that this film’s cast’s wigs are just as ridiculously campy as the wigs worn by Mike Meyers & Co. in Spheeris’s later hit, Wayne’s World. Yup, they’re that bad. And WTFuck was going on with Noah Segan’s sketch-comedy-night-improv take on Germs drummer Don Bolles? That dude is confusing moronic facial twitches and “funny” wide googly-eyes with actual, you know, acting. I’m guessing he learned it during his stint as Conner Lockhart on “Days of our Lives,” circa-summer ’07? (thanks, IMDB!)

But honestly, if the Germs and their peers sounded anything like they did in this shitty movie, I really have absolutely no interest in the whole hardcore punk thing. Fuck Darby Crash and his fake deep thoughts on circles and tepid Bowie lyrics. The Germs suck. I’m out! [Sound of mike being thrown to floor.]