Monday, November 14, 2016

MOOM PITCHER REVIEW BY BRAD KOHLER! GIMME DANGER, directed by Jim Jarmusch!

Being someone who would select the thousand dollar square right off the bat in Double Jeopardy if the category was the Stooges, what could I learn from Jim Jarmusch's documentary?

Alex Trebek: "A Luftwaffe uniform".

Me: "What did Ron Asheton wear to Iggy's wedding"?

Alex: "Correct for a thousand".

Me: "You see Alex, he did it in deference to the bride's Jewish heritage, the Luftwaffe being non-political soldiers, unlike the S.S. Of course, he wore that uniform more often".

Alex: "You really needn't extrapolate, it's not like you get extra credit. I don't even know who the Stooges are. This is odd".

Me: It's OK. You're in a dream I'm having. Let's try Von Lmo for six hundred".

These are the things I took away from the film.

1) Kathy Asheton is mentioned quite a bit in Stooges lore. She is interviewed here in the present day, and FINALLY I get to see a photo of her in her badass, hot Detroit girl prime. She and Fred Smith would have made the coolest prom king and queen ever, it they had deigned to attend something so lame.

2) Scott Asheton, interviewed here towards the end of his life (looking and sounding frail) is, as we all know, the greatest Stooge, and his pithy responses got the biggest crowd roar reaction.

3) Where are the demos of RAW POWER material like the tantalizing snippet of a faster, punchier "Penetration" with Iggy singing "I feel hungry" over the top?

4) Jarmusch, not the most conventional of film makers, has made a very conventional documentary about a very unconventional band. At almost two hours, it could have benefited from some editing. The whole reunion coda should have been an asterisk. Jarmusch spends as much time on how it came to be as he did on how the band got together in the first place. Iggy mentions watching SOUPY SALES as a kid, and how Soupy encouraged viewers to write to him, stressing that letters should be twenty-five words or less. Iggy remembered that, and used it as a template for writing lyrics. Economical is better. Jarmusch should have taken a heads up.

5) To get this right, the project should have been done years ago, when more peripheral characters were still around, but what ever went right when it came to the Stooges?

6) As the RAW POWER-era Stooges dissolve, Tony De Fries of Mainman wanted to take Iggy to New York to portray Peter Pan on stage. Almost all limeys are idiots. Something about that goofy diet I guess.

7) Why tell the Nico story if you're gonna leave out the best parts about her teaching Iggy the best parts about her teaching him about wine and how to eat pussy and telling him "Jim, you are not full of ze poison! A performer must be fill of ze poison!"

8) Any Stooges documentary should discuss the concept of the "O" mind, and this spiritual manifestation, as important as the theory of relativity, is not touched upon. Sorry to say, when you get the DVD, GIMME DANGER will not elevate you to the real "O" mind plane. I suggest that instead of listening to the bonus commentary track you construct a "Jim-O-Phone" and alternate playing that and banging a fifty gallon oil drum. You may want to get creative with what you put on your popcorn too.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Re. 7. Much less the fact that, after Nico left the Funhouse, Iggy discovered she'd given him the clap. One of the funniest pages in 'Please Kill Me,' a book crammed end-to-end with amusing anecdotes.