Music documentaries are springing up like weeds and I'm not complaining. There's nothing I love more than a well-drawn portrait of humans who channel some magic alchemy to create the soundtrack of millions of lives. Recent outings like Cobain: Montage of Heck, Amy and What Happened, Miss Simone have pushed and prodded the genre in unique and innovative ways and challenged the pervasive "talking heads" style that sprung from decades of formulaic, watered-down television treatments. Now that documentaries can sell as a viable theatrical experience, these docs are free to flex and become FILMS again. Which is precisely why I'm disappointed in Jim psychedelic Gimme Danger. Full access to Iggy Pop and the Stooges - one of the wildest and most mythical bands in history - and all of the archival material his heart desired at and what we end up with is a normie, risk-free doc with no teeth.
Look - I'm not saying it's no fun. There are incredible moments in here, described in the Michigan chainsaw drawl that is classic Iggy. His master interview is the spine for the whole film and he's totally guileless and open with his old pal. Jim (Jarmusch) and Jim (Osterberg) - aka Iggy - gab about the origin story of the band, Iggy's hilarious moment during his short-lived blues career when he "smoked a big joint and realized I was not black", the fall and rise of this gifted gang of miscreants, the drugs, the rivalry with the MC5, the invention of the stage dive - all of it. He bizarrely admits that he tried to keep all of his lyrics under 25 words because that's what comedian Soupy Sales did on his hit 1960s show. One of the sweeter revelations was that although he grew up in a trailer with modest means, his parents loved him unconditionally - to the point where they gave up the bigger bedroom to him so he could set up and bash away on his drums.
But there was a lot lacking in the choices Jarmusch made to tell the story. As a self-described Stooges fan boy, it stands to reason that he was too obsessed with everything that came out of Iggy's mouth to do a judicious edit of the interview and get some other perspectives. Along with the protagonists in these stories, we crave eyewitness accounts. The musical spawn of The Stooges are legion. Rather than a hasty montage of album covers from bands who carried the torch, where were the "the first time I heard I Wanna Be Your Dog, I dropped acid and started a band" accounts from their acolytes. And why not start with some scorching concert footage of the band at their most potent to blow our minds and get us in the mood, instead of a bunch of talking head interviews? The use of live concert footage in Janis: Little Girl Blue was so vivid and intense to watch in a theatre that it was like a séance - this is the opportunity of a theatrical documentary and this is what was sorely lacking here. Jarmusch does the general public a disservice by preaching to the niche of rock nerds that already know and love this band and not embracing the new and curious. The minutiae of detail in some of the song descriptions here is like an extended episode of "Classic Albums Live". Jim Jarmusch should know better - he did a great job with the 1997 Neil Young doc Year of the Horse so I'm not sure where he lost the plot. In his defence, I suppose, doing a Stooges doc must have felt like a BIG FUCKING DEAL and maybe he got mired in the responsibility of properly representing, in his words, the "greatest rock-n-roll band ever".
Two more quibbles, If I might. Why the hell is everyone in the doc world doing this animation thing now? Yes, sometimes it works beautifully (see Cobain: Montage of Heck), but if there's no artistry to it, it feels like a lazy transition device. In this film, it's animated sequences of the band that were obviously tacked on when Jarmusch realized that 80% of his film was just going to be a medium shot of Iggy otherwise. Illustrating the story with animation is lazy unless there's a distinct and artistic reason for it - so something wild with the song lyrics or something crazy and psychedelic to evoke a feeling - not just some cartoons of the band getting in and out of limos and hotels. It felt tacked on.
Finally - and this might raise some hankles - but why gloss over the complicated history that Ron Asheton brought to bear with his obsession with nazi paraphernalia? It's so jarring in 2016 to see a swastika armband and an iron cross flaunted as rock god attire. I know Lemmy did it and Guns and Roses did it and even Siouxie Sioux and the Sex Pistols sported this "look" but it's time somebody looked into why this vile fashion statement stank up the 70s and 80s and how they felt about it looking back. They brush it off in the doc with breezy platitudes about Ron being a collector and having a connection to his dad but it feels like it's time to have this deeper conversation.
I saw this film premiere at the New York Film Festival. Jarmusch and Iggy were there and did a long Q & A afterward (TIFF pals - if you think the questions in Toronto are cringey, never attend NYFF. Oof). At age 69, the lean, mean punk machine that is Iggy Pop is as lucid and warm and wonderful as ever. I mean, this fucker just finished a tour for his record with Josh Homme! He's more energetic and alive than audience members who were decades younger than him. It strikes me that this is at the heart of the incongruity with the film: the "raw power" and vitality of this man and his band had been flattened into an undynamic film. And that's not cool, man.
Here's hoping somebody with a little less invested in the band takes an objective stab at the delicious story of The Stooges in the future (Brett Morgen, I'm looking at you.)