12.21.07
Rockumentary Friday
Directed by Greg Whiteley, New York Doll is a documentary about Arthur “Killer” Kane, one of the founding members and bassist for seminal punk band, the New York Dolls. It seems that after the Dolls broke up, Kane was in a pretty bad state. Hopelessly alcoholic and without any real direction, he went back and forth between New York and L.A. for a while, forming various bands and just trying to eke out a living. Until one day he joined the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He became a fucking Momon! Isn’t that wild?
Anyway, during the course of this documentary, Kane gets a chance to reunite with the Dolls in a show that Morrissey is putting on in London. The extent of the movie is basically just following him around while he works in the Momon library in L.A. and gets ready to go play a show for the first time in decades. Then he goes and plays the show and makes amends with his old bandmates and it’s pretty fucking touching, actually.
The story of his rise & fall was interesting and the way that he is such an unassuming guy is almost mindblowing. There are these 2 really hilarious old Mormon ladies that were like “Yeah, we had no idea Arthur was such a big deal!” Then he dies like, weeks after getting back from the show. It’s kind of sad, but because they had interviews with all these people that were like “All he ever talked about was getting the Dolls back together” the fact that he actually got to have that happen before he died is sort of awesome.
Technically speaking, the movie is kind of so-so, mostly beacuse it seems kind of Ex Post Facto - like the director heard about the Morrissey show and then tracked down Arthur and decided to make a documentary and just got lucky that he died at the end, so it seemed kind of epic and important. I’m sure all the other interviews were shot after Arthur died. There were some pretty cool animations though, but the whole thing could have been a little better.
In contrast, The Devil and Daniel Johnston was clearly a labor of love for director Jeff Feuerzeig who obviously spent years on it. And it was totally worth it, because I thought it was great.
As I have previously mentioned, I was not a cool kid. I’m not claiming to be a cool adult (especially not when it comes to music), but there is no way I would have heard of Daniel Johnston even though a lot of people have. I just like documentaries.
Apparently this guy was this totally brilliant underground singer/songwriter who also happened to be batshit crazy (seriously, majorly, unmedicatedly bipolar). But he was also extremely driven to be a musician and made his way on to MTV and Kurt Cobain wore one of his t-shirts and people definitely knew about him. But once he finally got a record deal, he went all paranoid crazy and wouldn’t sign the damn contract!
Anyway, I really enjoyed this movie because it introduced me to this guy who seriously, even though he really sucks at guitar writes these really awesome Bob Dylan-esque songs that are kind of great! And it’s one of those Better Than Fiction stories.