Moriarty Hops In The Mosh Pit With WHAT WE DO IS SECRET, A Film About Darby Crash And The Germs!
Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.
I went through my punk phase back in high school. Used to go to shows at the Armory outside Tampa to see bands like the Circle Jerks or the Impotent Sea Snakes or Black Flag. I considered the REPO MAN soundtrack one of the essential artifacts of civilization, and I thought Penelope Spheeris was doing the Lord’s work with her documentary THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION. It’s a movie jampacked with memorable moments, and it really is an X-ray of the punk scene in Los Angeles at the end of the ‘70s. Black Flag, X, Fear, Catholic Discipline... they all made appearances, but one of the scenes that made a strong impression on me was the performance by The Germs, along with the interview footage with Darby Crash and the rest of the band. Everyone on the scene seemed wild, but Crash honestly seemed like he believed in anarchy, like a smart kid who had no larger goal as a performer than to spit in everyone’s face and laugh while doing it. Knowing how his story ended only made the footage in DECLINE that much more interesting.
The truth about the Germs was far more complicated than that short glimpse could have suggested, and I’m not surprised that it’s taken as long as it has for someone to actually figure out how to tell the story. Writer/director Rodger Grossman seems to have a genuine passion for the material, and his film does a very good job of evoking both time and place. WHAT WE DO IS SECRET isn’t just the story of the Germs... it’s an attempt by a filmmaker to recapture something lost, if only to understand what worth there was in it in the first place.
I would never make the argument that the Germs were a great band or an important band, but they certainly captured a mood that was percolating in the LA music scene at the time, and in a lot of ways, “Darby Crash” was the perfect product of the punk scene. He was clever but uneducated. Ambitious more than talented. He was smart enough to figure out how to get attention, but empty enough to not know what to do once he got that attention. One of the things that I like about the film is that it doesn’t make the case that they were a great band or great musicians.
Instead, it focuses on the personal. It traces the standard rise and fall of a band in much the same way that most music biopics do, but it works because the cast makes these kids feel real, and the sincerity of the thing gives you a rooting interest in whether or not they’re going to succeed. Darby Crash shows up in the film fully formed. He may have been born Jan Beahm, but he reinvented himself in such a way that he drew others into his orbit, including Pat Smear and Lorna Doom, who ended up co-founding a band they originally wanted to call Sophistifuck And The Revlon Spam Queens. By the time they branded themselves The Germs, they were already getting a reputation as the most dangerous live band in Los Angeles. Crash frequently cut or hurt himself onstage, and they were lucky if they actually finished a show without someone getting attacked or without something getting trashed. The movie seems well aware of why people went to see The Germs, and even the audiences at the gigs seem more interested in watching Darby cut himself than they are in anything being played.
Honestly, the film’s not great, but it’s got a sincere quality to the way it tells its oh-so-familiar tale of the rise and fall of a band in this cold cruel world, and that sincerity ultimately carried it for me. I haven’t seen Shane West in anything before this where he made even the slightest impression on me, but he does nice work inhabiting the overcompensatory swagger of Crash. Bijou Phillips, who certainly has the right background to understand the music scene, does some of her most affecting work to date as Lorna Doom. Rick Gonzalez is one of those guys you’ve probably seen in films like OLD SCHOOL, PULSE, WAR OF THE WORLDS, or PULSE, but you may not have made note of his name yet. I think he’s really good as Pat Smear, and he’s the real heart and soul of the film, the one person who seems able to reach the “real” Darby Crash.
Having seen THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION so many times, and in particular, the live performance by The Germs that Spheeris shot...
... I thought the way it was handled in the film was really sharp and interesting, and a great indication that Grossman’s got something going on as a director. His film is very low-budget, so he’s not able to afford tons and tons of period detail, but he still makes it feel right for the most part. He gets the dynamics right, the tensions in the venue, the friction between the band members. And he obviously knows LA very well, whether it’s the use of Oki-Dog as a major locale in the film or the holy-shit-fantastic work by J.P. Manoux as Rodney Bingenheimer.
I don’t think anyone’s going to see this film and suddenly have some dramatic about-face on the merits of punk or The Germs in particular, but it’s a solid, heartfelt picture, and it reminds me in some ways of last year’s CONTROL. That’s a more technically proficient film, but like that one, it’s the performances that carry the day. Darby Crash made the boneheaded mistake of making his biggest Rock Star Move (suicide by overdose) on the same day that John Lennon was shot, thereby relegating himself to footnote status until now. This film may be the tribute he had in mind in the first place, and I doubt anyone could have put one together that was more affectionate, so in that way, he’s finally been given the victory that timing and talent conspired to keep from him all these years.
WHAT WE DO IS SECRET is rolling out in limited release right now.
