The Decline of Western Civilization (1981, Penelope Spheeris) (Patreon)

71/100

Won me over instantly with the montage of acts derisively reading aloud Spheeris' crowd release, perfectly embodying the punk spirit. (Several of them independently—or so I assume—added "ugly" to the bit about spectators' likenesses possibly appearing in the film.) What follows is a truly extraordinary time capsule of a musical era that I was juuuust too young to be cognizant of at the time, having only started buying albums in '81 (and inaugurated said vinyl collection with the likes of Rick Springfield and Pat Benatar, not Germs and Fear; cut me some slack, I was 13). This might well be the only film of its kind that left me uncertain whether its live performances or interviews are stronger, since both are generally phenomenal. What's more, I didn't at all mind when one interrupts the other, even though that editing approach generally drives me nuts (making me bail quite early on Summer of Soul, for example); not only does it seem thematically appropriate in this case, but it does in fact work both ways, with jagged shards of concert footage frequently slicing into relatively sedate conversations, just as a reminder. Fascinated to see pre-Rollins Black Flag inhabiting a former church, so broke that Ron Reyes was paying $16/mo. (still only about $60 today) to sleep in a closet. Mightily amused by Germs' poker-faced manager recounting efforts to get Darby Crash to sing into the mic: "We've tried everything short of gluing his mouth to it." Disturbed to realize that barely a dozen years passed between Pat Smear's appearance here and my seeing him play with Nirvana on their final tour. (I was present at this show, which I still can't believe exists online in its entirety.) Confounded by knowing that the woman who made this scorcher would subsequently—and once again, it was only about a dozen years later—direct big-screen versions of The Little Rascals and The Beverly Hillbillies.

I do wonder whether Spheeris now has any regrets about the way she chose to end Decline, which constitutes one of my significant reservations. It's not simply that Lee Ving spends much of Fear's set spouting homophobic bullshit; a documentary should accurately reflect who these people were (or at least who they presented themselves as), so including such vile moments—see also lightbulb kid Eugene's casual use of the n-word in a clearly derogatory context—seems defensible. But either talk to Fear offstage, so that we get at least some sense of whether and to what extent that's genuine animus (as opposed to an opportunistic pose, which admittedly isn't laudable either but still, useful to know), or place that set elsewhere in the movie. As is, literally the last thing we hear in the film's final seconds is "The Star-Spangled Banner" twisted into an anti-gay slur. Don't leave us with that, for fuck's sake. It's not punk; it's just (um) rancid. Much less galling, but tangentially related and likewise dampening my ardor a bit, is the degree to which Decline gets front-loaded: We spend lots of time early on with Black Flag, Germs, and X (plus Catholic Discipline which frankly seems kinda silly in retrospect), whereas the acts who show up in the second half just play a few songs and disappear, with folks like the security dude providing interstitial texture. For that matter, it's kinda structurally awkward to open with the lightbulb kids and then return to that shoot (also featuring some band members) for one big chunk toward the end, as opposed to scattering their observations throughout. Makes it play, again, as if it's covering for the absence of band interviews. I might also complain that a fair bit of the live footage clearly isn't in sync with the audio—as always for me, this is primarily noticeable w/r/t the drums—but I cope with that in Stop Making Sense so I should be equally generous here; no doubt it's hard to get absolutely everything perfect when you're employing multiple cameras. A bit disappointed that this didn't wind up being among my all-time favorite docs, as I thought might be the case halfway through. Still, it's unquestionably essential. The Metal Years has a very different sensibility, I take it? That's a musical era with which I'm still largely unfamiliar to this day, despite having lived through it as a teenager and young adult.