Punk Performers & Theories Of Ideology ('Punk Mass' 1970 - )

Punk Performers & Theories Of Ideology ('Punk Mass' 1970 - ) Jul 17, 2020 23:55:16 GMT

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Post by petrolino on Jul 17, 2020 23:55:16 GMT

ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL & THE PUNK REVOLUTION

'Rock, rock, rock, rock n' roll high school,
Well I don't care about history,
Rock, rock, rock 'n' roll high school,
Cause that's not where I want to be,
Rock, rock, rock 'n' roll high school,

I just want to have some kicks,
I just want to get some chicks,
Rock, rock, rock, rock, rock 'n' roll high schooool ...'

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JIM JARMUSCH (born January 22, 1953, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, U.S.)

'# The soundtrack for ‘The State Of Things’ includes original music from Jürgen Knieper, as well as tracks from Joe Ely, X and The Del-Byzanteens. Jim Jarmusch was a then member of The Del-Byzanteens which often leads to the misinformation that Jarmusch co-wrote the music score. Leftover film stock from The State of Things was later used on the first third of Jarmusch's 1984 black-and-white film Stranger Than Paradise. Paul Bartel helped finance ‘Stranger Than Paradise’.'

- 'The State Of Things' (1982) at Wikipedia

There have been underground filmmakers over the years like John Waters, Amos Poe, Richard Kern and Nick Zedd who have become known for their outrageous takes on punk sensibilities. If I try to pinpoint when I think east coast cool collided with the industrial midwest in purely cinematic terms, I always think of filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. Spike Lee, who would make his own punk-influenced picture with 'Summer Of Sam' (1999), said he was inspired to go out and make a feature-length movie after seeing Jarmusch's New York picture 'Permanent Vacation' (1980).

"The outrageousness of Andy Warhol's factory environment and its transformation into punk nihilism paved the way for experimentation of all kinds. A relationship between filmmakers, musicians and performers developed mainly because they hung out together. The punk scene was totally anti-art and anti-acceptance.

The current bands like Suicide, DNA, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, The Contortions, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Bush Tetras, and the Heartbreakers rocked the New York clubs. The clubs were a happening scene; Max's Kansas City, CBGB, Danceteria, Club 57 and later the Mudd Club played host to a whole cast of characters. It was in these clubs, rather than in cinemas or alternative spaces, that Eric Mitchell, Amos Poe, James Nares, Charlie Ahearn, Beth + Scott B, Vivienne Dick, Manuel De Landa and M. Henry James showed their films. Super-8 film was cheap and cameras easily available. This opened up the possibility for anybody to make films and conceive of their use in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with Hollywood in production, form, content or ideology save for a type of genre exploitation or image plundering, which, taken out of context, served to make a statement."

- Tessa Hughes-Freeland, 'No Wave - Punk On Film'

"In the mid-to-late '70s, I spent a good percentage{%} of my time in or around CBGB. I dislike nostalgia (and looking back in general), but it was a formative period of my life. The city was wild, life was cheap, and you could do whatever you wanted. CBGB was a rock 'n' roll epicenter, and we were interested in ideas. Nobody was there for the money, 'cause nobody had any, and nobody cared."

- Jim Jarmusch, 'CBGB & OMFUG : Thirty Years From The Home Of Underground Rock'

"I blew all my work study money on classes with Nicolas Ray, the film director who did 'Rebel Without A Cause'. I got to study with him and Jim Jarmusch was his assistant. Jim broke through with 'Stranger Than Paradise' and I was doing 'Underground USA', which is unfortunately unavailable. You can only show that movie in museums now because of all the bootleg music (Supremes, Velvet Underground) on the soundtrack."

- Patti Astor, 'The Fun One'

“I would not cite Wim Wenders as a particular influence any more than any other film-makers whose work I like. Wim works in a different way and often prefers, I think, not to have a script at all and just start filming and then finding the story that way. That's not the way I work. I like his visual sense and a lot of things about his films, but I would not cite him as a primary influence. But he has inspired me and also helped me personally by giving me film material in the very beginning and being supportive, and I have a lot of respect for him.

I loved Robby Mueller's work and I asked Wim Wenders in 1980 how I might meet him. I was going to the Rotterdam Film Festival to show my first film, Permanent Vacation, and at that time in Rotterdam the people who visited the festival stayed on a boat that was harboured there, it had a bar in it, and Wim said, "Just go on the boat and in the bar next to the peanut machine, Robby Mueller will be sitting there." So I went to Rotterdam, I went on the boat, I went in the bar, and next to the peanut machine Robby Mueller was sitting there. (Laughter) Seriously. So I sat down next to him and started talking to him. And we hung out quite a bit at the festival and he saw my first film, and he said to me eventually, "If you ever want to work together man, let me know." That was a big thing for me.
I made my next film Stranger Than Paradise with my friend Tom DiCillo, because Tom was working then as a director of photography, but he really wasn't interested in shooting films, so when I wrote Down By Law, I immediately called Robby Mueller. The beautiful thing about Robby is that he starts the process by talking to you about what the film means, what the story is about, what the characters are about. He starts from the inside out, which is really, really such a great way. I've learned that you find the look of the film later after you've found the essence of the film, what its atmosphere is, what it's about and then you look at locations together, you start talking about light and colour, about what film material to use and the general look of the film, and we've worked together a lot now, so we don't have to discuss as many things as other people might because we understand each other.

He considers himself to be an artisan in a way. I remember, especially in Dead Man, the crew and I were joking a lot by saying, "He's Robby Mueller, but don't tell him that!" He considers he has a lens, he has film material and he has light. Sometimes crew members would mention some modern piece of equipment, "We could do that shot with a lumacrane," and Robbie would say, "What is a lumacrane?" I think he's like a Dutch interior painter, like Vermeer or de Hoeck, who was born in the wrong century.”

- Jim Jarmusch speaking at the British Film Institute

Spike Lee & Jim Jarmusch

Jarmusch is interested in cities with character. He returned to his adopted home of New York for 'Night On Earth' (1991), which also travels to Los Angeles, Paris, Rome and Helsinki. In between he'd made 'Down By Law' (1986) and 'Mystery Train' (1989) which visited the musical heritage of New Orleans and Memphis, as well as making an unexpected return home to Ohio to realise 'Stranger Than Paradise' (1984) which utilises several locations in Cleveland (about 30 miles direct from Akron, 40 miles drive).

"Recorded in the practice space of the electric eels in late May 1975, Agitated would remain unheard for more than three years: in Ohio, where the band the Electric Eeels came from, there was no local music industry that would countenance something so hostile. In any case, the eels – lower case in honour of the poet ee cummings – were on the point of splitting up even as they recorded the song through, as founder member John D Morton remembers: "Violence, lack of support. Once at a gig, an audience member said: 'You guys are wrong!' Not, 'You guys stink!' or 'I don't like your music.'"
Predicting the mood and the musical extremity of punk, two years ahead of time, Agitated bypassed 1976 and 1977 entirely. When it was eventually released on a single in late 1978, it slotted right in with the lo-fi, experimental aesthetic of the time. Indeed, that was the year when a whole range of Ohio music was revealed to British audiences, with spring tours and albums by Devo and Pere Ubu, the June release of the Stiff Records' The Akron Compilation, and the first Pretenders 45 by former Akron resident Chrissie Hynde. Along with songs by fellow Cleveland artists the Pagans and X___X, and Akron's Bizarros, Agitated features on a new compilation put together by Soul Jazz – Punk 45: Kill The Hippies! Kill Yourself! – which, as well as the scenes in New York and Los Angeles, recognises Ohio's importance to the story of American punk and opens up a whole 1970s history that is still underexposed.
Although Akron and Cleveland are only 39 miles apart, there are as many differences as similarities. These were flattened out by the steady trickle of music into the UK from Akron and Cleveland that followed the 1978 Devo/Pere Ubu breakthrough: albums and songs by Tin Huey, Jane Aire, Rachel Sweet and the Bizarros (all from Akron), and Cleveland's electric eels, the Pagans, the Mirrors, and New York transplants the Dead Boys. The British media thought of it as a trend, as yet another wave, but it wasn't. What had happened was that, in the space opened up by punk, a whole range of music and activity that had been buried underground came to the surface.
In Cleveland's case, the origins go back to the early 70s – with the formation of electric eels, just at the moment when, as Morton remembers, the city "was a vacuum for anyone originally creative". Cleveland – often abbreviated to Cle, after the airport code – sits on the southern bank of Lake Erie. The city looks north over a vast expanse of water, which in winter can deliver devastating dumps of the white stuff. Like Akron – prone to dust storms and saturated with the smell from the rubber factories – Cleveland had been blighted by decades of heavy industry."

- Jon Savage, ' Cleveland's Early Punk Pioneers : From Cultural Vacuum To Creative Explosion'

"Jim Jarmusch is from Ohio. It's very flat. You dream in very flat places. You learn to solve problems. Six presidents were born there. And Jim."

- Tom Waits, The New York Times Magazine

"I'm from Akron and I've always been a music nut."

- Robert Quine (The Voidoids), Perfect Sound Forever

"We all come from the Midwest and that's where there are 16 hours of horror movies a day on TV usually. We grew up with them."

- Lux Interior (The Cramps)

"Our early shows were like the confrontational 'Dada' events of 60 years earlier : the audience was a big part of it - we always evoked a hostile reaction."

- Poison Ivy (The Cramps)

"We were so insular. We started in Akron, Ohio, and there were just the five of us then. We did everything ourselves. We saw Devo as something bigger than a rock band. We thought that was the most boring thing you could do. We wanted to be a clearing house for concepts and ideas. That's where art de-VO came from. That's why we made films: Even though we had no money, we made the film The Truth About De-Evolution. We designed our own costumes, designed our own artwork and graphics. We designed every album cover that we ever had control of.

The downside of doing everything ourselves and directing our own films and producing our own films and going out and getting the props and coming up with the concept and the ideas was that we didn't really collaborate a lot. It's like, at the time, everybody wanted to work with us. David Bowie, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, Iggy Pop - I stayed at his house for a couple weeks. He wanted to record our first album before we did. I was like, "No, we want to do it first," and he was like, "Shut up, this would be so good for you." He was crazy during that time."

- Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo), A.V.Club

"Yeah, I have a real fondness for those post-industrial landscapes. There’s something really sad but really beautiful about them. I don’t know if it’s just nostalgia for growing up in Akron, but it is America to me much more than big cities, or clean forests, or anything like that. It’s extremely ugly, but I also find it very beautiful somehow."

- Jim Jarmusch, Film Comment

The Del-Byzanteens

Jim Jarmusch : A Stranger In Paradise

In 'Stranger Than Paradise', Willie (Lounge Lizard John Lurie) is visited in New York City by his 16 year old cousin Eva (Hungarian violinist Eszter Balint) on her way to Cleveland to see Aunt Lotte (Clevelander Cecillia Stark). Willie and his pal Eddie (Sonic Youth drummer Richard Edson) decide to head to Ohio to see Eva and then they all go to Florida in search of excitement.

Jarmusch has strong ties to the large Hungarian community in Cleveland; there are many Slovaks living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Poles living in Chicago, Illinois and Czechs living in Miami, Florida. Jarmusch himself has Czech ancestry.

"Lux Interior entered the world on October 21, 1946 as Erick Lee Purkhiser, the second son of a conventional couple from the suburban town of Stow, Ohio. Situated around 8 miles northwest of the county seat and economic hub of Akron, Stow was a growing residential community that had seen industry supersede agriculture as its main source of income during the first half of the 20th century. This shift was mainly due to the Goodyear Tire & Rubber company's main manufacturing facility being located in nearby Akron where similar firms, including Firestone, also subsequently built plants.

Established as the largest rubber company in the world, Goodyear was the prime local employer, with Erick's father among the multitude of workers who passed through its gates each morning. As Akron's industry sought to keep pace with the increasing demand for automotive spares and other vulcanised sundries, the city's population doubled, earning it the title of 'The Rubber Capital of the World.' As constant demand for rubber products increased the need for workers to man the plants, Akron briefly became America's fastest growing city.
While Erick's hometown of Stow was pleasant enough, the city where his father worked as a foreman was dominated by industry, with giant smoke-stacks belching plumes of toxic smoke into the skies above, while the nearby Cuyahoga River regularly became clogged with black, heavy oil that captured debris within its visceral flow. In addition to such environmental concerns, those who laboured amid the clamour of Akron's industrial plants were subject to long hours of mundane and occasionally hazardous work carried out in difficult conditions, with the effects of toxic air often exacerbated by humid, sweltering summers.

"It's very repressive," Lux explained. "Everybody works there 40 or 50 hours a week and when the weekend comes they just explode for a night or two, have a horrible headache on Sunday and get over it on Monday morning to get back in and punch the clock and go through another week's jail sentence. People really know how to go crazy in the Midwest."

Had Akron's population been primarily black, its immediate post-war social conditions would have made it a blues hub. As it was, it developed a reputation for being a place where real men did manly things - a notion underlined by the city's rocketing birth rate and an alcohol problem so severe that Alcoholics Anonymous was founded on Ardmore Avenue, situated a few minutes from the city centre."

- Dick Porter, 'Journey To The Centre Of The Cramps'

"Every city in Ohio had a train depot : Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo, Sandusky and Youngstown, even the smaller towns, Seneca, Barberton, Lodi, Lorraine and the rest. At one time America had the best train system in the world, probably because most of the men who built it were chained to other dedicated workers and not given time off. Along with the tracks that soon spanned America came alot of music because, as well as picking up the heavy chain that bound them, they sang. The slaves gave us tracks of many kinds. By the end of the '50s the extensive passenger-train system was, like the Indian Nation, history, so if it wasn't for the music there would be little else to show for all the hard work."

- Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders), 'Reckless'

"John Waters told me I should go into acting. He thought my voice was so strange, he told me I should act. I wasn't all that flattered. I said, 'No, I'm a singer.' And he said, 'No, you should meet my agent.' And I didn't really want to do that, either, but I ended up acting for about five or six years. It was such a lark. I was not really an actor, but people kept hiring me to be their sarcastic best friend."

- Rachel Sweet, The Plain Dealer

"The Waitresses are not, as their name might imply, an all-girl group, although they do include two females - Patty Donahue, who sings (in a fascinatingly dry, knowing drawl) and Tracy Wormworth who plays the bass. For the rest, there's Mars Williams (saxes and stuff like that), Billy Ficca (drummer, once of the renowned Television), Dan Klayman (keyboards), and one Chris Butler, who plays guitar and writes the songs. It's to Chris Butler, in fact that the bulk of my interview is aimed, since he's sort of The Waitresses' leader, and spokesman, and probably one of the songwriters I admire most at the moment. Butler it was who brought the group into this world, first emerging among the crop of bands based in Akron Ohio (remember the Stiff compilation?), then taking them to New York City - where, some months ago, they finally arrived at the current line-up; whose personnel make what they describe as "that Cleveland Akron Chicago New York Delaware sound", a label that I don't imagine will catch on in any big way."

- Paul Du Noyer, NME

Joe Strummer & Jim Jarmusch

The minimalist music score for 'Stranger Than Paradise' is composed by John Lurie. The one song heard again and again is by Cleveland shock rocker Screamin' Jay Hawkins who would later appear for Jarmusch in 'Mystery Train'. Willie and Eva watch cartoons, NFL games, sci-fi & horror movies together. They do get bored, as does Eddie who wants to go to a Cleveland Cavaliers game even though he's heard they stink. When the three of them see the snow in north-east Ohio, they have a spiritual awakening, though it doesn't feel much like it at the time.

Filmmaker Sara Driver is in the cast of 'Stranger In Paradise', which is photographed by her fellow director Tom DiCillo. Jarmusch's friends and contemporaries Spike Lee and Wayne Wang have also documented the immigrant experience within a vibrant city on celluloid.

In 2002, 'Stranger Than Paradise' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

"He was this great influence on me. There was this anarchism and wildness about him, this outsider hipster, this anti-authoritarian, blowing things up with explosives that affected me as a little kid. He opened me up to all kinds of weird-a** music; his whole anti-hierarchical appreciation of culture definitely influenced me."

- Jim Jarmusch on Ghoulardi (Ernie Anderson) the Presenter on 'Shock Theater'

"A lot of our songs are about driving. Like “Street Waves” is like, you know, in California they got the surf, and in Cleveland, in the summer, if you work real hard at it, there’s a surf that comes down the streets. And if you work real hard, you can ride that surf. And in Cleveland, that’s real bizarre. You get out on West 25th and Detroit and ride the surf and its real good. Really good. That’s our big summertime thing—you get out there in a car with a radio in it, “a car that can get me around,” and you know, we dress in our swimming trunks and just surf down the streets -snip- We’re not innocent, like the Beach Boys are innocent, cuz nobody can be innocent anymore. But we know what innocence is, and we know we have to try to get back there, even if it is tinged with reality."

- Dave Thomas (Pere Ubu), N.Y. Rocker

"Cleveland has such a rock and roll history that has everything to do with national acts and nothing to do with people from Cleveland. Everybody from out of town came to Cleveland and got a great reception. They got treated like kings. They got huge fame and accolades. But if you were from Cleveland, it was like, “Oh they can’t be any good. I know them!” You know what I mean? They just figured if you were from there you had to suck. So many people — I mean, everybody played there: the Stones, the Beatles on their first tour, Paul Revere and the Raiders. You had the Big Five Show, you had great radio. You had CKLW out of Detroit, and you had two of the first and best FM stations in the country with WNCR and WMMS. Two of the biggest progressive radio stations. But as far as local music was concerned, you had cover bands.

You did have the odd hit — you know, The Choir’s “It’s Cold Outside,” and the Raspberries had a couple of hits and so did the Outsiders. But they never really got the recognition in Cleveland they should have got. Everywhere else they went they did fine, but when they came home they were treated like just another local band. Which I get to this day! I mean, when I go back to Cleveland and they do an interview with me they want to know about my high school days. They don’t care about what I’m doing musically. They want to hear about when I worked at May Company. [May Company was a regional department store based in northeast Ohio.] “So you’re playing music, you’ve got a new band together. Does that mean you won’t be going back to May Company?” (laughter) It’s all very local. So it was a very strange and very frustrating place to grow up — at least musically. Your options were very limited, and I think that’s what all this came out of."

- Cheetah Chrome (Dead Boys), Verbicide Magazine

"Yeh, I liked it in Cleveland."

- Pat Benatar

Pat Benatar ~ Live in Cleveland '79

'A Young Jim Jarmusch Reports On Cleveland's Foremost Post-Punk Heroes, Pere Ubu' by Martin Schneider (Dangerous Minds)

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PENELOPE SPHEERIS (born December 2, 1945, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.)

Penelope Spheeris has made a few different music documentaries over the years but remains best known in this field for her trilogy consisting of 'The Decline Of Western Civilization' (1981), 'The Decline Of Western Civilization Part II : The Metal Years' (1988) & 'The Decline Of Western Civilization Part III' (1998). 'The Decline Of Western Civilization' is widely regarded to be an essential existing document of the California punk scene of the 1970s, filmed on location from December 1979 to May 1980.
Alot of musicians active at the time were written out of the picture so that Spheeris could create a cut + paste portraiture of the 'hardcore' punk colony as raging inbreds who were always getting high. It offers a searing study of the scene, so you could say Spheeris took the right approach, though many of the musicians involved felt it was a far cry from the reality of their working lives (though most acknowledged it to be an affecting piece of work).

"The Canterbury Apartments and the Masque were separated by one block off Hollywood Boulevard. Together, they became a refuge for drug addicts, transvestites, and L.A. punks like the Germs, the Go-Go's, and Joan Jett. It didn't last long, only about two years (1977-79), but during that time, the entire L.A. punk scene spilled out over one block that included about 50 punks living at the Canterbury Apartments (the Go-Go's rehearsed there), while at the Masque, Brendan Mullen happily allowed his venue to be covered in graffiti—consistently booking bands like X, the Germs, and Screamers. CBGBs was a hangout, located in a legitimate public venue; the Masque was a basement beneath a pornographic studio. It also didn't require taking the subway. The Canterbury Apartments and the Masque provided a punk rock orgy, within walking distance."

- Art Tavana, L A Weekly

"I became very familiar with the streets of Hollywood. Kind of like the television show 'Cheers', where everyone knows your name. There was always something to do, and we were just a short car ride away. We ate onion rings from a paper bag past midnight at Astro Burger, browsed old literature at Book Soup and even hung out in graveyards just for the fun of it."

- Brenda Perlin, 'L.A. Punk Rocker'

"The great thing about 'A Great Ride' (1979) was that the production company had elected to shoot it in Canada, where they could mow down old timber, scatter endangered moose herds, and squish internationally protected Gila monsters at a great exchange rate. The location shoot left me and the editing team happily "home alone," working by ourselves in the cheapest editing facility in East Hollywood, the back rooms of Producers' Sound Services, a sound effects house on Santa Monica Boulevard that had been providing the film industry with squeaks, bow-wows, and thank-ya-ma'ams since 1943.

Tucked away between boxes of gunshots and rolls of car screeches and crates of donkey brays, I would retreat to do my assisting in between hot dogs at Pink's, combination platters at Los Burritos, and strips of chicken and eggs at Teriyaki Lola's. In my salad days, I rarely went without 8 squares per day, in the form of breakfast, brunch, snunch, lunch, snee, tea, sninner, dinner, snupper, supper, and a midnight snack. This is when I learned that when you are profoundly bored, even 3 packs of Marlboros per day will not stanch your ravenous need for immediate gratification."

- Sharon Oreck, 'Video Slut (How I Shoved Madonna Off An Olympic High Dive, Got Prince Into A Pair Of Tiny Purple Woolen Underpants, Ran Away From Michael Jackson's Dad, And Got A Waterfall To Flow Backward So I Could Bring Rock Videos To The Masses)'

"Punk rockers are the termites in the woodwork of society, but somehow, I love them."

- Penelope Spheeris

Penelope Spheeris in the 'Decline' office

What's great about 'The Decline Of Western Civilization' is getting to spend time with the musicians themselves. The Germs, for example, appear as domesticates while being interviewed in their tiny kitchenette, expressing real worries and concerns while eating green jelly sandwiches, expounding upon their own personal philosophies while doing the washing up. By contrast, you have a tight outfit like X who seem relatively sober and totally switched on to what's going on around them, an asset of this particular band that Spheeris the interviewer finds tough to counter.
A top student at high school and keen self-promoter, Spheeris' carefully sculpted documentary films put her on the Hollywood map. Though she claims to have been handed a rough deal in Hollywood because there aren't the opportunities for women that there are for men, it was most definitely her own choice following the enormous success of 'Wayne's World' (1992) to strike the kind of huge cash deals that enabled her to direct the television updates 'The Beverly Hillbillies' (1993) and 'The Little Rascals' (1994).

"If New York punk was about art and London punk about politics, L.A. punk was about pop culture, TV and absurdity."

- Greg Shaw, Who Put The Bomp!

"Jane Wiedlin was not originally from L.A., but Wisconsin, home of the Violent Femmes. She was totally not like Belinda Carlisle. Belinda was a party girl, a cheerleader, pretty wild. Jane designed clothing, read books, called herself Jane Drano! (laughter) She was so cute and funny, all the guys loved her, and so did the girls."

- Exstase Breeze (The Juice Cartons)

"Billy Zoom would always give Jane Wiedlin guitar lessons and she was just the cutest, most sweetest person."

- Exene Cervenka (X)

Penelope Spheeris & Poison

Penelope Spheeris : Sweet Suburbia

In between operating as a ground-level documentary filmmaker and becoming a major studio director, Spheeris struck a deal with independent film producer Roger Corman to make the fictionalised feature 'Suburbia' (1983) which pays tribute to the punks of California. Having taken some serious criticism for the way in which she portrayed the musicians in her first feature-length documentary, she made up for it with this heavily romanticised vision of the scene she'd left behind. It's a film I'd recommend to anyone interested in punk rock cinema. It's also my joint favourite among the fictional features she's made, alongside the crime picture 'The Boys Next Door' (1985).

"I had a really difficult time getting distribution for the first 'Decline'. It seemed like no one wanted to play a documentary in a movie theater, even though people were going to see them in droves. So I said, "Okay, I know this subject matter and I've learned a lot. And I love these kids, so I'm going to sit down and write a narrative picture about them." So it turned out to be 'Suburbia'. I got Roger Corman to pay for half of it, and some dude from Cleveland who had a furniture chain paid for the other half."

- Penelope Spheeris, A.V. Club

"Directing is hard work. They don’t teach you that in film school. Critics are not aware of it, but it is hard, physical work. For instance, on 'Rock ’N’ Roll High School', I gave my usual lecture or series of lectures to Allan Arkush, and he was dutifully taking notes on everything I was saying about camera position and editing, and one thing and another. And the final thing I said was “Allan, get a chair with your name on it, and sit down as much as you can.” He did not take a note on that, figuring “Well, that’s because Roger’s old. He has to sit down. I don’t have to sit down.” The last day of shooting, Allan was almost unable to complete the picture, he was so worn out. He was working at a tremendously hard pace. So intelligence, the ability to work hard, and the third, which is intangible, is creativity.

Now, with most of the directors who start with us, they start in some other position and they move up and I can judge, particularly with Allan Arkush and Joe Dante. They were in our trailer department, and I could see they had potential, so they became second-unit directors. Jonathan Demme started as a writer, then became a producer and a second-unit director. So I was able to at least get a rough judgment of their creativity before I gave them a film to direct."

- Roger Corman, A.V. Club

Penelope Spheeris & John Lydon

For an alternative take on Californian punk that also captures the scene in vivid detail, I'd recommend two spirited films made by David Markey - 'Desperate Teenage Lovedolls' (1984) & 'Lovedolls Superstar' (1986). Redd Kross play a key role in proceedings and contribute music, while other musicians from the punk scene also make appearances.

These small-scale films are roughly made and really put the viewer inside the milieu. They're funny too and the second one has some nice parodies of '80s pop culture. I find the geography of Californian punk interesting because bands were frequently coming together in Los Angeles having travelled from locations like San Francisco, San Diego and Sacramento; they weren't all formed in the same big city.

"We went to see Patti Smith in Huntington Beach 'cause we'd heard a lot about her. Lenny Kaye had seen us at the Starwood and he really liked us, so we were backstage talking to him and then we went back to meet Patti, and the second we got to the dressing room she goes: "Get those b*tches out of here." Ivan Kral her guitarist was wearing a Runaways T-shirt onstage. She was being real rude to us for no reason. We were trying hard to be nice and she just walked on by. Lenny said that Patti was only into her own trip and we just weren't in her world. We were getting in her way. I guess she was seeing us as female competition. She couldn't even say, "Would you please leave?" She just threw us out. We were real hurt."

- Joan Jett (The Runaways), 'We Got The Neutron Bomb : The Untold Story Of L.A. Punk'

"As an example of modernity, (Charles) Baudelaire cites the artist Constantin Guys. In appearance a spectator, a collector of curiosities, he remains 'the last to linger wherever there can be a glow of light, an echo of poetry, a quiver of life or a chord of music; wherever a passion can pose before him, wherever natural man and conventional man display themselves in a strange beauty, wherever the sun lights up the swift joys of the depraved animal.'"

- Michel Foucault, 'What Is Enlightenment?'

KISS arrive just in time to see Brews Springstien performing 'Shoot Me In The Dark'

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ALEX COX (born December 15, 1954, Bebington, Cheshire, England)

Alex Cox has had one of the stranger careers in cinema, but a career that befits the former presenter of the film screening show 'Moviedrome', where his provocative introductions to films had British kids of my generation staying up late to watch all manner of unusual movies that operated within all kinds of fantastical genres.

In recent years, Cox has made the lamentable 'Repo Chick' (2009) - a failed spin-off from his Californian punk feature 'Repo Man' (1984) - and put together the deluxe redux 'Straight To Hell Returns' (2010) which it seems no-one has seen. He's also shot material for Wah and The Pogues but more often we've heard from him in his capacity as critic, observer and interviewer. Openly nostalgic, Cox waxes lyrical about returning to places he's visited many times before, providing the perfect punk recipe book for cinema, as boredom breeds repetition (cue refrain).

"{First punk gig} : It was either Devo at the Starwood, which was their first Los Angeles performance, or it was an aborted gig at the Elk's Lodge Hall in Los Angeles, which I think The Go-Go's played at. And it was supposed to be the Plugz and X and all these other L.A. bands, but the cops came and shut it down. The man wouldn't let the kids play their music. It was like a police riot: The police were smashing people's heads on the ground and that sort of thing. That was my introduction to the punk-rock scene. Either that or Devo, because both those shows were around the same time. That would have been 1978 or so."

- Alex Cox, A.V. Club

Everything was going right for Cox up to the release of his acclaimed rock biopic 'Sid And Nancy' (1986), a movie that gained a wider audience when John Lydon of the Sex Pistols suggested it was pure fantasy. For me, Cox's masterpiece is 'Repo Man' which came about as a result of his time studying at the prestigious film school UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles). 'Repo Man' is arguably the definitive Californian punk film; imaginative, absurd, theatrical and funny. 'Suburbia' (1983) would be in the running too, but I'd give the slight edge to 'Repo Man' in this regard.

"Russ Meyer, the filmmaker who was the best man at my wedding, was asked to make a Sex Pistols movie. He called me because of my teenage movie 'Massacre At Central High' (1976), which anticipated punk ... and so Malcolm McLaren, Russ, Roger Ebert, and myself were supposed to collaborate on developing a movie concept for the Pistols. Roger and myself were to write the script with input from Russ and Malcolm. It was an improbable mix. Russ wanted the movie to be a follow-up to his outrageously campy masterpiece 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls', written by Ebert. Roger was, of course, totally into Meyer's thing. Malcolm had no idea what he had gotten himself into, since the Sex Pistols came from an entirely different world than Russ.

I worked for months writing and rewriting different versions of what came to be called 'Who Killed Bambi?' but I couldn't bridge the chasm that existed between the band and their management at one end and Russ at the other. I shuttled back and forth between the two camps, but there was no way to avert the clash between Malcolm's anarchistic art-school earnestness and the camp sensibilities of the King of the Nudies.

One day Russ yelled at Johnny Lydon to have some respect. He shouted out: "We saved your l*mey a**es in World War II!" It all ended in bitter tears of rage and lawsuits, and Russ would never make a film again. It also cost me my dear friendship with Russ because ultimately I had to root for the Sex Pistols.

Our house became the U.S. headquarters for the Pistols and I was hanging out with them a lot, especially Malcolm, Sid Vicious, Paul Cook, and Steve Jones, who crashed with us and at other houses. Warner Brothers' Mo Austin was seriously wondering if punk could be the biggest thing since the Beatles."

- Rene Daalder, 'We Got The Neutron Bomb : The Untold Story Of L.A. Punk'

Having enjoyed his time spent studying and working in California, Cox embarked upon a new project with numerous 'Repo Man' cast members in tow. He assembled a bunch of punks to make the stranded western 'Straight To Hell' (1986) in Spain. Cox felt this small-scale project would help him to grow his own repertory company while teaching him about how to film in foreign languages, how to budget and operate in secluded destinations, and how to handle hot climates. At the time the idea was conceived, he already had his disastrous political picture 'Walker' (1987) on the horizon (which to my mind remains a really interesting movie).

"I had these two very good partners from UCLA: Peter McCarthy and Jonathan Wacks. Everybody who goes to film school wants to be a director, obviously, but they graciously agreed to put their directorial ambitions on hold for a little while to produce a film for me. So I wrote my script, and the budget was going to be too much, so they said, "Go away and write another one." This is the second one I wrote, and it went through 14 drafts over a period of about two years. Finally, the former Monkee, Michael Nesmith, took the project to a studio and they put up the money. At the time, the head of the studio was the guy who'd worked for Roger Corman, a guy who'd actually come out of the Corman empire; his name was Bob Rehme. His idea was to make a lot of films: Make them as cheap as you can and make a lot of them, because some of them will hit. So he green-lit 'Repo Man' and he green-lit Francis Ford Coppola's 'Rumble Fish', both of which are quite unusual."

- Alex Cox, A.V. Club

I enjoy the colourful visions that make up 'Straight To Hell' but its reputation with critics is extremely poor and it's been tagged as being an "indulgent punk workout" that killed Cox's career. This view glosses over the fact that he went on to make some intriguing pictures soon after, such as the Mexican crime drama 'Highway Patrolman' (1991), and 'Death And The Compass' (1992) which was expanded from a television piece he'd directed based on a story by Jorge Luis Borges.
Cox maintains that his lift-off point for 'Straight To Hell' was spaghetti westerns, in particular the work of Giulio Questi who is thanked in the end credits, but it feels like a random assortment of artistic references and literary allusions. Its success, if that's not too bold a claim, lies in it being an authentic D.I.Y. project filmed within a miniature township in the Andalusian city of Almeria that was built specifically to be the ideal location to house American actor Charles Bronson for the western 'Chino' (1973). Cox dresses up his cast as grotesques and lets cinematographer Tom Richmond light everything brightly so the entire film feels like it's set in a place of everlasting light. An unruly slab of improvised punk theatre, it brings together faces from Manchester and Liverpool to act alongside a batch of musicians plucked from the London arts scene, representing two closely connected northern English cities that proved to be just as exciting for their emerging bands in the late '70s as the capital.

"Liverpool came into existence to move things around: cotton, sugar, slaves and, later, paperwork when the insurance companies moved there. There was a saying that lingers in Liverpool today - the Liverpool gentleman and the Manchester man. Manchester was an industrial city that made things, its workforce stable, drawn from the Lancashire hinterland, dedicated to progressive causes such as the industrial revolution and the campaigns that grew out of it for trade unions and socialism. The Manchester mill-owner had dirt under his finger nails. The Liverpool gentleman engaged in commerce sat in an office in a white collar. The dock labourers, crowded along Scotland Road, formed the largest and densest slum in Europe, famine-Irish in origin, subject to arbitrary labour practices which had more to do with the slave auction than industrial relations. The gentlemen voted Liberal and the dockers right up to the 1930s still saw politics as an extension of the Fenian/Orange struggles over the water. But from the port came an infection of new ideas. The convoy ships that dodged the U-boats during the battle of the Atlantic to bring food to Britain from Canada also brought the records of Big Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Little Walter and Howlin' Wolf and the discs changed hands for huge sums in the dock road pubs, the beginnings and origin of the Mersey Sound that grew up in the warehouses that smelled of damp and the cargoes they once held, everything made of brick and iron to avoid combustion.
Liverpool's blitz was second only to London's and got a lot less newsreel coverage because of the propaganda value for the Germans of knowing how badly the docks had been bombed. Liverpudlians sat sullen in the cinema as the brave Cockneys grinned into the cameras. What about us, they asked? My father would turn off the TV in disgust when Dad's Army came on. The Home Guard he was part of defended the blazing warehouses after the German bombers came over. When the war ended, Liverpool's heyday had passed, transatlantic shipping was in decline, the unskilled dockers were decanted out of Scotland Road into brand new council estates in Halewood and Speke, and car factories were built to give them work. For the first time since it came into being, Liverpool was a predominantly industrial city, and this state of affairs lasted until the 1980s when manufacturing was eviscerated by successive Tory governments that transformed Britain into a service economy. Liverpool went Labour in the 1970s, but without a strong indigenous tradition of town-hall socialism it was prey to takeovers from the Militant Tendency, to the one-day wonders who strutted the streets in their mohair suits, the Derek Hattons who told the people that if Glasgow, Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle caved in, it would be Liverpool that would take on Thatcher, even if it lost and went to the wall. It went to the wall."

- Linda Grant, The Guardian

"It all began back in the late 1800s, where the building of the Manchester Ship Canal changed the face of the North West economy. Before, Liverpool was the economic capital of the North West due to its international port which created many jobs in the city. But the ship canal allowed ships to bypass Liverpool’s ports and go directly to the cottonopolis of Manchester, leading a large amount of job losses in Liverpool. This led to a lot of hatred from the people of Liverpool towards Manchester at the turn of the century. In the '70s and '80s both cities suffered economic decline and shared the pain of mass unemployment leading to a slight mutual respect against a (Margaret) Thatcher government. Recent years though have seen big regenerations projects across the two cities and both now compete to see who can attract the most overseas tourists."

- Tom Belger, Mancunian Matters

'Straight To Hell' plays with corporate identity and conspiracy theories, drawing from history to do this, and there are some funny branding exercises just like in 'Repo Man'. The performances are pitched near delirium and Cox took suggestions from his stock company players as to how their characters should meet their fate (Cox and Dick Rude came up with the basic story while hungover in Cannes, France). The international cast speak with many different accents which makes the town feel like it exists within its own time and place. This dislocated sense of time and place is one of the film's enjoyable aspects.
Alex Cox commissioned a soundtrack from California collective Pray For Rain and The Pogues. There are musical contributions made by musicians in the cast who'd initially been brought together for a proposed tour of Nicaragua. Courtney Love said she based her femme fatale Velma on Carroll Baker's iconic performance in 'Baby Doll' (1956).

"The film director's career is designed to take you to Hollywood - Alan Parker is a good example. He started on commercials, then he made films that glorify the FBI. Now he's head of the Film Council."

- Alex Cox, The Guardian

"Yes, 'Searchers 2.0' (2007). The idea actually originated with Jon Davison, who started his career with me, first as the head of our advertising department, then as a producer. He went on to produce Robocop (1987) and some giant-sized science fiction films. He’s younger than I am, but semi-retired and he came up with the idea of doing the film and doing it with Alex Cox. The idea seemed to me a very good and interesting one and it wasn’t going to cost that much money, so we did it simply as an experiment. I thought the picture turned out well, I thought Alex and Jon did a very good job ..."

- Roger Corman on the rise of Microbudget Filmmaking, Electric Sheep

I think Alex Cox is a great British filmmaker. He's the first English director I think of when I think of punk rock movies. Other directors like Derek Jarman and Julien Temple may be more readily recognised by critics - perhaps in part because Cox has frequently travelled overseas to shoot his movies - but he's my favourite. Filmmakers Dennis Hopper and Jim Jarmusch play character roles in 'Straight To Hell' which has been restored to dvd by the British Film Institute for future audiences to enjoy.

'Reel Ten' - The Plugz

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Celluloid Punks

01. Toyah Willcox - 'The Tempest' (1979) - With her punk costume gone, the rebellious Toyah was asked to perform a play by legendary playwright William Shakespeare. When she heard it concerned deception and alchemy, she was all over it.

02. Annie Golden - 'Hair' (1979) - Milos Forman was considered the ultimate audition director, a reputation earned during his early years working in Prague, and I've no doubt he could spot a star, which is exactly what he did here.

03. Cherie Currie - 'Parasite' (1982) - Charles Band's influential science-fiction horror features Cherie Currie and session player turned Runaway Cheryl Smith (you can see her in the 1984 film 'Du-beat-e-o') among its cast. It's a magical combination.

04. Debbie Harry - 'Videodrome' (1983) - Having worked with her friend Pat Benatar on 'Union City' (1980), here was a plum role for Harry that was ripe for the picking. David Cronenberg told Harry she needed to eliminate the "high camp" of her Blondie performances, but she was an exemplary performer who always pitched things right, as proven on the Blondie comeback tour many years later. She plays the criminal dominatrix underpinning life's greatest conspiracy in Cronenberg's audio-visual masterpiece.

05. Clare Grogan - 'Gregory's Girl' (1981) - A popular, localised Scottish favourite that employs young actors from the Glasgow Youth Theatre, this beloved drama co-stars bubbly Clare Grogan of Altered Images.

06. Jane Wiedlin - 'Clue' (1985) - She's the Singing Telegram Girl.

07. Wendy O Williams - ' Reform School Girls' (1986) - The Plasmatics' leader teams here with punkette scenester Tiffany Helm.

08. Linnea Quigley - 'Night Of The Demons' (1988) - I consider this to be the quintessential horror to marry gothic sensibilities with punk attitude. Director Kevin Tenney leaned heavily upon a former gymnast, punk guitarist and accomplished genre performer, who brought the "cosmic ballerina novice" envisioned years earlier by Dario Argento's 'Suspiria' to American life. Quigley has been hired to dance in countless films due to her innate sense of rhythm and musicality. Here, she's the life of a satanic terror party and proves herself to be horror cinema's ultimate baby doll. She'd reteam with Tenney the following year for 'Witchtrap' (1989).

09. Susanna Hoffs - 'The Allnighter (1987) - Pop singer Susanna Hoffs is showcased in a beach movie update for 'The Allnighter'. That's no surprise - it's directed by her mother!

10. Joan Jett - 'Boogie Boy' (1998) - Another former Runaway teams up with Linnea Quigley for Quentin Tarantino's best buddy Craig Hamann and the results are electrifying. This is one of the great gay crime dramas, continuing a strong tradition among punks for breaking down established social boundaries and being all-gender inclusive.

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PETER GREENAWAY (born April 5, 1942, Newport, Wales)

'Chasing Sheep Is Best Left To Shepherds' - Michael Nyman

East Anglia : Tigon Films, Roger Corman & Peter Greenaway

“This was not the first film to mine the sepulchral thrills of seeing Vincent Price at large in the East Anglian countryside. One of the highlights of Roger Corman’s Poe cycle, 1964’s The Tomb of Ligeia, was shot at the priory at Castle Acre, Norfolk. Four years later, however, this 17th-century tale of the manipulative exploits of real-life witchhunter Matthew Hopkins (played by Price) remains Suffolk’s most famous bid for cinematic immortality.

Witchfinder General was directed by the 24-year-old Michael Reeves, who grew up in Suffolk himself, but who would die tragically a few months after the film was released. Made for Tigon British and Corman’s AIP studio, it’s a film that cuts deeper than many of the contemporaneous Hammer horrors in its disturbing depiction of the abuse of power and how morality and faith can be twisted for evil purpose. Suffolk’s low-lying expanses seem both beautiful and desolate, an empty terrain where superstition and fear can permeate. Reeves beat Pasolini (The Canterbury Tales, 1972), Kubrick (Barry Lyndon, 1975) and Harry Potter (Deathly Hallows 1 and 2) to the use of Lavenham as a location, but only here does Suffolk’s picture-postcard medieval village play itself.”

- Samuel Wigley, The British Film Institute

“Few films try harder to visually delight their audience as much as Drowning by Numbers, a black comedy about three related women (Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson and Joely Richardson) all named Cissie Colpitts and cursed with tiresome husbands. When the oldest woman (Plowright) drowns her spouse, the other two women consider doing likewise. Typical of Peter Greenaway, every scene is utterly beautiful and composed like a painting, even when depicting the grotesque.

The film was shot around Southwold in Suffolk, and makes great use of the coast and landmarks such as the lighthouse and the water tower. The performances are top-notch, especially from Plowright. And if that’s not enough, eagle-eyed viewers can spend their time spotting the numbers 1 to 100, which appear throughout the film.”

- Alex Davidson, ’10 Great Films Set In East Anglia’

“Influencing everyone from Peter Greenaway to Stephen King via Martin Scorsese, the first in Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe cycle, 'House Of Uhser' (1960), remains terrific stuff. Armed with a smart script by Richard Matheson, Corman mines perceptible unease from the tale of a family, headed up by a masterfully creepy Vincent Price, struck by a bizarre curse in a malevolent mansion which itself becomes a tangible character. If occasionally the supporting cast - Myrna Fahey as Price's sister, Mark Damon as her suitor - are as creaky as the old house, the mixture of English Gothic, French Grand Guignol and American low-budget thrills make for an intoxicating brew.”

- William Thomas, Empire Magazine

01. 'The Falls' (1980)

"Now get ready for his 1980 feature, ''The Falls,'' an epic shaggy-dog story that pretends to be a documentary about the decline and fall of mankind after what's referred to simply as VUE, or ''Violent Unknown Event.'' We are told that no less than 19 million people around the world were affected by this catastrophe, the exact nature of which remains as much of a mystery as its epicenter, which may have been either in a ''boulder orchard'' in Yorkshire or outside a London tube station. In the course of ''The Falls,'' we are given the case histories of no less than 92 VUE victims, who are sometimes interviewed, sometimes recalled by loved ones or who sometimes remain as statistics gravely read out on the soundtrack by a series of narrators. To make matters more simple, the film maker has arbitrarily limited his survey to a cross section of those victims whose surnames begin with the letters ''F-a-l-l,'' so that all the people we learn about have such names as Falla, Fallabus and - my favorite - a young woman called Loosely Fallbute."

- Vincent Canby, The New York Times

02) 'The Draughtsman's Contract' (1982)

Peter Greenaway described 'The Draughtsman's Contract' as the result of a decade immersed in experimental film. 'The Draughtsman's Contract' is set in 1694, the year of the first Married Woman's Property Act and the formation of the Bank of England. 1694 is a year in which Greenaway felt modern history could begin to be written. The film is a work of symmetry in various forms, a murder mystery that turns upon its Machiavellian protagonist with playful equipoise.
Unlike some of his film-making contemporaries working in British cinema, it might be said that Greenaway embodied what punk in America originally set out to be : art. His question to himself was, should an artist create a work based on what he sees, or what he knows? In America during the 1970s, punks embraced low budget genre cinema, David Lynch's midnight movie 'Eraserhead' (1977) becoming emblematic of a diverse artistic movement.

"Just as 'The Draughtsman's Contract' was based on twelve drawings, and 'A Zed & Two Noughts' on the eight Darwinian states of evolution, 'The Belly of an Architect' is based on the figure seven. The seven hills of Rome, of course, but also, I reckon there were seven clear influences that emanated out of Rome and affected the whole of western civilization."

- Peter Greenaway, Sight & Sound

"As the film's title ('Drowning By Numbers') suggests, the film relies on the elemental nature of water. The numbers alluded to in the title involve the doubling and tripling of characters, the four elements, the visual presence of ciphers, and the frequent allusions to counting. In Greenaway's films numbers play a prominent role, having to do with complex modes of ordering the world and are tied to modes of representation - classification, taxonomy, and symbolisation - that are scientific and visionary."

- Marcia Landy, The British Film Institute

03) 'A Zed And Two Noughts' (1985)

A year before David Lynch paid homage to entomologist filmmaker Luis Bunuel with 'Blue Velvet' (1986), Greenaway did so with 'A Zed And Two Noughts', which is photographed by Frenchman Sacha Vierny who'd lensed Bunuel's 'Belle De Jour' (1967). It's the story of an amputee and concerns natural selection, with narration by David Attenborough. Greenaway has said it's his favourite of his feature films even though he recognises it as being the runt of the litter.
'A Zed And Two Noughts' is also remembered for the impact it had on David Cronenberg who drew from it when making his controversial literary adaptations 'Dead Ringers' (1988), 'Naked Lunch' (1991) and 'Crash' (1996). Cronenberg abandoned the abrasive style of his earlier horrors (several of which were shot by mobile cameraman Mark Irwin), opting to craft a more refined style of cultivated film form that utilised the stylish compositions of cinematographer Peter Suschitzky. Canadian filmmaker Allan Moyle worked with Cronenberg in the 1970s before directing the New York punk classic 'Times Square' (1980).

"He successfully played the trick of making the two twins one person courtesy of Jeremy Irons, whilst we tried the much more difficult game of making two actors (admittedly brothers) not only twins, but separated Siamese twins, and not only separated Siamese twins, but separated Siamese twins who wanted to be united."

- Peter Greenaway introduces 'A Zed & Two Noughts'

"The band themselves, David Byrne in particular, were well informed and experienced in modern art and experimental theatre, as well as musical performance. Byrne already had a fairly detailed idea of how the film should look and sound, even down to completed storyboards. But Jonathan Demme efficiently picked up on the effects Byrne wanted and achieved these with slick mastery. Further, Demme developed a smooth and productive working relationship with Byrne, who took Demme's own suggestions seriously and happily incorporated many of them.
: Title credits flash across a darkened stage as the live roar of the audience grows in anticipation. David Byrne's feet (wearing white trainers) stroll across the empty box stage, wearing a light cotton two-piece suit. He carries a ghetto-blaster in one hand and has a guitar strapped over his shoulder. Byrne approaches the solitary microphone centre-stage, "Hi, I've got a tape I want to play," he says, quoting a line from 'Videodrome', stands the ghetto-blaster on the stage and switches it on ... :
The stage area is deliberately bare and derelict, free of sets and props at the gig's outset. This is an efficacious concept, similar to avant-garde theatre techniques developed by Bertolt Brecht. As other performers, props and instruments are gradually added to the mise en scene, as they are required for the show, the spectator's attention is concentrated on the process of making music and performing. You get to see precisely what, and who, does what and how, unburdened by showy distractions - a demystification of the production process."

- Chris Barber, 'Talking Heads : Stop Making Sense'

04) 'The Belly Of An Architect' (1987)

Greenaway's most celebrated work of the 1980s, 'The Belly Of An Architect', has been called his most personal outlet, a measured confessional in which the artist (in this case an architect) resents the use of the exposed female form as indecent intrusion, leaving the artist to fester in his own macho obsessions.
Greenaway originally wanted American superstar Marlon Brando to play his mumbling architect but instead settled on Brian Dennehy who carried with him a similarly imposing frame. Fresh from playing Nancy Spungen in 'Sid And Nancy' (1986), Chloe Webb portrays the model who exposes the architect to his own vices. The anxious string section is composed by Glenn Branca who augments an aural accompaniment by the minimalist Wim Mertens that uses concise numerical patterns.

"Russ Meyer, Jonathan Kaplan and Pete Walker walked away from Malcolm McLaren before his marriage of convenience to Julien Temple for the execrable 'The Great Rock N Roll Swindle'. Punk pin-ups The Clash clamoured for a six-figure sum from media major CBS who launched the lucrative "Clash" brand to a wider fanbase, maximising merchandising returns. Each "clash cow" increased profit potential while securing brand legacy, with rowdy sing-a-long anthems like "Clash City Rockers" and "This Is Radio Clash" cementing the bad boys' growing reputation as everybody's favourite punk commercial."

- Steve Warwick, 'Marketing The Punk Revolution'

"I was thinking about all the movies we were making for Roger Corman and New World; Kaplan, Demme, Dante, Arkush and me. We were making little 45 RPM Rock ’n’ Roll movies. Same subject matter as early rock songs and same lack of respect."

- George Armitage, The Lincoln Center Film Society

05) 'Drowning By Numbers' (1988)

The story in 'Drowning By Numbers' concerns a coroner and three generations of women who formulate plots for murder as a way to relinquish tensions exacted by a lack of private fulfillment. A warm, nostalgic sojourn to the countryside, it shows how the common interactions between women can destroy a young boy whose perception of manhood is irrevocably shattered by the casual oppression of his formative years.
Inside the hidden cast is Edward Tudor Pole, a punk symbol who'd already appeared twice on film for Julien Temple and twice for Alex Cox. Sacha Vierny's cinematography of Suffolk pastures is entrenched in the moisture of saturated waters which seep from each and every pore of the frame, granting the film an abundancy of natural textures inspired by great rural artists and childrens' book illustrators from British history. The film is graced by Michael Nyman's evocative string suite.

"Punk cinema is not a new genre, nor an original approach to filmmaking. It doesn't represent a significant break with pre-punk cinema and wasn't inspired or augmented by punk rock alone. There's no manifesto or agenda to establish, delineate or lay claim to the punk film heritage. Punk cinema pre-dates punk rock, with examples dating back to silent movies ... That is, films exemplifying the formal concerns of punk. Punk subculture as an eclectic, late 20th century phenomenon, was partially inspired by cinema. Some controversial or cult films were icons for adolescent punks. You would be hard pushed to find an ex-punk rocker who didn't rave about 'A Clockwork Orange' or 'Taxi Driver'. Or ask any punk cine-auteur to name the filmmakers that most inspire them and a handful of directors are repeatedly named - Bunuel, Vertov, Godard, Waters, Warhol ..."

- Chris Barber, 'Punk On Film'

"Hubert Selby Jr. famously said that he grew up feeling like a scream without a mouth. Lydia Lunch, one of his most celebrated - and most uncompromising - literary progeny, delivered scream, mouth, teeth, blood, hair, knife, and adrenaline in her purgatorial masterpiece 'Paradoxia : A Predator's Diary', for which the late legend Selby himself penned the introduction to the original UK edition. When 'Paradoxia' was first published, it was considered extreme. It still is."

- Jerry Stahl, 'A New Introduction To Paradoxia'

06) 'The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover' (1989)

In 'The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover', Margaret Thatcher's Britian breeds urban dreams in the city where self-appointed V.I.P.s trade Michelin Stars for new gourmet banquets in which human suffering is paramount. Also on the menu are the successfully impoverished who get to eat their own human waste.
In Greenaway's quest to present films as seamless, perfectly structured numerical facades that confront the viewer with the artifice of the moving arts, his adherence to staging demonstrations of universal themes (sex & death) ensures an honesty for the avid spectator. 'The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover' is Brechtian to its core, yet awash with vibrant colours, Michael Nyman's score being typically cut to precise frame counts.

Punk is minimalism, which is at the heart of the structural building blocks of rock 'n' roll. It's also a philosophy. Greenaway's punk spirit leads to all kinds of artistic exchange.

“Despite the evidence, cinema is not very visual and is really a literary medium. Nobody seems to make anything without writing a script. Most cinema is some form of illuminated text. I would argue that we’ve yet to see any piece of cinema worthy of the name.”

- Peter Greenaway, IBC Accelerators

(EPILOGUE) Achievement

Though born in Wales, Peter Greenaway recalls the English east coast he explored in his youth, from Suffolk down to Kent, as being full of flat spaces. He now lives in Netherlands where he frolics in the flatlands. Performers like Debbie Harry and Madonna have literally beaten down his door looking for work, such is their admiration for him as a filmmaker. This is his legacy.

'Outdoor Miner' - Wire

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Punk Essentials

01. 'The Driller Killer' (1979) - Those who were able to escape from movie theatres screening Abel Ferrara's nightmarish vision of the punk underworld, shared stories of their own traumatic experiences brought on by the film; one lady in New York even claimed to have died and come back to life before the movie ended. The film acts as a document of the times and also happens to be a stomach-churning horror picture. It feels raw and is authentic to the scene. Watch it in a double-bill with horror filmmaker Ulli Lommel's equally corrosive document 'Blank Generation' (1980).

02. 'Rock 'N' Roll High School' (1979) - Allan Arkush & Joe Dante nearly had Cheap Trick playing the band that headlines this playful musical produced by Roger Corman. That would have made for an equally fun movie, I'm sure, but instead they got the Ramones. Arkush went on to make 'Get Crazy' (1983) which also carries plenty of punk swagger.

03. 'Times Square' (1980) - The first film in Allan Moyle's 'Musical Youth' trilogy is the tale of two troubled teenage girls (Trini Alvarado & Robin Johnson) touring the trash parlours of New York who form renegade punk outfit The Sleez Sisters. Meanwhile, city politicians clash with radical DJ Johnny DeGuardia (played by the great Tim Curry). New York street life for kids is spotlighted within the vile cesspool known as Times Square. Moyle would later shatter the suburbs with 'Pump Up The Volume' (1990) and tackle post-modern musical communes with 'Empire Records' (1995). The Sleez Sisters perform with New York Doll David Johansen on an electric rock n roll soundtrack.

04. 'Class Of 1984' (1982) - Action filmmaker Mark Lester inaugurated the 'Class of the Future' series with this violent turf war between teachers and punks. It's one of the scariest pictures to deal head-on with confrontation, conflict, abuse, vice and violence occurring day-to-day in educational institutions. The most diabolical gang member is pink-haired punk priestess Patsy (Lisa Langlois), a bruised violet who positively delights in the protracted suffering of students and disciplinarians alike. Langlois' fellow Canadian Michael J Fox goes bananas.

05. 'Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains' (1982) - Having engineered a series of comic misadventures for Cheech & Chong that brought the Groundlings together with various Sunset Strip mainstays, influential music producer Lou Adler put together a band of reckless teenage runaways to create this rough-edged chronicle of life on the road. This movie was a launching pad for Diane Lane's acting career. It's become a staple part of the punk diet with members of the Sex Pistols & the Clash making appearances (as well as rock 'n' roller Elizabeth Daily).

06. 'Repo Man' (1984) - Emilio Estevez may just be the greatest movie punk of them all in this dark take on the life of an apprentice car repossessor. Alex Cox's science-fiction film is an inspirational tale about working your way up in life. It's co-produced by Monkee Michael Nesmith and filmmaker Jonathan Wacks. The soundtrack is colossal and the film includes a performance from the Circle Jerks.

07. 'Desperately Seeking Susan' (1985) - Orion Pictures had to be convinced that Madonna could override a name actress, but director Susan Seidelman fought the former Breakfast Club drummer's corner furiously, in the most ferocious studio dust-up since Francis Coppola went to bat for failed stand-up comic Al Pacino. Yet it's bored New Jersey amnesiac housewife Roberta who brings punk fever to this production, as portrayed by Rosanna Arquette. The film stands hand in hand with Seidelman's near-formless 'Smithereens' (1982) and robotic 'Making Mr. Right' (1987) as a modern fairy tale about a woman looking for creative love by asserting her independence.

08. 'The Return Of The Living Dead' (1985) - Terror greets the blue moon of Kentucky when a crew of hostile punk posers meet their match in the form of rampaging running zombies with an appetite for live brains! Punk icon Linnea Quigley brings her signature innovations to the show using personal designs, cut-up arts and D.I.Y. techniques that remain unparalleled within the horror genre to this day.

09. 'Class Of Nuke 'Em High' (1986) - Most Troma products came and went but 2 quality offerings spawned long-running brand franchises (see 'The Toxic Avenger' series featuring Marisa Tomei). This one stars the wonderful Janelle Brady, though it's dominatrix Muffey (Theo Cohan) who proves herself to be the most ferocious Tromette in Troma history; she even happily suffocates a nerd by sitting on his head.

10. 'Howard The Duck' (1986) - Here you have the greatest love story between a punk and a duck. This audio-visual extravaganza has it all. Lord love a duck!

11. 'The Chocolate War' (1988) - A chilling adaptation of a novel I've not read by Robert Cormier, this concerns an all-boys school where students are forced to sell chocolates. The one ray of light is Jenny Wright's bold, independent punkette - "You better catch that bus, boy!"

12. 'Tapeheads' (1988) - Countless music industry figures got involved with this failed project produced by Monkee Michael Nesmith, including many talented punk musicians. It's a complete mess and the scattershot soundtrack's all over the shop, but the saving grace remains Katy Boyer's hilarious turn as deconstructionist loft artist Belinda Hart.

13. 'The Big Picture' (1989) - Jennifer Jason Leigh captures the essential being of an eccentric art school punk to perfection, complete with candy-coloured shock wardrobe and bizarre elocution that befits a girl trapped in an old department store warehouse.

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