Reviewed by Alexis Madden
(July 2008)
Director: Rodger Grossman
Written by: Michelle Baer Ghaffari, Rodger Grossman
Starring: Shane West, Bijou Phillips, Rick Gonzalez, Noah Segan
When David Bowie sang, "Five years that's all we got," he inspired Darby Crash (born Jan Paul Beahm) to form The Germs, one of the most influential punk bands to come out of Los Angeles in the late 1970s. Bowie's song became Crash's life code. And his five years with the band, captured here in Grossman's debut feature What We Do Is Secret, cinematically procures Crash's true self - experimenting with his art and his sexuality, worlds in which he seemed scattered, hidden and, at times, dangerously disjointed.
The film opens with the dominant voice of Slash music mag founder Claude Bessy, aka Kickboy Face, telling us to cut through the "bullshit" and "punk politicking" and talk about "the most unpredictable, the most chaotic and the least understood band in the whole Los Angeles punk rock scene."
It is in these first few minutes of the film that Grossman declares the passion and intensity of the unforgettable punk front man, Darby Crash (Shane West - A Walk to Remember, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen).
Secret centers mainly on the five years of Crash's journey from forming the iconic band to his planned suicide. Through interviews with members of the band: Pat Smear (Rick Gonzalez - Illegal Tender), Lorna Doom (Bijou Phillips - Choke, Bully), and Don Bolles (Noah Segan - Brick), the film touches on Crash's tragic childhood - a dead brother, a father who disappeared and a mother who was "like a character out of a John Waters film, drunk all the time." Crash was the ascetic genius who couldn't fit in... of course making him the perfect leader for other outcasts.
With the help of a flyer searching for a few girls who couldn't play instruments, his own lyrical talents, and a couple of name changes, The Germs was born. As the popularity of the band grew, The Germs's relationship with its audience angled toward outright aggression, and before long the band was banned from every venue in Los Angeles. With their popularity also came "the march of the creeps," girls who would aid Crash with money, alcohol and hard drugs. Consequently, the close-knit band family quickly unraveled, leaving Crash with nowhere to turn but to his own vices and, ultimately, to his death.
West portrays Crash's downward spiral with such raw honesty that it allows the viewer to experience the pain Crash had been trying to conceal since his childhood.
And, in fact, the entire cast does an exceptional job of bringing Grossman's vision to reality. In serving the integrity of film, they worked closely with the real members of the band. Don Bolles spent hours side by side with Noah Segan discussing the script and Pat Smear served as a musical coach to make the onscreen performances as believable as possible.
Grossman devoted 15 years of his life searching for the correct pieces of the Darby Crash puzzle, and he has succeeded in connecting the right cast and crew to deliver a project boasting a gritty, turbulent authenticity.
In creating a bio-pic that attempts to capture these inimitable artists in 93 minutes, it is understandable if some elements of the world The Germs inhabited, and the people they encountered, may have been exaggerated or ignored. |
