2023 Cannes Marathon: Gimme Danger

 

(Played at the Midnight Screenings Section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival)

Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, Gimme Danger is a documentary film about the career of the influential proto-punk band the Stooges whose three albums from 1969 to 1973 were widely considered to be the blueprint for punk rock. The film chronicles the band’s rise and fall and reunion in the early 2000s following the success of vocalist Iggy Pop’s solo career as it explore the many hardships the band endured despite the attention it got in the underground as well as artists such as David Bowie and Lou Reed. The result is an exhilarating and evocative film from Jim Jarmusch.

Coming out of the rock n’ roll music scene in Detroit that would launch such acts as the Amboy Dukes featuring Ted Nugent and the widely influential proto-punk band the MC5 are the Stooges. Consisting of vocalist James Osterberg aka Iggy Pop, guitarist Ron Asheton, drummer Scott Asheton, and bassist Dave Alexander that would later include saxophonist Steve Mackay and guitarist James Williamson. The Stooges from 1969 to 1973 would release three studio albums that many believe helped laid the blueprint and foundation for what would become punk rock in the late 1970s. Like other legendary proto-punk bands such as the MC5 and the Velvet Underground before them as well as the New York Dolls. The Stooges weren’t commercially successful as the group disbanded in 1973 in a haze of drugs and destruction months after the release of their third album Raw Power.

Shot largely in the 2010s before the passing of drummer Scott Asheton in 2014 and saxophonist Steve Mackay in 2015 as they’re both interviewed in the film along with archival interviews from Ron Asheton in the 1980s and 2000s before his own passing in 2009. The film showcases the band’s struggle to get some mainstream success despite being in not just this vibrant music scene in Detroit that wasn’t Motown but also a growing avant-garde music scene in Ann Arbor, Michigan that featured the likes of John Cage. The most prominent talking voice in the film is Iggy Pop as there are scenes with him and Scott Asheton having conversations about their time in the band with Pop and Asheton along with the latter’s younger sister Kathy talking about their early lives. Pop also goes into detail about what makes the Stooges’ music unique where they weren’t just influenced by their environment but also a lot of the underground music that was coming out as well as jazz as the band loved John Coltrane and Miles Davis.

Despite their limitations as musicians, the Stooges were able to come up with ideas that allowed them to grow musically with Pop doing a lot to establish not just what the Ashetons brought to the band but also bassist Dave Alexander who was mastermind for one of the band’s key songs from their 1969 debut album We Will Fall with producer John Cale on viola. Pop also talked about why Alexander was fired from the band in late 1970 as it wasn’t an easy decision with Scott talking about Alexander’s final years that lead to his death in 1975 due to complications relating to alcoholism. Several bass players would come in from 1970 and 1971 with James Williamson joining the group as a second guitarist where a lot of inactivity and being dropped by Elektra Records after two albums lead to a hiatus for the band despite manager Danny Fields’ efforts to help the band find a new label as he is also interviewed in the film. Fields’ loyalty would get Pop to meet David Bowie and his then-manager Tony DeFries where Pop revealed the deal he made with the latter as he described the contract he sign is similar to the one that TLC signed 2 decades later where they have sold 10 million copies of an album and declare bankruptcy.

Though Bowie would use whatever time he had in helping the Stooges in doing additional re-mixing of their 1973 album Raw Power, it wasn’t enough where Pop revealed a lot of sabotaging from DeFries is what stalled the album as well as not having the band do a lot of shows during that time. The film opens with the final months of the Stooges who were playing gigs to an audience that were either hostile or indifferent towards them with Pop, Williamson, and Scott Asheton all reflecting on how these events led to the band’s dissolution. For Jim Jarmusch to open with that story helps set the tone for the chaos on the story of the Stooges as well as little tidbits on Pop’s solo career that was successful which included a rare top 40 hit in the early 90s with Candy featuring Kate Pierson of the B-52s.

It was in the late 1990s when Mike Watt of the Minutemen and fIREHOSE who worked with Ron Asheton in creating music for the 1998 Todd Haynes film Velvet Goldmine for Ewan McGregor’s Curt Wild character is when Ron became interested in playing Stooges music again with J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. that lead to Scott joining in the project with Mascis and Watt. That eventually led to the Stooges’ reunion in the early 2000s with Watt playing bass for the band where the band played massive festivals including Coachella as it not only gave the band a lot of attention but also money that kept the Asheton brothers from returning to steady jobs while James Williamson was a record producer for a time and eventually an executive for Sony until he returned to the Stooges in 2010 to replace Ron Asheton.

Jarmusch’s direction is largely straightforward as many of the interviews he shot with cinematographer Tom Krueger have Pop, Scott and Kathy Asheton, Steve Mackey, James Williamson, and Danny Fields in unique settings with Pop and Scott having their conversation at Pop’s home. Even as Jarmusch brought in animator James Kerr to create some animated sequences in some of the stories including a phone conversation between Ron Asheton and Moe Howard of the Three Stooges where the latter told him “as long as you don’t fucking call yourself the Three Stooges”. There is also some visual effects work from Chris King that help play into the animation including a scene where Pop is talking and the film gets fuzzy like the old TVs back then. Much of the work that Jarmusch does comes from archival footage thanks in part to the work of editors Affonso Goncalves and Adam Kurnitz who help cultivate as much archival footage from the band in the early 70s as well as rare footage of the Ashetons’ lives following the Stooges’ dissolution including interviews with Ron in the 80s through early 2000s.

Sound designer Robert Hein does superb work in not just capturing many of the audio archives but also some of the interviews and the way the music is presented as much of its music soundtrack features not just music from the Stooges but also other artists including some such as the Sex Pistols, the Damned, the Dictators, Sonic Youth, and David Bowie covering Stooges songs. It shows exactly the vast influence the group had as they were inducted into the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2010 though it was a bittersweet moment considering that it happened a year after Ron Asheton’s passing.

Gimme Danger is a tremendous film from Jim Jarmusch. Not only is it a great documentary about one of the most dangerous acts in popular music but also one of the most influential in terms of their raw approach to rock music. Especially for a band that didn’t get their due during their prime but eventually would receive a lot more in the 21st Century while Iggy Pop continues to have an illustrious solo career. In the end, Gimme Danger is a sensational film from Jim Jarmusch.

Jim Jarmusch Films: Permanent Vacation - Stranger Than Paradise - Down by Law - Mystery Train - Night on Earth - Dead Man - Year of the Horse - Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai - Coffee and Cigarettes - Broken Flowers - The Limits of Control - Only Lovers Left Alive - Paterson - (The Dead Don’t Die) - The Auteurs #23: Jim Jarmusch

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