On Dec. 8, 1980, the world mourned former Beatle John Lennon's tragic death at the hands of a deranged fan. Just a day earlier, an underground Los Angeles society numbering perhaps in the hundreds mourned the passing of its own idol, Darby Crash, the 22-year-old singer for the punk rock band the Germs.
Although Crash garnered only a fraction of the posthumous praise that Lennon did, his sacred circle may yet expand as a slew of film projects celebrates his life and the lives of other bygone punk antiheroes. No mere exercise in nostalgia, the films, say some of those involved, offer a glimpse into an era of renewed relevance for today's youth.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday August 24, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 38 words Type of Material: Correction
Punk documentaries -- An article in Tuesday's Calendar section about upcoming films chronicling the punk era identified Dick Hebdige as a professor of film studies at UC Santa Barbara. Hebdige is also a professor of art studies there.
A biopic on Crash, "What We Do Is Secret," directed by Rodger Grossman, has just wrapped and is slated to hit the early 2006 film festivals. A documentary about the Germs directed by Dan Griffith and based on the 2002 book "Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs" is currently in production.
Looking more broadly at the scene, the documentary "Punk: Attitude" debuted in July on the Independent Film Channel (the network home to "Henry's Film Corner," in which Henry Rollins of the L.A. hard-core punk band Black Flag critiques movies). "New York Doll," a documentary from Greg Whiteley about the late Arthur "Killer" Kane of the New York Dolls, is slated to hit movie screens in late October. And the documentaries "Punk's Not Dead" and "American Hardcore" are also slotted for next year's film festival circuit.
If punk is dead, as has been said, it appears to be kicking and digging its way out of the grave.
Seminal punk groups from the '70s and early '80s -- the Germs, the New York Dolls, X, the Sex Pistols, Black Flag, the Clash and the Ramones among them -- have been credited with influencing a generation of musical artists and fans. Crash, in particular, was an arbiter of West Coast punk style, giving birth to devout followers known as "Crash Trash." In 1980, says Rodney Bingenheimer, host of the 29-year-old KROQ-FM radio show "Rodney on the Roq," "Darby came back from London with this huge mohawk after meeting Adam Ant. He started the whole mohawk thing."
It was Bingenheimer's radio show -- a trailblazer in giving punk bands airtime -- that planted the seed in director Grossman's mind that would eventually become the film "What We Do Is Secret." Grossman, 38, says he first heard the Germs' album of the same name on Bingenheimer's show in 1982 "and went out the next day and bought the record. It changed my life completely."
