Gimme Danger (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Gimme Danger (2016) – J. Jarmusch

A master filmmaker, such as Jim Jarmusch, can really take a well-worn genre, such as the music doco, and enhance it.  The result is even better when the focus, The Stooges, is so clearly loved by the director and so clearly deserving of attention (I have their three original albums:  The Stooges, 1969; Fun House, 1970; and Raw Power, 1973).  So, even though a big proportion of the running time is Iggy Pop’s talking head, he is charismatic enough to carry the weight (as one of rock’s elder statesmen, surprisingly). Jarmusch and his team work some magic in the editing room, ladling on ace concert footage, old photographs, unusual video or musical clips (virtual asides that spring from Iggy’s comments), and even animated sequences showing The Stooges and their adventures.  We do hear from Ron and Scott Asheton (guitar and drums) and Steve Mackay (sax) who died before the film was released and from James Williamson (guitar on Raw Power) who became a Silicon Valley exec in his second/actual career.  In an interesting choice, Jarmusch opens the film with the band’s downhill slide into oblivion in the mid-70s, pre-opening credits, and then returns to tell the tale from the beginning, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and onward to Detroit and then their major label recording contracts (both Elektra and MainMan/Columbia), their dissolution, and then “reunification” (as Pop calls it) in the mid-2000s to widespread acclaim with Minuteman Mike Watt on bass (their Live in Detroit DVD is pretty great). The rapport and friendship between Jarmusch and Iggy Pop (who featured in Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes, 1993, and had a bit part in Dead Man, 1995) very likely created a climate which helped to boost this beyond your usual rockumentary.  Right on!