4/12/18. I liked quite a few of Iggy Pop's songs and wanted to learn more about him. While he is quite articulate, it is amazing that he is considering his history with many drugs that he talked about. Interesting to listen to but the sparsity of the music that made the Stooges iconic is a testament that this documentary could have been done better. Listing all the bands that were influenced by Iggy and his band is somewhat meaningless without including the music that made them so influential.

I've seen the movie two times within 3 weeks with two friends of mine who didn't know much about The Stooges but they were like "well OK, whatever". After the movie they had bright eyes and were totally excited and happy that I invited them. That says it all. I enjoyed it the second time even more.I'll start with a few of the negatives: I really missed some details about Iggy's time with Bowie in Berlin. I think it was a really productive and important part of Iggy's life and had an influence not only on him but on the band. On the other hand there were some scenes which I would have left out: for example the part with John Wayne or some stories about the trailer. They didn't add anything to the story. The music wasn't really in focus here so someone who doesn't know them, won't love their music after this nor will know anything about the process of making music, except a few details.Now the positive side: I love the fact that this is a documentary about The Stooges and not about Iggy Pop. He is a unique, eccentric figure, but he doesn't steal the show. Every member of the band share their stories and I was really happy to see and hear the Ashtons before they passed away. Jarmusch focuses on the history of the era, the history of The Stooges and the personal stories behind the stage and on stage. I adore him for not asking 200 critics and some distanced relatives to talk about them. He asks only people who were either in the band or in a close relationship with the band.I love The Stooges and I knew some things about them besides their music but Gimme Danger had some new information to share, it does a great job in organizing 40 years in 2 Hours, which is not a walk in the park, it was genuinely funny and sometimes also touching. The parts in the second half where the band comes together were like that. It was moving to see 50-60 year olds, some of them in a bad condition to be happy as a child because the band is together again. It was heartwarming watching Ashton play the drums for the last time. These guys didn't care much about the big money, they just wanted to play music. It doesn't matter that their lost their way, they always find a path somehow to play again. Overall Gimme Danger has some weaknesses but I would watch it over and over again, because it does justice in portraying The Stooges. It is also unique, because most of them are not with us and it would have been a huge missed opportunity to not interview them for the last time.

So what is this? A quite conventional musical documentary embedding a bands history within a bigger history of society and musical appearances and hereby constantly arguing the uniqueness, the coolness and the relevance of The Stooges and their professional anti-professionalism. It has the same sort of bohemian snobbish feeling to it I already found disgusting in ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE: all this bitter mystifying praise of the „real", „authentic", „good", „true", etc., artistic stuff within a devilish sell-out Disneyland world is just soo much emphasized that it's actually ridiculing itself. But at the same time it is a fanboy work and a work of friendship, a film not only about the band, but a film in dedication for the band, a gift, an openly political and explicitly personal attempt to immortalize the musicians, communists, existentialists, drug users and drug abusers around Iggy Pop: „The Stooges Forever!", it says on the gong starting and finishing the film. And this is basically the sole purpose the film is made for and this is what adds quite a bit of intimidating intimacy to it, making it more like a letter to Iggy only masked as this educational musical documentary it is trying to be at its surface. This is no offense: The naive and sincere face under the mask is what turns the film into touching cinema, after all. And the sound, well, the sound made me heart jump around hard every once in a while.

Growing up in the sixties and seventies we were exposed to a ton of music and musical styles that seem lacking in today's world. At any time you could turn on the radio and find Frank Sinatra, Black Sabbath and Sly and the Family Stone all on the same channel. Today we tend to compartmentalize music into sub-genres and limit listening to only what we love without exposure to anything different. Had that been the case back then music would never have evolved and led to different styles. Such was the case with the Detroit band known as The Stooges.This documentary follows the early beginnings through to the last moments of the Stooges career along with their front man Iggy Pop. It runs like most rock documentaries in that it follows the timeline, shows them performing and combines that with interviews past and present to form a cohesive of the band start to finish.As with most bands that began in the sixties there is plenty of open talk about the drugs they took from marijuana to acid to heroin. It doesn't glorify the use of those drugs but it was a part of the lifestyle they lived. It was a part of the rock culture at the time and the fact they survived those days without serious overdose or multiple deaths shows it didn't always end that way. That they don't discourage or encourage the use of drugs shows a more even keel in the discussion rather than aging rock stars saying "I did this but you shouldn't", something most rock docs seem to do. It becomes a hollow piece of advice in those.The sound of the Stooges was raw and it was powerful and that's what drew fans to them and their music. I got the sense that this stemmed from their home base of Detroit, of being exposed to that working class atmosphere, of listening to the hammering of metal in factories in the area. Many bands that came from the area were exposed to the same thing and it is apparent in the sound of bands like Grand Funk, Alice Cooper, Bob Seger, Ted Nugent and The Stooges. But The Stooges sounds was rawer than most with the exception of perhaps MC5 who played a major role in their early years as seen here.This sound The Stooges created influenced so many bands and was also part of the foundation for the next big genre of rock music to come, punk. Their influence can be heard and is commented on in the film with their style replicating in bands like The Ramones, Sex Pistols, Sonic Youth and more. It was hard, it was fast, it was loud and it was raw. That word comes up a lot when thinking about The Stooges and deservedly so.The movie doesn't spend any time discussing the solo career of Iggy Pop and actually that turns out to be a good thing and goes along with what he says in the film. He talks about how the band were true Communists when they began, not in the sense of political ideology but in that they shared and shared alike. Money coming in was divided evenly. This extended to their return to the stage in 2003 at Coachella where he was offered so much to perform and said they'd have to triple the amount so each band member would get the same. To his surprise the backers agreed and they played.The movie does give a historical perspective of the band and that's great that a new generation will possibly find the band through the film. Many will be surprised at how influential they were. The biggest surprise in the film for me was that while directed by Jim Jarmusch his style of filmmaking isn't on display here making the film about himself instead of the band. Rather he sticks to the straight forward format used in most rock docs and it pays off in the end.As far as rock docs go this one is among the better that I've seen. It tells the story of its focus, The Stooges, rather than become a movie about stylistic choices of the director. It moves along from start to finish for the band and offers them in performance all along the way. It presents the band and its individual members in a respective tone allowing each to speak never giving one more on screen time than the rest with perhaps the exception in a small amount to Iggy. It doesn't glamourize nor demonize the band. It just lets the music do the talking. And what powerful talking it does.