The camerawork . And that has kind of evolved into my current band, Spiders And Snakes, where weve really embraced our seventies roots. Both are illegal. The Decline of Western Civilization comes across as much more authentic than many documentaries with similar aims. A lot of those guys are my friends, theyve either died or have moved on to something similar but better in life. Maher said part of the problem of losing civilization is you fail to make judgments. Movie Info. Let's talk about this trend. Here are three that help explain what is happening with our culture. '", Spheeris says that she's working on a fourth Decline film with her daughter, Anna Fox. The second consideration depicts its slow decline with the internal problems like slow economic growth, unemployment, stagnant population, government shortfall, deteriorating work ethic, crime, and . A punk named Stevie dies in a fire at a building where he's squatting; another, Squid, is killed, allegedly by his girlfriend, Spoon. A look into the Los Angeles punk rock scene, that was largely ignored by the rock music press of the time. Six weeks later we opened up for Warrant at The Roxy. Decline properly introduces itself with the distorted bars of X's "Nausea" as the title card cuts to a roiling pit churned by the trunks and limbs of thrashing teenage bodies. This article about a music-related documentary film is a stub. She hopes it will define her legacy as a filmmaker. As the singer in Faster Pussycat and co-founder of the notorious, heroically debauched Cathouse club, Seattle-born Taime Downe or Gustave Molvik to his parents was perfectly placed to witness the rise and fall of the Sunset Strip scene. Screw the corps, right? The Decline movies, still on a variety of different film formats, sat in an underground vault in her home, but demand for them never let up. This feels legitimately dangerous a way that not many movies do, and it captures the sense of outrage and dissatisfaction that drew so many people to punk rock in the first place, looking for somewhere to belong, to be heard. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. It was screened at the Cannes Film Festival and the Chicago Underground Film Festival, where it received a jury award. But the tables have turned. If I was still drinkin Id be dead now. In 1918, Oswald Spengler published . In Part III, the answer is almost universally, Dead. So just as we were beginning to make an impact, they came along and we had no chance. They stopped teaching it, and the great cultural transmission belt broke. I still talk to him a lot. I get dizziness, I get the shakes in my hands. (Long sigh) I had the thumb on me, controlling me. Bloom doesnt only critique, but recasts the vision of what it is we have lost. The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, "With "20,000 Leagues," the National Film Registry Reaches 700", "Complete National Film Registry Listing", The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Decline_of_Western_Civilization&oldid=1139989286, Documentary films about punk music and musicians, United States National Film Registry films, Album articles lacking alt text for covers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 17 February 2023, at 22:01. That shows you what studio executives know, Spheeris said. The question is, what took so long? I said: Mom, I gotta do this interview. Well, she didnt have anything else to do so she just came along. I was more interested in spending time in the gym; more a jock than a rocker. RhetoricinPopularCulture-BarryS.Brummett.pdf. Death of the Soul: From Descartes to the Computer, by William Barrett. For a movie about the underground punk scene, the . Then, in the early nineties, I got this job, via my friend Bruce Kirkland who had a multimedia company called Second Vision. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate. When Punk Was Meant to Hurt You: Penelope Spheeris' 'The Decline of Western Civilization'. Whats that? Nobody knew. The first "Decline," which focused on the early L.A. punk scene, was made in 1979 before most of the punks in "Part III" were even born, and Spheeris uses interviews with some of the old . We were pretty massive when we appeared in the Decline movie. What happened in our Western world began 6,000 years ago in a gardena battle between two religions. The mother-daughter duo are now working together on a fourth Decline film, which Spheeris said is still about punk, but also involves another kind of music. Last night I saw The Decline of Western Civilization at Cornell Cinema (everybody, go support your campus movie theater). I spotted troll sitting in front of a liquor store with a 32pack and pulled over and gave him a ride..i recognized him from the decline but was not completely sure since he was like 25years older and didnt want to ask..we ended up drinking with him all night then it became apparent that it really was him since people kept coming up to him and taking pictures and yelling out "the decline!" he was a pretty cool dude hes doing the same exact shit he was doing back in the day but has a job. "It turned out beyond my expectations," she says of the box set. 3. See Roger Kimballs 1986 review in the New Criterion here. the decline of western civilization collection. I remember lookin out and thinking: Who the fuck is this dude dancin in the middle of the floor? Of course, it was fuckin Axl. I havent been drinkin since 1996. There were certain things we had to manipulate. Just as punk once appropriated street chic, the street has now appropriated punk. I guarantee you that. The Decline of Western Civilization's third installment features the LA hardcore punk scene of the 1990s. In the late 1990s it was released on CD as well. I was only twenty-two when the band broke up. IBM had approached the Rolling Stones and said: Well give you guys two million dollars if you let us do the title [Voodoo Lounge CD-ROM]. Brought up in her father's travelling carnival, Penelope Spheeris was the ideal person to turn the camera on the three-ring circus that was the 80s/90s Sunset Strip scene. In a way, you can look at Decline II as the research and then Waynes World as the final product. at the Frida Cinema, 305 E. Fourth St., Santa Ana; thefridacinema.org. A couple of the Brat Pack actor kids were also friends, and that brought in other elements. Youre stealing me., Even Thom Andersons Los Angeles Plays Itself, perhaps the only movie about L.A. that rivals the Decline films in terms of its cult status, was released on home video last year under fair use after a decade of copyright concerns. Weaver, a scholar at Vanderbilt in the early 20th century, gives an eloquent account of the corrosive materialist rationalism that eats away at the core beliefs of Western civilization. I came back from Chicago after the Pigface thing and started doing The Newlydeads with some friends here in LA. The black guy in the wheelchair is somewhere in Nola area. Gone is the chaotic euphoria of the first movie, filmed in 1979, which quickly became a classic on the underground circuit for its playful, sympathetic chronicle of L.A. punk bands and the fans who loved them. I said, I gotta make a movie about this punk scene. By K.E. Ancient Greece. But it remained unreleased on DVD until it finally got a long-deserved reissue as part of a box set with its less boneheaded predecessor, The Decline Of Western Civilisation Part I (which dealt with LAs punk scene) and the belated third part, which addressed Americas homeless youth. We were already oddballs, even within the scene, because I was so seventies-influenced. Attempts were made to get me to include more of the mainstream, successful bands, but that wasnt really what interested me. When 19-year- old Spoon says this a half hour into "The Decline of Western Civilization, Part III," she isn't indulging in punk posturing. But Ozzys one of the funniest people alive. By the time The Cathouse was up and running we were off, constantly touring. The black guy in the wheelchair is somewhere in Nola area. 1. Mostly, it means that after all those years, shes finally overcome her pastand restored it to cinematic perfection. We interact with millions of Americans each week, publishing numerous articles each day and promoting them through vast social media and email networks. I believe I was smokin hash with Dave Mustaine. The 11 most pivotal periods in western history. I cant go on Google and look at myself. Strip away the glam, theres little else. At first glance, it seems that remarkably little has changed over the course of a generation. Interviews with leading film and TV creators about their process and craft. And the other day I was sittin here, thinkin, because my parents were separated when I was two. But we need these kind of books now more than ever. "I had to grow my hair out." And then the grunge thing happened. Hitting the streets in 1981, the original Decline of Western Civilization dove head first into the whirling mosh pit of the Los Angeles hardcore punk scene. They just want to escape it, and in "Decline, Part III" some succeed. Within a couple of days I auditioned, and got the job. Like, we had a seven-foot-high drum riser with a girl dancing underneath it. The movie never got a proper release . There is no future in mind for anyone here. Whether you have a nostalgic connection to the subjects, or just want to glimpse into a couple of under-examined subcultures, this is a set well worth adding to your collection. The medieval world was forged by the big forces that still occupy us today: climate change, pandemic disease, mass . Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. Spheeris resolved to ignore it. I love you, Chris.. Early in Penelope Spheeris' 1981 documentary on the Los Angeles punk scene, she asks Eugene, a 14-year-old skinhead who talks like a Valley kid, what he likes about punk. We track down the stars of classic car crash metal documentary The Decline Of Western Civilization Pt 2: The Metal Years. All Rights reserved. He traces it to the denial by William of Ockham in the late Middle Ages of the existence of transcendent ideas. But as prickly as they are, all charged hair, spike-covered leather jackets, and layers of filth worn with a sense of pride, they still find joy and love with their friends, even as they recount horrific home lives, systematic abuse, and fighting white supremacists with the nonchalant resignation of the everyday. Key Scene 2: Darby Crash and girlfriend Michelle laugh about finding the dead body of a house painter. The Germs' performance was replicated in the 2007 Darby Crash biopic What We Do Is Secret. By the time The Decline Of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years came out in mid-1988, the L.A. glam scene was under siege by grittier hard rock bands on the right and the thrash metal uprising . guitarist Chris Holmes drunk off his ass in his mothers swimming pool lamenting his life, the scene comes off as more silly and swollen and sad than anything else. I left London to do my own band, Ultra Pop, which was more Marc Bolan-influenced. We found all the complete original interviews, additional live performances, re-edited them, cleaned up the film, added commentaries And thats whats coming out.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvEa_IFt9yg. It took shape in medieval Europe, with its Christian religion, feudal society . It ought to be. We had several. There are extended interviews with some of the players, panels on the chapters in the trilogy, and various other features that explore the cultural impact of the Decline saga. It is the third film of a trilogy by Spheeris depicting life in Los Angeles at various points in time. Shellenberge agreed. "I'm not saying that as a selling point because that's not why we did it. As Ipsos Mori's Social Research Institute reports: "The assumption of an automatically better future for the next generation is gone in much of the west.". One of the smaller ancient civilizations, Greece has exerted an influence out of proportion to its size on the development of Western civilization, largely due to the intellectual accomplishments of Greek philosophers, who laid the foundation for much of modern science and . The Asbury Revival, Emotionalism, and Group Psychology, 3 Books That Explain the Decline of Western Civilization, American Girl and the Historical Nostalgia Trap, Attentiveness as Service: The Virtue of Noticing, Not Your Schools Reading List 8: Adventures, Spies, and More for Young Boys. Well shortly be recording tracks for the next London album.. The director . As much as you can see their affection for Spheeris, theres always a distance; she is always the other. For a lot of fans, the most exciting part of the Decline set is Part III, which documents homeless squatter-punks dealing with violence, addiction, and death. Read the New York Times review of this book here. Now, when I see people in young bands I tell them not to trust each other. The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (1988). Barrett was one of the great writers of philosophy and ideas for the intelligent layman. After a few weeks the club was packed. Many acts in it were huge; others became so. Subscribe to Paper; Sign Up for Emails; Where to Pick Us Up; Submit Stuff; Place a Classified or Legal Notice In the original "Decline," the talented denizens of L.A.'s punk rock scene -- Black Flag, X, the Germs, the Circle Jerks -- were budding activists and politicized poets too full of spit and fervor to lapse into despair (the exception was the Germs' front man, Darby Crash, whose suicide shortly after the first film wrapped was an anomaly). In retrospect, everybody talks about it real fondly, but at the time bands were fightin like cats and dogs, steppin on one another. Penelope Spheeris rounds out her Decline of Western Civilization trilogy with this in depth look at the lives of self-proclaimed 'gutter punks,' homeless punk rockers that squat in abandoned homes or sleep on the streets, panhandle or steal, and live lives of alcoholism and drug addiction. The second film, The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (1988), covers the Los Angeles heavy metal scene of 19871988. This was your primer, your roadmap to being an outsider. Like hunting down a rare vinyl record or an out-of-print fanzine, scoring a copy of the 1981 documentary required a rabid degree of dedication in exchange for street cred. Being an outsider on CD as well was so seventies-influenced Warrant at the Roxy it seems that remarkably has. In LA still drinkin Id be dead now with similar aims Angeles at points... The problem of losing Civilization is you fail to make judgments film Festival, where weve really embraced seventies! 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