Review: D.O.A.: A Right of Passage

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2018

Images from the Internet

D.O.A.: A Right of Passage

Written and directed by Lech Kowalski

High Times Films / MVD Rewind Collection

90 minutes, 1980

Blu-ray and DVD

www.mvdvisual.com

This documentary of the later part of the early days of punk rock, namely the late-1970s, is now considered the granddaddy of non-fiction films about the genre, much as Please Kill Me is viewed, though in book form. While I’m not trying to imply that this or Kill Me was the first, I do posit that they are both game changers and have since become iconic.

There are generally two schools of thought: one that punk started in New York in 1974, and others that believe it began with the Sex Pistols in England, in late1975. They can be both right, as they were different in both politics and sound, with the occasional overlap. Rather than thinking of them as one or the other, I like to believe they are both concurrent and inter-serving. Yeah, I am in the New York school, and believe it started there, but am also comfortable knowing that they are both different and alike at the same time, as long as both acknowledge each other.

The film is essentially three acts that are intertwined, and yet remain unique: one is the Sex Pistol’s tour of the Southern United States (including post-tour), the governmental and record company reaction to the Pistols directly and therefore British punk as a whole, and live performances of various bands.

The film starts with the Pistols playing in Atlanta, including a clip of them performing “Anarchy in the [U.S.A.].” Of course, it’s the audience interviews that are equally as interesting as the music. The haters are a drawling hoot, but even the fans present a level of pretention that’s hard to explain. In New York, I remember seeing Eddie and the Hot Rods play Max’s Kansas City, and they were disgusted with the lack of audience frenzy, despite the applause after the songs. The First Wavers (aka the Blank Generation), including me, were too cool, after years of the Heartbreakers, Ramones, Dead Boys, et.al. By the way, the Damned were a more interesting live band than the Hot Rods, but I digress.

The point is that the audience in Georgia that were pro­-Pistol appeared just a bit off and pretentious to me in their going out of their way to be “different,” such as one who said, “They made me want to vomit, they were so beautiful.” It’s like the two girls fake fighting in the ticket-buying line to see the Ramones in the film Rock and Roll High School. I just said, “Hunh?” to the person I was with at the RaRHS New York premiere on Bleecker St. For me, the whole idea of punk was the lack of pretention and social norms, not necessarily creating a new one for this scene (which became especially codified by the time hardcore – aka, the Third Wave – came about).

I’m not sure if the interviews with the British politicians and such were specifically for this film, or taken from newscasts (or both), but it’s an interesting corollary between them and the hyper-sensitive Evangelical Republicans on the Hill today as I write this, seeing anything different as evil (e.g., “Make America Great Again” is much more regressive than, say, “Make America Greater”). To be fair, ironically (and hypocritically), much of what these people say about punk is how I feel about most of the modern Top 10. Yeah, I’m old.

The live music is part of what makes this film great, such as the underappreciated X-Ray Spex doing “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!”, the post-Pistols’ Glen Matlock band the Rich Kids (I saw them play Harrah’s in New York opening for Sylvian Sylvian’s 14 Street Band, and was not impressed; Matlock was a great songwriter, but not as much as a front man), Generation X playing “Kiss Me Deadly,” and Sham 69, who were underrated in the States, doing a couple of numbers, including “Borstal Breakout.”

While a bit confusing on the why part, I am certainly not complaining that two thirds into the film, it shifts to the “U.S.A.” (as the John Holmstrom drawn title card states) and the Dead Boys – a band I saw many times – are playing “All This and More.” I really miss those shows, so it put a smile on my face to see them again in their glory; to me, they were the one of the rare bands that had an affinity to the British punk style (which would explain why they shared a bill with the Damned so often), and can arguably be seen as the first genuine hardcore band, fitting into all three Waves in function.

Of course, the most infamous scene occurs about an hour in: sort of the absolute antithesis of the John and Yoko Toronto bed-in interview is the Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious conversation (such as it is) where Sid is totally nodding off while wearing a Swastika tee. Nancy’s odd accent that’s a cross between Philly high-line, New York Lower East Side and London-esque is as disarming and alarming as Sid’s drug-induced mumbling.

For the film’s final act, it’s a mix of the Pistols’ last show of the tour and what came to be their final performance before reforming decades later with Matlock replacing Sid, the police presence and fans outside the club, and more wacked out Sid and Nancy at the Chelsea Hotel. This includes the infamous Rotten onstage comment about “being cheated,” playing over some woman spontaneously pretending to masturbate for the camera in a totally unsexy, fakey way.

Terry Sylvester

The ending is a nice mash-up of the band playing “Bodies” with clips from all their American shows melded together. And yet, even though they are the centerpiece, the Pistols turn out to really not the entire theme of the film, but rather a creamy layer of the whole cake. One of the points of focus is Terry Sylvester (not to be confused with the singer from the Swinging Blue Jeans), who was the lead singer of Terry and the Idiots. Not lasting long, they were pretty terrible-but-enjoyable; they remind me of New York’s Student Teachers, who were a better act, and arguably modeled themselves on the Mumps. We follow Terry around and listen to him philosophize about punk, and tell a very bad joke based on innuendo that really had nothing to do with the point of the film, but whatever. There’s also an amusing interview with New York stalwart Bleecker Bob in his infamous shop (Lenny Kaye worked there at the time, but you don’t see him). He talks about some bands, and they pan a bunch of singles on the wall, most of which I own (bought at Disc-O-Rama, though, not from him).

Worth it merely for the live band footage alone, but that is only a small helping of what is good here. Yeah, when it was reviewed by the late-great Lisa Baumgardner in the pages of FFanzeen back in the day, it was slagged (HERE). I remember it being really grainy and rambling, but I’ve always been kinda fond of the film, being somewhat neutral on the which is better front (though not on where it all started). The current release, however, while still obviously taken from the print by the wear and tear, it’s much clearer than I remember.

Lech Kowalski

The basic extras are an Image Gallery, the original film trailer, and a trailer for (I kid you not) the classic Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, which was put out by the same distribution company as this one. There is also a nice and thick booklet with photos, and some text by Holmstrom, and a folded film poster.

The most notable extra is a complete and full-length documentary about the making of D.O.A. titled Dead on Arrival: The Punk Documentary That Almost Never Was. Put together by Richard Schenkman especially for this Blu-ray and DVD 2-disc set, at 115 minutes, it actually lasts longer than the feature it is about.

The two main talking heads are Punk magazine co-founder and the key New York Scene illustrator John Holmstrom and Scene photographer Robert Bailey, both of whom became part of the D.O.A. caravan through the American Sex Pistols’ tour, and Holmstrom then also continued on with the British phase after the American leg ended. Others who appear extensively in new material include (but not only) New Musical Express writer Chris Salewicz, musician Midge Ure (who was in the Rich Kids at the time of filming, and would go on to his own cult fame leading Ultravox), cinematographer Rufus Standefer, and crew members David King (U.S.) and Mary Killen (U.K.).

Along with some historical interviews with Malcolm McLaren and Billy Idol that are included from television shows, one of those in the new segments is Lamar St. John, the woman who is laying on the ground in the film as part of a group of teenypunkers from Los Angeles who drove to see the Pistols in Dallas. She’s also the one who bloodied Sid’s nose.

While the Pistols’ tour was infamously and covered from the inside with tons of snark by roadie Noel E. Monk and writer Jimmy Gutterman in the book 12 Days on the Road: The Sex Pistols and America (1990, Quill/William Morrow & Co.), which is name checked in this follow-up documentary, the view presented here was more from the outside looking in, which actually makes it extremely interesting in a whole different light. They lived in a circumstance of being within the crowd, with near constant threats of violence from the audience, from the clubs’ personnel, and even the Pistols’ Warner Bros. team. It’s definitely an interesting bookend to the Monk self-serving version.

Part of what kept me riveted is that everyone who discusses the events was at the filming, giving first-hand accounts of the events, rather than from other journalists who were told what happened. John and Roberta are experienced at telling of events of the 1970s, so this practiced hand keeps off the stumbling around for words or remembrances, keeping the pace up.

I especially liked when Holmstrom comments that punk was the last musical form created totally in an analog world, before digital music and CDs temporarily replaced vinyl. As a student of media and technology, this spoke to me.

What makes the film D.O.A.: A Right of Passage so palpable is that it is not news footage, but rather a group of fans who put together a film trying to express a positive point. Back then, and I remember this strongly, most of the media attention was on the negatives, about how punk would degrade culture rather than put a mirror up to it, as is expressed by the officials in the U.K. within the documentary. This (and I do believe the follow-up, modern Dead on Arrival) is a better indication of what was actually going on in a three-dimensional way, from multiple directions rather than just pro- or anti-.

Oh, and Lech? You still owe me the $100 for the full page ad you took out in FFanzeen when this film came out. Just sayin’…

Film Review: D.O.A. (Don’t Overlook Any-Of-It) [1980]

Text by Lisa Baumgardner / FFanzeen fanzine, 1980
Introduction © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2015
Images from the Internet

This review was originally printed in FFanzeen, issue #4, dated May/June 1980, page 11. It was written by Lisa Baumgardner Falour, who published Bikini Girl fanzine at the time.

Sadly, Lisa passed away early this year in Paris. Lisa was an incredibly interesting person, as was her fanzine. She worked as a writer, photographer, artist, and for a while as a BDSM pin-up model. She was also known for always carrying a hidden cassette recorder, on which she taped all conversations, and then would publish them in her fanzine when she found them interesting. But hardly anyone she transcribed was as thought-provoking as her. I was introduced to her by Diana Torborina, someone who I worked with at Dimensional Sound Studios, and with whom I became friendly (Diana, if you read this, please feel free to contact me).

For my first half-tabloid newsprint issue of FFanzeen, Lisa wrote a review of Lech Kowalski’s then-new, and now-classic 1980 documentary about the Sex Pistols, D.O.A. As a side note, Lech took out a full page ad for the film, for which he never paid the $100. I’m just sayin’. – RBF, 2015

D.O.A. will soon be released to theaters around the world as a feature-length punk rock documentary. It’s definitely worth seeing, but requires a lot of patience and objectivity. Punk rock and its spin-offs in the fashion, art and political world are both important and inconsequential, and tell a story about the ‘70s, yet doesn’t say much at all.

Lech Kowalski’s Film is hard to sit through but bears a number of incredible scenarios. Beginning with a baptism and a soundtrack peppered with corny heartbeats, we are led through the doorway of X-Ray Spex’s rehearsal studio for an astounding performance of “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!” Cut away to an interview with the president of Warner Bros. Records, who sneers and mentions, “You know, we are not a non-profit organization!”

These perplexing statements are part of a much larger onslaught of visual sludge known as D.O.A. (Dead on Arrival), a 100-minute-long documentary film on punk. Not the “punk” I grew up with. Hopefully, you too were spared because it’s ugly and disturbing, and when I saw it, my own youth suddenly seemed too close and fresh and unsettling. Yuck!

A pretty girl with heavy makeup and short hair is interviewed in a prone position in a parking lot in Texas. She has just been literally thrown out of a theater where the Sex Pistols were playing. Her crime? “Hangin’ out,” she moans. Apparently, the police have used direct physical force to eliminate a group of fans loitering in the lobby. She looks pretty seriously hurt, at the very least extremely distraught. Can she get up? “This is why punks gotta carry chains!” she says. Violence is breeding further violence. “What are you doing tonight?” Lech Kowalski asks her from behind-camera. “Who cares?” she replies, starting to cry. “I don’t care. If you care, you get let down.”

The film is full of gruesome vignettes. The comedy relief? An interview with Sid and Nancy, O.D.-ing and barely coherent in his all-black bedroom in London. The only time Sid seems aware of anything is when Nancy peels off her black rubber t-shirt, glistening with sweat. He picks it up, sniffs it, and smiles with a look of wonder. “’Ey, it smells just like you, Nancy!” “Well, it ought to,” she replies, “I’ve been wearing it since the first day I got to London.”

“I ain’t afraid to walk down the street looking totally ridiculous,” one serious-looking London punk musician explains. “It don’t matter what ya got on. You’re a human bean, just like everybody else. You’re messed up.”

The message behind this film, as well as the continuity, is obscure. Punk is a reflection of decay, one might say, and as the title implies, was born dead. The similarities between British and American audiences are the boredom, pent-up frustration, and search for freedom of expression of the anger youth feels. British public officials are quoted ridiculing punk and insisting, “They can’t win.” Can’t win what? “I’m ashamed of the world we’ve made,” one female official says, “if our children are growing up with attitudes like this.”

There are moments in D.O.A. that come close to capturing the feeling at a band rehearsal. Four or five young musicians are kidding around in an old, garage-like converted studio, and they begin to belt out a tune as if their lives depend on it. Yes, we conclude, it does start out positive. It’s energetic self-expression, and it beats the fuck out of boredom. But by the time it gets to be performed before thousands of kids who’ve paid ten bucks to see it, it’s pretty sorry stuff.

D.O.A. is negative, but very thought-provoking. It is exciting to see a film with guts these days. It is straightforward, raunchy, and has no plot. It seeks to reveal glimpses of a fascinating phenomenon. Lech Kowalski has a lot of energy and determination to have traveled extensively with a crew numbering from four to thirty, and the footage shot of the Sex Pistols’ tour in the South, particularly Georgia and Texas, is priceless. He has not tried to be arty. He presents a variety of conflicting circumstances and opinions, and allows us to be voyeurs without getting spit on at a crowded rock arena full of young people looking and behaving like assholes. He shows us Sham 69, the Dead Boys, and Bleecker Bob, too. He also makes us wonder about money – the concert promoters, the record companies, the media – and the way they present punk to the world. One of the British officials insists the individual musicians are doing it for the money. We think of Sid and Nancy. In it for the money?

Bonus D.O.A. footage: