DVD Review: Looking for Johnny: The Legend of Johnny Thunders

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2014
Images from the Internet

 

Looking for Johnny: The Legend of Johnny Thunders
Written and directed by Danny Garcia
Jungle Records
Chip Baker Films
98 minutes, 2014
www.jungle-records.com
www.chipbakerfilms.com       
www.mvdvisual.com

A week before his first album was released, I became embroiled in an argument with Tom Petty over the use of the name “The Heartbreakers.” He insisted that he checked the New York band out and they weren’t going anywhere, and no one would care. Petty was both right and wrong. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers out sold Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers probably a million to one. But I have never seen a Tom Petty bootleg; there are hundreds of Johnny Thunders. I have never heard a guitarist say, “Man, I heard Petty play, and just wanted to form a band.” You would be hard pressed to find a guitarist these days who would not call Thunders’ an influence. How does one judge success?

For me, I saw Petty play twice (CBGBs and the Bottom Line). The Heartbreakers out of New York, in various forms, is probably the band I have seen more than anyone else (even more than the Ramones!). Most of the time it was at Max’s, and usually with Nancy Foster / Suzie Q / Nancy New Age / Nancy Neon (among her many handles), my musical sister if ever I had one, across the table.

Most of the shows Thunders was on fire (as was the rest of the band, but this film is about Johnny, so I’ll stick with him as the focus for now), flowing from song to song without stopping between, roaming the stage and spitting glances. Honestly, I’ve also seen some terrible shows; one that comes to mind is an Irving Plaza gig where he was so out of it that he couldn’t find the direction of the audience and had to be shown by underrated bandmate Walter Lure (the last surviving Heartbreakers member) which direction to face. Johnny couldn’t work his hands until a band member gave him something up his nose while on stage, and then he could either strum or finger the chords on his guitar, but not both. I saw more than one person in the audience literally cry that night.

The memorial for him in 1992 in New York was a blast. It was a gala affair with the likes of Lenny Kaye, Cheetah Chrome, Spacely, David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain, and many other New York crème de la crème of the scene on stage and in attendance. I still have the tee-shirt from that night.

Today, the born in 1986 son of a good friend is a huge Thunders fan, and for him Johnny was the model of how to play. It doesn’t matter that there are those that are reviled by his questionable usage behavior or some of his off-stage antics. He was an on-stage role model, and that is why, in my opinion, that he has such a multitude of fans, both from the day and even now years after his controversial New Orleans demise in 1991.

At the halfway point of the film, we’ve met many of the main characters in both flashback and talking heads mode. There’s Actress, the New York Dolls and both versions of the Heartbreakers (Richard Hell and after, when they were at their “height”). Lots of notables who were around the scene at the time, and I kept thinking, damn, I’m glad they made this when they did. So many had already left this earth, including Billy Mercia (1971), Jerry Nolan (1992; last time I saw him play was at the Thunders memorial that same year), Arthur “Killer” Kane (2004; there is a great documentary about him as well, New York Doll), and Malcolm McLaren (2010; who is heard in voice interviews); and just as notable, too many died after being filmed for it, such as the great Billy Rath (2014), Marty Thau (2014) and ever lovable photographer and Heartbreakers’ manager Leee Black Childers (2014).

It is also noteworthy to see who doesn’t appear, such as David Johansen, Max Blatt, his kids, Richard Hell, and Patti Palladin.

But now let’s focus more on what the film has rather than lacks: the likes of musicians Lenny Kaye, Walter Lure (amusingly looking his most corporate and sounding his least deprecating; not meant as any kind of insult), Andy Shernoff (nee Adny) of the Dictators (other members of this also great group despised Thunders), Cynthia Ross (of the underrated B-Girls, and girlfriend of Stiv Bators), Bob Gruen (photographer who has some of the most biting and insightful comments about Thunders’ drug use) and other musicians who have played and worked with him across the globe.

Essentially this is a standard biography, chronologically following a musicians life, but Thunders loomed so large in the New York music scene, that he oozes out of every frame, making this his own in the same way he shared the stage with incredible musicians, such as Lure and the MC5’s Wayne Kramer, and each one of those groups are known as “Johnny Thunders and…” or “Johnny Thunders in…” He led an amazingly charmed albeit drug-addled career. The stories weaved by these (and other) musicians, friends and relatives are fascinating, and that’s what is the center focus of the tale.

While I enjoyed the first half of the film, it is at the center that it really starts to pick up for me. I mean, there are so many books and films about the Dolls that bleed into the Heartbreakers that I sat there enjoying the story, but it felt more like, “And…?” But after the break-up of the Heartbreakers, well, for me that’s where it becomes new and exciting; more films and interviews that I’ve never seen, including during his residency in Sweden, France and Germany.

At first I was annoyed that there was little mention about what a dick Thunders could be (Howie Pyro, who is interviewed here, has a great story in the deleted scenes about how he met Johnny), especially about money, but that is covered in this second part. Being the non-drug user I am, I was nervous about hanging around him and never did, but I loved being in the audience when he played, even the odd gigs like Girls Nite Out at the Ritz, or the Save PIX benefit at Irving Plaza.

The film touches on the mysteries surrounding his death, but thankfully doesn’t belabor it, because Thunders’ importance is music first, and then possibly fashion, and solid personality. There are no definitive answers about the circumstances around his demise, so the focus on his life feels more important. What made him tick, you might say, not what made him stop. I would rather hear about his short film career than what happened in New Orleans. That, it seems, should be a different film for another time.

In all, this is a loving but honest film about a troubled musician’s life, seen through the eyes of his friends, videos, performances, and conversations with the man, himself. If one were to look at just three albums from each phase of his life, the Dolls’ first release, The Heartbreakers’ L.A.M.F., and the solo So Alone, one could stop and be satisfied, but there is so much more.

I remember standing in the kitchen of Boston musician and publicist Joe Viglione in the first half of the 1980s, and talking to music producing legend Jimmy Miller (a Brooklyn boy, FYI) about working with Thunders for the French label, Red Rose Records. I could have asked him about the Stones, but Thunders was my interest. That says a lot.

The extras are pretty good from end to end. They include a Behind the Scenes, which is mostly a radio interview with the director on a New Orleans radio station mixed with some deleted scenes, which is about 9 minutes long. This shouldn’t be confused with the actual 20-minute Deleted Scenes, all of which is interviews that didn’t make the final cut, but which are all interesting and worth a view. There are two live songs including the Heartbreakers doing the Lure classic “All By Myself,” and a bluesy music video by ex-Oddballs (a band he was in with Thunders) Stevie Klasson called, well, “Looking for Johnny.” Along with the trailer, there is a short film about a guitar-maker who designs Thunders-modeled electrics.

This is an excellent documentary, and does really well in placing the importance of Johnny Thunders on an international stage, in a wider expanse than one would normally envision for a kid from Queens. Take that, Tom Petty.

DVD Review: Sister Smile (Suor Sorriso)

Text © Robert Barry Francos/FFanzeen, 2011
Images from the Internet


Sister Smile (Suor Sorriso)
Directed by Roger Deutsch
MVD Visual, 2000
90 minutes, USD $xx.95
MVDvisual.com

Let me get this straight… This is an Italian language film made by an American director about a Belgian nun who spoke French.

Perhaps it’s appropriate that it is splintered that way, as it is reflected in the film, but more on that later. First a bit of background: the person we know as The Singing Nun (aka Soeur Souirre, French for Sister Smile, or Suor Sorriso in Italian, which is the original name of this film), was born as Jeanne-Paule Deckers in 1933. While in the Dominican order, she was at the Fischermont Convent in Waterloo, Belgium. Her new name was Sister Luc Gabriel. While there, she recorded an album to sell to visitors to help bring in some extra income to the convent. A song from it, “Dominique,” went viral (or, to the Top 10 in then-speak), which was a blessing for the church who kept the proceeds that were not taken by the record label (the latter of whom also owned the Soeur Souire name). After leaving the church to pursue a musical career that quickly failed under the name Luc Dominique, she became a pro-contraception activist and opened a school for autistic children. Following a lengthy legal battle with the Belgian government over taxes and a second failed career attempt (including a disco version of “Dominique”), At the age of 51, Jeanne and her lover of a decade, Anna Pécher, committed joint suicide in 1985 (they are buried together).

Now about the DVD. Broken into five parts (noted by chapter cards), the film is more of a pastiche of Jeanne-Paule’s (changed to Janine here) than a straight bio-pic. Lots of liberties are taken with details, though some are spot on, and it touches down on parts of her life in almost vignettes rather than a straightforward narrative. At times, it’s almost impressionistic in artistic licensing.

Note that for clarification, when I am discussing the real person, I will refer to her as Jeanne, and the fictional film version, Janine.

Ginerva Colonna plays Janine from beginning to end with long, dark hair (Jeanne had short-cropped hair, which was turning white by the ‘80s), and does an excellent job in presenting a nearly bi-polar, unreliable, and substance abuse-addled, Janine. As she sinks deeper and deeper into a life of hard drugs and promiscuous sex (of both genders), she still remains somewhat sympathetic, and that is all due to Ginerva’s textured performance, which ranges from sullen to manic and back, and finally to pathetic.

When we meet Janine, she is sneaking out of her father’s house by shimming down from a window by a sheet, on her way to join the convent and buying a guitar she christens Adele along the way. The abstract, artistic level of the film starts right off, with her having a poetic conversation with a rose in a park. In a voice-over, she queries, “’Who knows,’ she asked a lush red rose, twinkling in the morning dew, ‘who knows what you, Adele, my guitar, and I might do together.’”

The first scene shown in the abbey, she’s already discontent, and then, eight minutes into the film, she has the hit record. The film plays her life like a stone skipped on the water. When Ginerva starts to sing as Janine, well, it’s pretty bad, but after a couple of lines, the actual recording plays with her lip syncing over it. Other songs touched on in part are “Je Voudrais” and “Entre Les Etoiles.” In another scene, she is watching Debbie Reynolds playing her in the Hollywood rendition, The Singing Nun. Both the real and fictional nun in this newer version did not like the 1966 rendition of her life. I’ve occasionally wondered what Jeanne thought of The Flying Nun, which was more inspired than based on her, though it is not addressed here. Also invented is having a radio announcer state that she had never made a live appearance. This, of course, is untrue, as she famously played on the Ed Sullivan Show, as well as many concerts in her convent days, in full habit. For the film’s version, the first section ends with her voice-over saying, “I am only a voice.”

The start of the second act begins with her taking an action that is repeated often throughout the story: she runs away. Somehow (and unexplained here), she ends up at Hope House, a shelter for “wayward girls” run by another ex-nun who will become her lover, renamed Clara (a powerful and emotional performance by Simona Caprarrini) for the film. Janine becomes overly possessive of Clara, which causes people in their care to leave, leading to the eventual closing of the house as the government pulls their funding. Yet Janine blames Clara for being bored and suffering from writers block. This leads to running back to her dad’s house (who is remarried to someone who looks a lot like her, and is about the same age), by climbing up the same sheet, still hanging from the window after all these years (and still white)!

Her dad getting on with his life has her running back to Clara (a common theme is going to and leaving her). As the film progresses from this point, Janine decline through mental illness, attempted suicide and excessive behavior begin to take their toll, both spiritually and physically. One of the better lines she says is, “from angel dust we come, and to angel dust we go.”

By the film’s final fifth, her woes with the tax bureau are shown at a point when she’s trying to heal and stay sober. All the proceeds of her music went to the record label and the church, but because of the lack of paperwork; Jeanne was fined US$63,000. This sets her off on an attempt to be with Clara, and yet another binge after that. As the end of both the tale and their lives nears, Janine develops stigmata as she and Clara drift off together.

This is a very aesthetically beautiful piece of cinema. The writing, lighting, acting, and even the editing work well in a piece of pseudo-verities. While being far more map than territory, director Deutsch has made more a piece of art – albeit depressing as all get-out at parts – than a true bio-pic, but that’s okay. This is an art form that is closer to oral tradition than a book, and liberties taken are nothing new. In fact, there are probably more correct pieces here than in the 1966 saccharine telling. I just wonder what Sister Smile would make of a film of her life that has that smile turned upside down.

There are two very interesting documentary shorts included in the special features, both early works by Deutsch in Super 8mm black-and-white, and narrated by him in a calm, soothing voice. Dead People (finished 2005) bring us into the life of Tres Frank Butler, an elderly African-American man from the small town of Ellicott City (Maryland?). He is a hopeless alcoholic who spent the early years of his life being traded to various people outside the family. Shot mostly in 1974, we see and hear Frank hanging out and talking. Most of what he says is captioned, because even Deutsch admits it took years to understand what he was mumbling. Deutsch comes back to Ellicott City in 1985 to attend Frank’s funeral. It’s a lovely portrait of a life that has had unbelievably hard moments, and even though most of what he talks about is his past and death, there is something positive about the man that Deutsch obviously saw and captured.

The second feature is the 12-minute long Mario Makes a Movie (completed 2004), which was shot in 1987. Back then, Deutsch worked in a school for mentally challenged teens. One of the projects he gave his class was to hand out cameras and let them film whatever they wanted. After an introduction, we meet a troublesome student named Mario, who was perfectly normal until falling out a window as a toddler, and suffering brain damage. Much of what we see from that point on is the footage that Mario shot, with Deutsch describing what Mario was seeing, and stories about him. A lot of it is Brakhage-like (personally I couldn’t tell the difference between Mario’s and Stan’s work), with out of focus close-ups of, well, whatever, including train windows. It’s a sad but engaging snapshot of a life that was irrevocably changed in a moment.


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