MovieChat Forums > What We Do Is Secret (2008) Discussion > Fake Legend

Fake Legend

posted 12 years ago by droppo76
3 replies | jump to latest

Did the Germs really do anything to distinguish themselves from the rest of the punk scene? Not really. The movie sucks. Acting was student-film level. Painfully obvious the filmmaker is trying to establish Crash as a "Morrison-Like" figure, with ex-high school teachers commenting on his super intelligence, the scene where Crash tells Smear he wants to start a band and then shows him his "awesome" lyrics is pretty much a rip-off of Manzarek reading Morrison's songs on the beach, and then, the final telegraph at the club booking: "he's like a Jim Morrison for our generation..." Really? Morrison wasn't even dead for 3 years and already a WHOLE generation is passed by? I can forgive the Whiskey a' go-go references and scenes, because it is, after-all, LA, but let Morrison be Morrison and stop trying to draw parallels where there are none, with the cinematic subtly of a 5-year-old to boot. There's plenty of real legends from the punk scene.

[–] Janko76 12 years ago

The movie is sh-t. Darby wasn't at all like he was portrayed in the movie, just listen to the real KROQ interview. They were just crazy kids having fun. I think the reason he stands out is because he died so young, and lived a fairly un-ordinary 5 years. In my opinion, what distinguished them from other punk bands was that they were really good, with some great lyrics, and that they were one of the first hardcore punk bands. Plus Darby's stage antics. I don't think he was that much of a legend, but like I said, the band stood out from others.

[–] siriustemplar 11 years ago

Agree 100% this movie was horrid trash version of an after-school made for TV movie. Should have been on the Lifetime Network.

However, gotta disagree because The Germs do have an important place in punk rock history as they were a missing link between the art punk of The Weirdos or Talking Heads (Don Bolles was a notorious *beep* rock fan and played with some free jazz groups), the garage punk of The Ramones, and the growing hardcore scene. Believe it or not, they were the perfect band for L.A. at the very end of the 70s. The downtown art punk scene was dead to dying as Paisley Underground took over, yet the Orange County Bro-dog hardcore hadn't taken over yet. They were the best of both worlds at the right time. Many compare Crash to G.G. Allen and the like, but Crash's lyrics are not throw away shock value trash and have some depth. "Shutdown" and "Lexicon Devil" are as good and as developed as anything coming out New York or England at the time.

With all that said, Darby didn't need a movie made of him (if you ask me, a D. Boon movie would be more emotional and tragic) and that's why it failed.

[–] siriustemplar 11 years ago

Really? You can't say *beep* rock on imdb?