There are hints throughout Jim Jarmusch’s agreeable documentary on The Stooges that the film-makers think they are telling an unreported story. There was once some truth in that.
After achieving modest sales for their incandescent first three albums, the Michiganian sound terrorists found themselves shouldered aside by corporate monsters such as Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. Iggy Pop, the band's big throbbing vein, did tolerably well out of a collaboration with David Bowie and began a tour that lasted 30 years. Punk name-checked No Fun, TV Eye and I Wanna Be Your Dog. But the LPs were hard to find.
In 2016 there is, however, scarcely a single serious rock fan unfamiliar with that footage of Iggy spooning peanut butter while surfing an adoring crowd in Cincinnati. Documentaries on BBC4 recycle it almost as often as they replay the film of Bowie squinting at milk in the American desert. It is 20 years since Iggy talked us through the music's creation in the series Dancing in the Streets.
Jarmusch is hampered by a dearth of early footage. The band were, after all, never likely to follow The Archies onto Pop, Look and Listen. He has tackled the problem in conventional fashion.
We get judiciously chosen shots of the US as it looked in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Leaning towards a contemporary-doc trope (see the recent Oasis film for one of many examples) that is fast becoming a cliché, the film also incorporates some mildly quirky animated sequences. An unprepared Friday night BBC4 viewer would find little to suggest a film-maker as singular as Jim Jarmusch was behind the camera (unless they recognised the brief clips of Jim Jarmusch, of course).
Those moans issued, it can’t be denied that, for all its conventionality, Gimme Danger will delight Stooges fans and win over a few among the unconverted. Taking us from beginnings in Ann Arbor to messy dissolution, the film features interviews with all key participants.
James Williamson left music and prospered into comfortable late middle age. Scott and Ron Asheton both died in their 60s. Iggy Pop became, against the odds, a veritable ornament of his nation. He is as clever, funny, self-deprecating and purposefully absurd as ever. “I helped wipe out the Sixties,” he says in an archive clip. Worth doing.
Without breaking many rules, Gimme Danger honours these admirable rule-breakers.
- Gimme Danger is at the Irish Film Institute and the Light House Cinema Dublin from Friday, November 18th
