What We Do Is Secret (2007)

User Rating:

6.5/10   

Director:

Rodger Grossman

Writers:

Michelle Baer Ghaffari (co-story writer)
Rodger Grossman (co-story writer)

Release Date:

8 August 2008 (USA)

Genre:

Biography | Drama | Music

Plot:

A biopic of punk legend Darby Crash and his band, the Germs. |

Plot Keywords:

Punk | Suicide | 1970s | Punk Rocker | Punk Rock

Awards:

2 wins & 1 nomination

US TV Schedule:

Tue. July 21

2:15 AM

TMC

Cast

Shane West	...	Darby Crash
Bijou Phillips	...	Lorna Doom
Rick Gonzalez	...	Pat Smear
Noah Segan	...	Don Bolles
Ashton Holmes	...	Rob Henley
Tina Majorino	...	Michelle
Lauren German	...	Belinda
Keir O'Donnell	...	Chris Ashford
Sebastian Roché	...	Claude Kickboy Bessy
Azura Skye	...	Casey Cola
Katharine Leonard	...	Jena
Rachael Santhon	...	Malissa
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Noah Abrams	...	Audience Member #1
Daniel Alvarado	...	Bar Patron
David Alvarado	...	Bar Patron
Ozzy Benn	...	Captain Sensible
Thom Bishops	...	Tony the Hustler
Christopher Boyd	...	Dave Vanian
Missy Doty	...	Amber
Brian Gleason	...	Regi Mental
Leslie Grossman
Amy Halloran	...	Becky
Michele Hicks	...	Penelope Spheeris
Kylan James	...	Rat Scabies
Chad Liffmann	...	Audience Member
J.P. Manoux	...	Rodney Bingenheimer
Chandra McWhorter	...	Farrah-Fawcett Minor
Greg McWhorter	...	Eddie Subtitle
Lachlan McWhorter	...	John Morris
Howard S. Miller	...	Starwood Manager
Jonathan Milliken	...	Young Darby Crash
Bru Muller	...	Teacher
Randi Newton	...	Gerber
Paul Nygro	...	Bob Biggs
Brian Oerly	...	Bouncer
Ray Park	...	Brendan Mullen
Trevor Parsons	...	Billy Zoom
Chris Pontius	...	Black Randy
Sara Rivas	...	Shannon
Scott L. Schwartz	...	Biker
Anna Waronker	...	Joan Jett
John Westernoff	...	Auditioning Drummer
Richard Wharton	...	Whiskey Manager

MPAA:

Rated R for drug use, language and brief sexuality.

Runtime:

USA:92 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

USA:R

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Coalition Film

Trivia:

Because he was so good as Darby Crash, Shane West was hired as the new vocalist and The Germs reunited for a tour.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: During scene set at LA hot dog stand in late Seventies, huge wall menu in background reflects 2000 era fast food prices and even lists at least one soft drink not introduced till years later.

Punk stardom: nasty, brutish, and short

Last year there was an accomplished little film called Control by Anton Corbijn starring Samantha Morton, Sam Riley, Alexandra Maria Lara, et al., with beautiful black and white images of England evoking the short life of Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division, an English rock group of the 80's. This is the same thing, only the singer and the group, "legendary" and "seminal" though they may be among followers of punk, are less remembered among music fans, and the extent of the legend hardly becomes clear in this version. The focus is a lead singer who runs a group called The Germs. The film-making, which mixes dramatized sequences with fake documentary interviews, seeks to evoke the LA punk scene of the late 70's and early 80's. The scene and the film are sloppier, the concert sequences are more violent and less musical, the characters are less defined, and the ending is sudden. Yet in the opinion of some fans, it's not violent or sloppy enough, and one can see their point.

The lead singer in question, played by the successful TV actor Shane West, is a professed Fascist, though anarchy seems more his style, who takes on the name Darby Crash. He has been expelled from a special high school whose teachers proclaim him ungovernable but brilliant. He gives other band members names like Lorna Doom (Bijou Phillips) and Pat Smear (Rick Gonzalez). Gonzales has wonderful cheekbones, but never seems like a punker. Darby tells a French interviewer that he has a five-year plan--indication of his ambition but also a hint that his days are intentionally numbered. He's giving himself that long to make it big; perhaps also that long to live? So it went, anyway. At some point he seems to have said to the band they'd be as big as the Beatles. Ironically, he offed himself the night John Lennon was shot. In a late sequence Darby's cohorts mourn Lennon as they watch reports on TV of his death, while the scene cuts back and forth to their lead singer, alone with a girl groupie pledged to go out with him, deliberately overdosing.

This movie may awaken nostalgia or longing in those who wish life were crazier than it is now. The LA punk scene was a time of true mayhem, which is conveyed here even if the styles and interactions don't always quite fit the period. The group is assembled haphazardly including two girls recruited on the basis that they should have no talent and not be able to play an instrument. The Germs began to play without knowledge of the rudiments of music or their axes and their energy grew out of the outrage of the audience, which itself seemed more in search of violence and anger than art from the stage. This was a time of "joke bands," set up with some gimmick, like a male lead singer wearing a dress, and wailing laments that were not taken seriously by the band. The Germs were more serious, insofar as their leader cut himself and bled in public. The aim was to risk everything, and The Germs got banned from one music venue after another. At one point they stage a comeback by changing their name to "GI," for "Germs Incognito." They have trouble finding a drummer and run through nine. The one who sticks is a guy from Arizona who calls himself Don Bolles (Noah Segan). Segan has a wide-eyed eagerness and energy that, faute de mieux, has to pass for Bolles' personality. A homosexual relationship seems to develop between a certain Robby Henley (Ashton Holmes), who hero-worships Darby, but maybe he just wants to be in the band. Later he replaces Bolles as drummer through a violent misunderstanding. A woman called Amber (Missy Doty) becomes manager, over someone else, by virtue of paying for Darby's and the others' drinks and drugs.

Briefly Penelope Spheeris becomes a character, shown working with a big movie camera on her film, The Decline of Western Civilization--a reminder that this is a scene that has been well documented. This is a fictionalized recreation, with documentary touches. In that respect more than Control it resembles Fulton and Pepe's 2005 Brothers of the Head, which cunningly presents multiple forms of fake footage for an invented Siamese twin punk band. But both of those deserve higher ratings than What We Do Is Secret, though some may value the raw crudity of the concert sequences here, rarely recreated with such ferocity.

The movie is less successful, indeed makes little effort, at showing how The Germs interacted with and influenced, or were influenced by, other punk bands of the time; and in detailing the personalities involved; or specific songs. Datelines indicate times and venues of main Germs concerts, and the making of an album is briefly sketched in. But concerts are represented by one partial, ill-defined song each. Contrast Control where some concerts get extended sequences, and songs come through to even an uninformed viewer. Here, the atmosphere outside of violent clashes between people, boasting by Darby, and the in-your-face nosh pit concert scenes, is not really that punk. The clothes and manners could be any beatnik hippie depressed young folk of the last fifty years, and the effort to define a moment through a key group and voice is a failure.