Growing up a punk rock kid in a small or at least smallish town, Penelope Spheeris ' 1981 documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, chronicling the early Los Angeles scene, served as a de . See David Wrights 2015 review at Memoria Press here. Of course, hes still not as big as Robert Plant, but he hasnt killed himself yet. This summer were going to ride our motorbikes down to Florida together.. Here are three that help explain what is happening with our culture. Every day the staff of Intellectual Takeout come to work eager to do their part to restore and improve our great nation. I spotted troll sitting in front of a liquor store with a 32pack and pulled over and gave him a ride..i recognized him from the decline but was not completely sure since he was like 25years older and didnt want to ask..we ended up drinking with him all night then it became apparent that it really was him since people kept coming up to him and taking pictures and yelling out "the decline!" Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. However, it never went into general release and was not available on VHS or DVD until the release in 2015 of a box set containing all three films on DVD and Blu-ray. People really remember the movie, especially Chris Holmes drinking the vodka in the pool, and the guy from Odin sitting in the hot tub saying that if he didnt get as big as Robert Plant he was gonna kill himself. It is the third film of a trilogy by Spheeris depicting life in Los Angeles at various points in time. Ive never rode a motorcycle or done one single line of cocaine. I do wish where was a little more about Part III. That one cost five-hundred thousand. Penelope Spheeris and her boyfriend, Eyeball Penelope Spheeris, creator of The Decline of Western Civilization series, is a veteran Hollywood filmmaker, a "den mother" and most importantly, a cheerleader for punk rock. [3] Decline III was also released separately via streaming video. Spheeris talks to homeless teenagers living on the street or squatting in abandoned buildings in Los Angeles, an unstable mother, Los Angeles Police Department officer Gary Fredo, and a paralyzed youth living on disability benefits. That was our first show together. Blackie was always threatenin me to be thrown out or this or that, and on top of it the person was jealous of me bein me. Six weeks later we opened up for Warrant at The Roxy. I said, 'I am Penelope.' READ MORE:Sorry, Ladies: Study on Women in Film and Television Confirms the Worst, Penelope Spheeris, the films director, has a less romantic way of explaining the movies thriving underground market: theft. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Were doing gigs, we recorded a live album last year, and played some shows in Germany and Switzerland. The Decline movies, still on a variety of different film formats, sat in an underground vault in her home, but demand for them never let up. User Reviews. You end up wanting to scream. I still talk to him a lot. The second film, The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (1988), covers the Los Angeles heavy metal scene of 19871988. Murray added, "Sometimes, empathy isn't . But I was also determined to get people like Dave Mustaine of Megadeth into the film, because those guys were different, kinda deeper than the others. In The Metal Years, when Spheeris poses the question of Where will you be in five or ten years? to her eye liner-wearing, big hair-sporting wanna-be rock gods, the answer is, across the board, that they will be rich and famous rock stars. Powers and Thrones takes readers on a journey through an emerging Europe, the great capitals of late Antiquity, as well as the influential cities of the Islamic West, and culminates in the first European voyages to the Americas. The point here is why Muslim societies have always been skeptical . Aside from a love of music and a desire to make a lot of money and bang as many groupies as possible, theres not much substance to the people of The Metal Years. The documentary was equally entertaining, even if the focus was less on the music and more on musicians' lust for sex, drugs and stardom. But three decades later, Duke TV has shot a sequel pool interview (conducted by Holmes's wife, Sarah) with the now-sober, 58-year-old musician. After years of what she describes as paralyzing anxiety surrounding the films she considers her lifes most important work, Spheeris finally did something about that queasy feeling in her gut. The sequence with Ozzy, thats not really his house. Taime Downe: When Faster Pussycat started, Mtley and Ratt had already taken off, and newer bands like Poison were playing the Strip. And every one of them may accelerate and intensify the coming collapse while increasing the difficulty of recovery. Starting decades ago, many people, especially in the universities, lost faith in the Western civilization narrative. The first film, The Decline of Western Civilization (1981), dealt with the punk rock scene during 19801981. Close. The Decline of Western Civilization includes never-before-seen footage, new interviews, and even performances that didnt make the original cut. I actually met that one asian dude "Troll" about a year ago..me and my friend were looking for a ghetto ass backyard show in L.A because they posted the wrong directions on facebook..the troll dude came up to my car and asked if we knew where the show was at but we didn't at the time..about 10min later we found out where it was and started driving. mainman]? She goes: Well, he wants money. Spheeris resolved to ignore it. Penelope Spheeris: My family background was chaotic, so when I saw the punk thing happening in clubs I felt very at home with it. If you went out on the Strip on a Saturday night in those days to The Rainbow, The Roxy, Gazzaris, it was like a madhouse. Western civilization refers to the art, literature, culture, and enduring ideas that emerged from the eastern Mediterranean basin in the centuries before the common era, that developed in myriad forms through the Middle Ages, and that ultimately took modern shape after the Renaissance. This Article is related to: Toolkit and tagged DVDs, Penelope Spheeris, Shout! Here are three that help explain what is happening with our culture. Im sure that movie did enhance our career. Check them out. I knew it was going to be just soul-searching psychologically freaking out., Fox ultimately convinced her mom to do the soul-searching work by giving her an ultimatum. At that point my answer was, DVD is dead, its too late.'. With Eugene Tatu, Alice Bag Band, Black Flag, Catholic Discipline. Now we tour at least three months out of every year. RhetoricinPopularCulture-BarryS.Brummett.pdf. Nadir DPriest: In the mid-eighties a lot of other bands saw us as a threat because we had such great ideas. By the time Penelope interviewed us for Decline we were one of the hottest bands on the Strip. Each movie got a shiny new 2K upgrade, so they look as good as these movies will ever look. The black guy in the wheelchair is somewhere in Nola area. In the first week we had twenty people look at it, and a year or two later were were getting twenty-five thousand a day. This has caused an intellectual crisis, and some Muslims saw new ideas from the West as a direct threat to Islamic identity. PopMatters is wholly independent, women-owned and operated. Cause alot of people here had the answers to your questions. This is hard core. Death of the Soul: From Descartes to the Computer, by William Barrett. Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, If the subjects have changed, so has their documentarian. That was difficult, because Nadir was hungry to have one of those heavy metal record deals, but chasing deals by trying to prove how metal you are wasnt where I wanted to be at. I did a solo album, but I couldnt even get it reviewed. Spheeris: "Some people are put off by that, they don't get the joke, they don't get that it was totally tongue in cheek. Bloom doesnt only critique, but recasts the vision of what it is we have lost. Faster Pussycat broke up in 1993, because the whole scene had changed. It is a lament on the impoverished state of modern thought and discourse that has disconnected itself from the Western tradition that sustained it until a generation or two ago. Being on stage in Tuff was a licence to kill, as far as getting girls. Hamburger died in 1999 or 2000, I believe. We were just doing the same things and having the same attitude as everybody else did, but we just happened to get put in a movie. I thought, Well, Im just going to go do something else man, screw it. A look into the Los Angeles punk rock scene, that was largely ignored by the rock music press of the time. 3 Imperial incompetence and chance could be added to the list. It . She said: Only if you do the Decline box set first. She hung around the LA music scene, she was very familiar with the clubs and the people, and so she knew there was an audience, a huge appetite, out there for those films. I knew it would be drudgery. I couldnt see any point in sitting round writing the same thing again. Also The Decline . BA1 1UA. Within a couple of days I auditioned, and got the job. It is, instead, the most passionately engaged and compellingly depressing film in the series. the decline of western civilization collection. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. It's unique among the world's civilizations in putting the individualas opposed to the collectivein a central position. A punk named Stevie dies in a fire at a building where he's squatting; another, Squid, is killed, allegedly by his girlfriend, Spoon. So I quit my job and bought a one-way ticket for a hundred and nine dollars from Chicago to LA-X. I carried London on even after Lizzie left. And that has kind of evolved into my current band, Spiders And Snakes, where weve really embraced our seventies roots. Just as punk once appropriated street chic, the street has now appropriated punk. Strip away the glam, theres little else. Gone is the chaotic euphoria of the first movie, filmed in 1979, which quickly became a classic on the underground circuit for its playful, sympathetic chronicle of L.A. punk bands and the fans who loved them. I remember lookin out and thinking: Who the fuck is this dude dancin in the middle of the floor? Of course, it was fuckin Axl. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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