Gimme Safety. This documentary on the incendiary Stooges from writer-director Jim Jarmusch is an occasionally entertaining but ultimately bland affair. It doesn't open that way, though, promising to be as hectic as the band's music: Dropping us into the chaotic years between the release of Fun House and Raw Power, the years when drugs and label hassle caused the band to disintegrate, there's a fun raggle-taggle style. But after the belated opening credits Gimme Danger reverts to a very ordinary and conventional The Story of The Stooges. The band deserves something more inflammatory than this.
As expected Iggy Pop is the ringmaster. Over three interviews Iggy takes us through the early years, of life in a cramped trailer with his parents, his first love playing the drums, his first foray into music with The Iguanas, and on to meeting Dave Alexander and the late Asheton brothers (interviewed here in a BRMC tee, drummer Scott died before this release). "Sick of looking at people's butts", Iggy graduates to frontman, citing strange influences like Carabell The Clown and the thinking behind his stripped back lyrics (not wanting to be another Dylan, Iggy’s twenty-five-words-or-less approach to writing was based on a write-in segment of a children’s programme). Moving in together, the 'Psychedelic Stooges' experiment with drugs and music, using blenders and oil drums and Iggy’s raw vocals, and with because of the patronage from Nico and the MC5 a supporting gig leads to a record deal...
Jarmusch is in a playful mood with animated sequences and dropping in Stooges tunes over scenes of The Three Stooges (the first time was slightly amusing – the fourth time was irritating). There are some fun gig stories and lots of live footage with Iggy doing his sinew-straining contortionist thing. There's some insight too, like why We Will Fall on the debut album was so important to the band, and problems with the label that banned them from playing gigs due to potentially embarrassing behaviour. Iggy himself drops in a few nuggets, like seeing the peace, love and unity of the hippy movement as a sham concocted in a business meeting (in a TV interview he states that his legacy was to "help wipe out the sixties").
But despite this counter-counter culture standpoint Gimme Danger remains on the straight and narrow. And some things are glaring from their absence: why the eulogy for Dave Alexander is left to Scott Asheton and not Iggy, who doesn't mention him at all, is strange, and Jarmucsh decides to skip Iggy's solo career (there's a brief mention of Kill City but no The Idiot or Lust For Life or Berlin to be seen) in favour of a lengthy and rather uninteresting segment set around the reformation.
For a band that really pushed the boundaries and was a major influence on punk (there's a nice montage where various punk bands covering Stooges songs), there's just something tame and safe and expected with this documentary. It could have been louder too.