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. The film was ostensibly a followup to her first documentary, 1981's The Decline of Western Civilization, which focused on an earlier Los Angeles scene, the punk of the late 70s and early 80s. Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, But for now, the filmmaker is still reveling in the films she has made and how well they hold up now. It continued to dominate the cultural discussion for years after its publication. Sign up for ourDaily Digestemail newsletter to receive intellectually engaging content and updates from our organization straight to your inbox. Jeff Duncan: From what I remember, Penelope Spheeris contacted our manager at the time. 5. I'm gonna make The Decline Part Three,' she recalls. "It turned out beyond my expectations," she says of the box set. She means it, man, and the saddest part is that she's . I remember hanging out with Penelope at the Cat Club in New York for the release party. Featuring interviews with established bands like Poison, as well as acts like Odin, Lizzy Borden, Faster Pussycat, and others struggling to break through and find mainstream success, The Metal Years is a portrait of excess. But it remained unreleased on DVD until it finally got a long-deserved reissue as part of a box set with its less boneheaded predecessor, The Decline Of Western Civilisation Part I (which dealt with LAs punk scene) and the belated third part, which addressed Americas homeless youth. IndieWire is a part of Penske Media Corporation. I havent been drinkin since 1996. The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: the Metal Years is a tragicomic look at the late-80s 'hair metal' scene. And every one of them may accelerate and intensify the coming collapse while increasing the difficulty of recovery. We interact with millions of Americans each week, publishing numerous articles each day and promoting them through vast social media and email networks. And thats the part also that really upset me.. Lizzie Grey: London became like a launching pad for rock stars. I left London to do my own band, Ultra Pop, which was more Marc Bolan-influenced. My hair started getting longer, I wore leather pants, bracelets, eyeliner and all that, but I liked a good nights sleep and drinking orange juice at breakfast. So just as we were beginning to make an impact, they came along and we had no chance. 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. Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox! This summer were going to ride our motorbikes down to Florida together.. Featuring concert footage of Los Angeles punk bands and interviews both with band members, the publishers of Slash fanzine, and with the punks who made up their audience, the film offers a look into a subculture that was largely ignored by the rock music press of the time. Ironically, its nearly the same thing she was told when she tried to get distribution for Decline of Western Civilization Part I: punk is dead. In the UK alone, he has written for Smash Hits, Q, Mojo, The Sunday Times, Radio Times, Classic Rock, HiFi News and more. In a way, you can look at Decline II as the research and then Waynes World as the final product. I cant go on eBay and all those other sites because theyve got these shitty DVDs and things ripped off on there, she said. BA1 1UA. Decline properly introduces itself with the distorted bars of X's "Nausea" as the title card cuts to a roiling pit churned by the trunks and limbs of thrashing teenage bodies. Weve done three albums and were doing another one at the end of the year. 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. It was screened at the Cannes Film Festival and the Chicago Underground Film Festival, where it received a jury award. You know that feeling you get in your stomach thats like this fluttery kind of fear? she told Indiewire recently, describing the sensation that would wash over her when shed stumble across a bootleg copy of The Decline of Western Civilization, including the 1988 and 1998 sequels of the same name. One of the smaller ancient civilizations, Greece has exerted an influence out of proportion to its size on the development of Western civilization, largely due to the intellectual accomplishments of Greek philosophers, who laid the foundation for much of modern science and . November 6, 2020. But it caused all kinds of problems. I played in bands in Wisconsin, but then I saw a flyer for Tuff, with pictures of them all except for one empty square in the middle, where it said: Wanted Lead Singer/Frontman. For Spheeris, it's also a testament to how she grew up. Guitarist Lizzie Grey (born Stephen Perry) was the bands linchpin, while Nadir DPriest, aka Nadir Munoz, was their frontman during the Decline period. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. Check them out. It also exposes the homeless gutterpunks that claim. The cut- and-paste editing, harsh lighting and seat-of-the-pants production that made the first film's technique a perfect reflection of its content have been replaced by MTV-era aesthetics. Fox, too, is working on a documentary inspired by painful family historySpheeris dad, a carnie, was murdered while protecting a black man in the Southbut the racially-charged subject matter might be more relevant than ever. Ill get stuck in the hallway because I cant get my legs to move. If money comes in the situation it changes everything. Now I was intrigued. This has caused an intellectual crisis, and some Muslims saw new ideas from the West as a direct threat to Islamic identity. Here she finds the struggle of street kids and young adults in West Hollywood trying to make it day by day, fighting. The original Decline contains rare footage of the Germs live and Black Flag at their squat, the second finds Ozzy Osbourne making breakfast and Aerosmith living soberly and the third focuses on smaller bands of homeless punks who somehow manage to meet up for practice. This is hard core. Every day the staff of Intellectual Takeout come to work eager to do their part to restore and improve our great nation. But Ive been doin it a long time. That one cost five-hundred thousand. Factory has a reputation for putting out comprehensive and well thought out packages, and this Decline of Western Civilization box set is no exception. 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. Spheeris has spent much of the past 20 years directing Hollywood fare such as "Wayne's World," and her professionalism shows in the synaptic firing of sound bites over visuals and the abrasive but seamless juxtaposition of scenes. Ancient Greece. The couple spoon and squid they had got into an argument because dude was cutting another girls hair she got jealous and stabbed squid with the scissors. The mother-daughter duo are now working together on a fourth Decline film, which Spheeris said is still about punk, but also involves another kind of music. Read the New York Times review of this book here. The expression in the title is widely known, but the book that made it famous is little read today. For the purposes of this article, the "West" is that civilization which grew up in western Europe after the end of the Roman Empire.. Its roots lay in the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome (which themselves built on foundations laid in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia).. Youre stealing my soul. For a movie about the underground punk scene, the . The third film, The Decline of Western Civilization III (1998), chronicles the gutter punk lifestyle of homeless teenagers in the late 1990s. In this follow-up to the 1981 punk rock documentary "The Decline of Western Civilization," filmmaker Penelope Spheeris dissects the world of heavy metal. Visit our corporate site (opens in new tab). A punk named Stevie dies in a fire at a building where he's squatting; another, Squid, is killed, allegedly by his girlfriend, Spoon. Civilization" on their Victory medal.3 "Western civilization" would be a good idea, in other words, if we were sure where to find it. China lost the conflict, and the West imposed sanctions that permanently weakened Qing rule. We were filmed in a hot tub. [3] Decline III was also released separately via streaming video. I just knew I had to make another film, about these people. Close. In retrospect, everybody talks about it real fondly, but at the time bands were fightin like cats and dogs, steppin on one another. She hopes it will define her legacy as a filmmaker. In the years after making Decline of Western Civilization Part I, she directed two narrative films which covered some of the same territory she mined in Decline, Suburbia and The Boys Next Door. In the years that followed, she found plenty of mainstream studio success directing broad comedies, including Waynes World, The Little Rascals and The Beverly Hillbillies. But her favorite film remains the most tragic: Decline of Western Civilization Part III, a lesser-known portrait of homeless teenage punks trying to get by on the streets of Hollywood. Influencers: Profiles of a Partnership 2022, How to Pitch Stories and Articles to IndieWire, Best Black Friday TV and Movie Deals: Criterion Box Sets, 'Venom: Let There Be Carnage,' and More, Best TV & Movie Box Sets: Criterion Collection, TV Classics, and More, Oscars 2023: Best Makeup and Hairstyling Predictions, Oscars 2023: Best Visual Effects Predictions. At the end of 1995 the band came to an end. The Best Picture Race Got a Lot More Confusing This Week, Tom Cruise Made the Rounds This Week, but Other Oscar Nominees Got More Applause Than Top Gun: Maverick, These Oscar Categories Are the Hardest to Predict, Translating the Unconscious Into Images: The Cinematography of Bardo, Poker Face Takes Viewers on a Cross-Country Road Trip Without Leaving New York, Why TR Looks Different from Every Other Movie of 2022, The 50 Best Movies of 2022, According to 165 Critics from Around the World, All 81 Titles Unceremoniously Removed from HBO Max (So Far), 10 Shows Canceled but Not Forgotten in 2022. All Rights reserved. Filmmaker Penelope Spheeris looks back as her L.A. rock trilogy readies itself for a box-set reissue. The Decline of Western Civilization is a 1981 American documentary filmed through 1979 and 1980. The movie is about the Los Angeles punk rock scene and was directed by Penelope Spheeris. But its Part II on which the series legend is built as well as that of the dying days of the Hollywood scene. What happened in our Western world began 6,000 years ago in a gardena battle between two religions. The Decline of Western Civilization R 1 hour 40 min 1981 by J.R. Jones October 26, 1985 August 26, 2021. In 1988 she followed the first Decline with a second installment, The Decline of Western Civilization, Part II . He died shortly before the film was released, though the promotional images for the film and album release had been designed before his death. Cheered by those who saw what Bloom saw and reviled by those who refused to see, it continues to be referred to as one of the great books on Western culture. If we told you wed have to kill you, Spheeris joked. The question is, what took so long? She put us in the movie and it absolutely put us on the map. The first consideration is the western dominance on the economic, political, cultural and security situation of every other civilization and region. This is the roughest watch of the trilogy as it . In 2016, The Decline of Western Civilization was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[4][5]. Roberts / November 7, 2016. Toggle navigation. [1], The film's title is possibly a reference to music critic Lester Bangs' 1970 two-part review of the Stooges' album Fun House, for Creem magazine, where Bangs quotes a friend who had said the popularity of the Stooges signaled "the decline of Western civilization". Nikki Sixxs email address was in there. In this documentary, filmmaker Penelope Spheeris captures the life of Los Angeles "gutter punks": homeless teenagers who prefer anarchy and chaos to organized society. Three decades on, the members of W.A.S.P., Faster Pussycat, London and Odin are still making music, still dreaming the dream and still unrepentant, despite having never reaped the rewards that they were utterly convinced would soon be theirs. "But it's like, 'That's it, I'm never gonna be doing another box set in my whole life so I've got to get it right.'". 'OK, cool, let's go get some beer. Director Penelope Spheeris began filming The Decline of Western Civilization, a documentary about LA's raucous punk community, in 1979. That was just one situation. I found guys like Chris Holmes of W.A.S.P. Subscribe to Paper; Sign Up for Emails; Where to Pick Us Up; Submit Stuff; Place a Classified or Legal Notice Like hunting down a rare vinyl record or an out-of-print fanzine, scoring a copy of the 1981 documentary required a rabid degree of dedication in exchange for street cred. "I'm an abortion that couldn't get paid for." Factory. Weaver, a scholar at Vanderbilt in the early 20th century, gives an eloquent account of the corrosive materialist rationalism that eats away at the core beliefs of Western civilization. The promoter said we didnt have to play, so we just hung out and played basketball. The Decline of Western Civilization includes never-before-seen footage, new interviews, and even performances that didnt make the original cut. Im sure that movie did enhance our career. What happened to squid from decline of Western civilization? All those years later, the films remains a rite of passagerequired viewing materialfor new generations interested in punk rock, including Foo Fighters front man Dave Grohl, who was such a fan that he got in touch with Fox and volunteered to record the DVD commentary. Then, in the early nineties, I got this job, via my friend Bruce Kirkland who had a multimedia company called Second Vision. But the tables have turned. In 1998, the last in the series, "The Decline Of Western Civilization Part III", hit select theaters but was never released in any home video format. I cant go on YouTube and find out whats been stolen. Penelope Spheeris began her career in the early '80s with The Decline of Western Civilization, an aggressively political and energetic chronicle of the late '70s L.A. punk scene featuring bands like Black Flag, X, and The Circle Jerks. As the singer in Faster Pussycat and co-founder of the notorious, heroically debauched Cathouse club, Seattle-born Taime Downe or Gustave Molvik to his parents was perfectly placed to witness the rise and fall of the Sunset Strip scene. The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, "With "20,000 Leagues," the National Film Registry Reaches 700", "Complete National Film Registry Listing", The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Decline_of_Western_Civilization&oldid=1139989286, Documentary films about punk music and musicians, United States National Film Registry films, Album articles lacking alt text for covers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 17 February 2023, at 22:01. mainman]? She goes: Well, he wants money. The arrival of "The Decline of Western Civilization Collection" as a pristine extras-filled box set from Shout Factory this week is to budding punks what a new "Star Wars" movie is to . To restore and improve our great nation been stolen abortion that could n't get paid for ''... Restore and improve our great nation, cool, let 's go get beer... 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