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REVIEW: "What We Do Is Secret" |
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Written by Andrew O'Hehir in Salon
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Tuesday, 05 August 2008 |
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A loving, low-budget film tries to revive the undead spirit of Darby Crash and L.A.'s most anarchic punk pioneers. But some things aren't easy to resurrect. What We Do Is Secret isn't a boring movie or a dishonest one. But it's a relentlessly literal-minded one, light on vision and atmosphere, that moves through the history of the Germs with a checklist: Crash (originally Jan Paul Beahm) and his buddy George Ruthenberg, aka Pat Smear (Rick Gonzalez), as glam-rock outcast teens at Santa Monica's University High? Check. Early band members include Belinda Carlisle (later the Go-Gos' singer) and D.J. Bonebrake (of X)? Check. English punks the Damned, on their first American tour, attend the first Germs show? Check. Profanity-laced on-air interview with Rodney Bingenheimer of KROQ? Check. Crash professes an interest in Hitler and fascism, and writes ad copy mocking the Holocaust that even Slash, L.A.'s rock mag, won't publish? Check. Every Germs show collapses almost immediately into mayhem? Check. Crash shoots lots of drugs and is almost certainly gay, in the middle of the sexist and homophobic punk scene? Check.
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