Who is This For? Remembering (?) the film CBGB
Why am I writing about the unpopular 2013 movie CBGB in 2022? Great question, and to that I ask: what could possibly be more punk rock than upending the rules of internet article topicality? Oh literally anything? Gotcha. Well, I’m doing it because it’s an interesting music biopic even if it’s not a good movie, and I don’t want to forget this evolutionary dead end.
I don’t love music biopics. They are usually about capital B Big artists like Johnny Cash, Queen, and Aretha Franklin and I already know about them. Their movies are an excuse to listen to their songs and get confirmation that yes, it was pretty special when John Deacon wrote “Another One Bites the Dust”. That’s fine, but it’s nothing I couldn’t have just thought about briefly and moved on. No need to involve costumes and fake teeth.
The other problem is that most movies I like are short stories rather than sprawling, life-encompassing legends. It’s hard to take the lifespan of a band and make that an engaging story from front to back. Life doesn’t follow a story arc, there are tons of boring bits and years between the good stuff. Biopics usually do the Forrest Gump structure, where you just string together the interesting stuff and tack on some functional intro/outro scenes. And while it can work in some cases, it’s a little exhausting.
Oh, and the other other problem is that every biopic does this one thing that sucks: they use a scene as a moment to wink to the audience with information we now have in the future. Like the Mike Meyers scene in the Queen movie where he says something about headbanging in cars. Good lord, we get it. They all do it and if there was justice in the world it would have been a dead and buried trope after Walk Hard called it out.
So those are my gripes, but I acknowledge I’m a huge hater and I know most people don’t care about that stuff. But I gripe because I’m an optimist. CBGB could have been one of those movies that pushes the genre in a fresh direction, mostly because of its subject matter: the 1970s New York punk scene, its most famous club, and the eccentric owner of the club Hilly Kristal (played by Alan Rickman).
Against all odds CBGB is trying to unite two opposing forces. For the sake of simplicity, there are two separate and distinct audiences, the one that wants Ray Charles to say “I’ve got Georgia on my mind… hey that might make a good song!” and punks that think everything sucks.
Generally speaking music fans that fall into the Rock n Roll Jeopardy, VH1, Rock n Roll Hall of Fame camp have often had a tenuous relationship to punk. They can acknowledge The Clash and the Ramones, but usually with little caveats that amount to, “You crazy kids, real rock ‘n roll is Led Zeppelin and guitar solos and concept albums.” CBGB feels like an attempt to connect with that audience, and apply a little lore to the punk world, which of course ruins the mystique of punk music.
There are tons of these lore traps the movie falls into. Those moments that feel cute and movie-ish, like when we find out that combat boots became part of punk fashion because the sound guy kept getting fleas on his ankles. Or David Byrne saying, “The name of this band is Talking Heads,” onstage. They even casually include Richard Nixon saying, “I’m not a crook,” just so you know it’s the 70s.
If you’re the kind of sick fuck that nudges your couchmate and goes “That’s Mary Harron! She went on to direct American Psycho!” (ie, me) this movie is seemingly for you, but also it’s not. You’ll be happier re-reading Please Kill Me. This movie lives in no man’s land.
The hang up is that Hollywood doesn’t really make punk movies, and to be a functional biopic you need to have the rights to all this music, a feat only the money of Hollywood can pull off.
So what CBGB does right is include tons of incredible music from the era. The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, The Stooges, Television, Patti Smith are all played, and it really does make the movie feel like a real movie. The other edge of that sword is that these cleanly mixed studio versions are often played in the movie diegetically, onstage at a beer soaked 2 a.m. show.
We get to see Hilly listen to The Police audition in his crusty club on blown speakers and say, “There’s definitely something there.” No shit Hilly, it’s the album version of “Roxanne.”
I understand it’s impossible to re-record these songs so they sound appropriately scrappy, but is it very distracting to see Justin Bartha lip sync to The Dead Boys.
The movie does do tons of stuff that doesn’t feel Hollywood though and I’m appreciative for that. A recurring plotline is that Hilly’s dog Jonathan shits everywhere and they show it all the time in close up. There’s a montage of people barfing into urinals. There’s a scene where Joey Ramone tells Hilly’s mom (played perfectly by George Costanza’s mom Estelle Harris) that she’s eating Stiv Bators’ cum in a bowl of chili. This is the grime this movie wants to be deep down, but can never get a handle on.
CBGB then takes a third act turn to mostly portray The Dead Boys on tour, and part of me wishes we could have just gotten The Dead Boys biopic. They don’t make movies about bands like that though, so they have to jam everything together and add Blondie and Talking Heads and Iggy Pop to get greenlit, then the movie is an overcrowded mess and tanks and the suits say, “See? Punk movies don’t work!”
The story of CBCG’s is too much for one movie to pull off. To include dozens of musicians in just under two hours is enough of a job, to do it in a way that accurately reflects the times and the scene is even harder. The lead performance of Alan Rickman really does try and hold it together though. He plays the role in a state of constant defeated endurance. He knows running a punk club is futile, but he has to do it, and this tone embodies the movie’s identity itself.
Hats off to CBGB for trying, and it’s a shame it didn’t work out because I really do want more movies about dog shit and cum and barf.
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