Gimme brevity

Stooges doc ‘Gimme Danger’ is exhaustively detailed, and sometimes exhausting

I came to know Iggy Pop, lead singer of the Michigan-born punk-progenitors The Stooges, mostly from his appearances in nerdy movies (as opposed to the band that made him famous). First, there were the cult sci-fi flicks “Hardware” and “Tank Girl.” He even played a Ferengi in an episode of “Deep Space Nine.” When I discovered Jim Jarmusch, I noticed Pop showing up in movies like “Dead Man” and, perhaps most memorably, “Coffee and Cigarettes”—where he indulged in both with another legend of era-defining cool, Tom Waits. Dude’s done it all. Or so I had thought. 

“Gimme Danger,” director Jim Jarmusch’s exhaustive (and somewhat exhausting) documentary chronicling the life of Iggy Pop (nee James Osterberg) and the influence of his seismic-shifting band, The Stooges, plunges the depths of his drug-fueled, anarchic, pedal-to-the-metal existence—a life that miraculously didn’t kill him before somebody got a chance to make a movie about it. Aside from longtime guitarist James Williamson, nowadays everyone else in the band is dead. 

Inspired to perform by the unlikely influence of television personalities Buffalo Bob (“Buffalo Bob was like Timothy Leary,” he recalls) and Soupy Sales, Pop started playing drums in bands in Ann Arbor in the ‘60s. Soon after The Stooges coalesced with brothers Ron and Scott Asheton on guitar and drums, and their friend Dave Alexander on bass. 

Pop, stirred by the blues scene while briefly living in Chicago, decided to reinvent the genre. Incorporating the “mega clang” rhythms of the Motor City, the traditional three-chord blues structures became infused with an edge that was seminal to the rise of punk, while irrevocably influencing the direction of rock and metal for years afterward.

Heroin and alcohol addiction plagued the band, forcing lineup changes while fueling their raucous shows. Pop stage dived into the crowd (he’s often credited for inventing this), would cut his skin and bleed, flash his junk, rub peanut butter and raw meat all over himself, and generally be the kind of zero-fucks-given frontman for whom any legit band of true delinquents would punch out someone else’s front teeth. Without Iggy Pop there would be no GG Allin (if you know who that is, then this movie is definitely for you).

They’d break up and reform in different incarnations between 1968 and 1974, until Pop got clean and went solo in the mid-‘70s. Despite the crazy ride, their albums “The Stooges,” “Funhouse” and “Raw Power”—like most great things—wouldn’t find commercial success or critical respect until after their time. 

Jarmusch’s level of respect and fandom for The Stooges, and Pop in particular, borders on the familial. They are, collectively, “Gimme Danger’s” greatest strength. A love letter of epic proportions, Jarmusch’s time capsule holds a novel of minute details revealed during extensive interviews with Pop, who tells the story of the band with the reminiscent clarity of someone who survived a car crash. With vintage photos, archival interviews, behind the scenes footage, and legendary concert performances, Jarmusch documents seemingly everything you could want to know about the formation of the band, the chaos of their time together, and their influence on the music that came after. If you’re a fan, you will be enraptured.

But my favorite feature of Jarmusch’s work is the emotional distance he usually puts between his camera and his characters. Here, for a layman or passing fan especially, his personal connection to his subject (and friend) renders the story into a stream-of-consciousness laundry list of events, connections, and relationships that—absent his particular cinematic style—starts to feel less interesting and revealing than he thinks it is. 

In that regard, it could have been directed by any other aficionado, which is fine, but Jarmusch’s affection for his subject ultimately makes “Gimme Danger” for superfans only.

For more from Joe, read his review of “The Greasy Strangler.”