What We Do Is Secret
by Rodger Grossman
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DVD details
Actor: Bijou Phillips, Chris Pontius, Noah Segan, Rick Gonzalez, Shane WestDirector: Rodger Grossman
Brand: Trinity
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 110 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-11-04
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Model: PAE 43210
Studio: Peace Arch Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of What We Do Is Secret
DVD Review: How did this even get made?
Summary: 3 Stars
I find most biopics shallow and corny, no exception here, but I'm perplexed as to how this one got made in the first place.
I can understand how a movie like, say, Oliver Stone's The Doors came about, since The Doors, beyond just having a cult following, also had half a dozen hit records, toured the world, and have had several books written about them; but who were The Germs? They were a garage band that were together for less than 4 years, put out only one album in that time, were little known outside of the Los Angeles area because they didn't tour, and had little influence outside of a subsection of an already small indie punk scene. While they may have been among the first to play the style of music that would come to be known as hardcore, being the first doesn't mean they were the best; contemporary LA bands like Black Flag and the Circle Jerks were musically a lot better, as were many of the bands that would later come out of the suburbs.
It's true that singer Darby Crash wrote lyrics that were of a higher caliber than the standard rock fare and that he could rightly be considered a poet, but you wouldn't know it from the slurred, unintelligible way in which he sang the songs; I've owned the Germs' G.I. LP since 1987 or '88 and had no idea his lyrics were that good until I happened to read some of them online a few years ago (unfortunately, the record didn't come with a lyric sheet). I was amazed to discover such intelligence in his lyrics because on stage and in interviews, he came off like a stupid, drunken buffoon more than anything. I'd wager that more people have heard of The Germs because guitarist Pat Smear went on to play in Nirvana and the Foo Fighters than for anything the band accomplished during its brief existence. Well, there was that iconic image of Crash lying on the ground, clutching a microphone, black marker war paint dripping down his face and a Maltese cross hanging off his neck, that was used for the poster of Penelope Spheeris's documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, but image doesn't equal substance.
There just wasn't a lot of material to work with here.
I kept thinking as I was watching this that there were far more interesting subjects to make a biopic about than Darby Crash, like Rozz Williams of Christian Death, for example (though I doubt a movie would ever get made about him since it would be nearly impossible to make it a feelgood popcorn movie and since an honest movie about his life would portray homosexuals negatively, which Hollywood doesn't want to do in these politically-correct times).
While I'm no expert on Crash's life or the history of The Germs, the movie seems fairly accurate from a factual standpoint, and fortunately, it doesn't go to town with the rumor that Crash was a homosexual, which I feared it might (though it's implied throughout the movie that he was).
The movie touches lightly on Crash's fascination with Adolf Hitler and fascism (there's something vaguely fascistic in the armbands with blue circles worn throughout the movie), but surprisingly, completely avoids one of the more intriguing facets of The Germs, namely, Crash's interest in cults, Scientology, and mind control. It would appear from some of the things I've read online that Crash admired Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and regarded The Germs as an experiment in mass mind control, perhaps even as a cult. I would have found the movie far more interesting if it had spent some time exploring that, instead of taking the safe route of being a formulaic rock star biopic.
Description of What We Do Is Secret
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