What She Does Isn’t Secret

So you’ve already ransacked your punky-bank and purchased Penelope Spheeris’ watershed The Decline of Western Civilization trilogy – finally! – and the remastered, bells-and-whistles-and-catcalls 4-disc box set from Shout! Factory is as awesome as you remembered. Now what?

Here’s what: The Austin Film Society has brought Spheeris and her daughter and co-conspirator Anna Fox to Austin to present all three of her Los Angeles-set punk/metal documentaries plus her gritty, prescient, and Roger Corman-produced punk melodrama Suburbia at the Marchesa Hall and Theatre this weekend. This might be, literally, your only chance to watch any of these classics of serious rock & roll anthropology on the big screen, like, ever.

A month back, The Austin Chronicle caught up with Spheeris on the phone prior to the huge anticipated Shout! Factory release (see here). Space considerations limited the amount of our talk with Spheeris to a few pull quotes, but we had lots more to ask and Spheeris had plenty more to say. That said, here’s more Penelope to tide you over until the inevitable, unmissable Q&A sessions with Spheeris and Fox that will follow each screening.

Austin Chronicle: When did you first hear about this thing people were calling “punk rock” and what was the first punk band that you saw live?

Penelope Spheeris: I was standing in line at a film equipment house and a guy that I knew just sort of casually asked me if I had been to any clubs lately. I told him no, I didn’t really like music anymore – this would’ve been around ’75 or ’76 – because it was all disco, Doobie Brothers, and whatever. I wasn’t even tuning in anymore. So he says, “Well, you’d better check out the Sex Pistols.” So I did. And then I started going to the clubs in Los Angeles: the Masque, the Starwood, all of those places. It’s really hard to remember who the first punk band I actually saw was, but I will say that the Germs at the Starwood really stands out in my mind. It could’ve been them.

AC: Speaking of the Germs, did you ever see the 2007 biopic of the band, What We Do Is Secret?

PS: To be honest, [director] Rodger Grossman had been in touch with me along the way, and I tried to help him. The poor guy had worked on the movie for 10 years and then of course nothing really happened with it. But I think he unfortunately got some things wrong. So, you know, whatever. I guess when I say “some things wrong,” I mostly griped about the way I was represented! He had me hiding behind a speaker during a concert. Uh, no, that didn’t happen, dude. But yeah, Rodger was over at my house quite a bit. I was showing him footage and trying to help him out. Finally, I just got fed up and said “Forget it.” And there you go.

AC: I actually caught a gig by the reconstituted Germs up in Reno, Nev., in 2007. Actor Shane West was doing his best impersonation of the Germs late frontman Darby Crash. It was crazy good because this time around everyone knew how to play their instruments. Pat Smear, who had since been in Nirvana and Lorna Doom was there. It was total flashback chaos but with everything in tune for once.

PS: Pat was with them? Awesome, that’s great! I thought [Shane West] was pretty good in the Germs movie. I mean, there were a lot of good things about that movie – the way shots were set up, for one – but ultimately it’s a tough subject to handle, you know? What I think the problem was is the question of why make a movie about a guy who was very talented, and very smart, and very sweet, but his whole goal was to kill himself? I mean, who are you supposed to like here?

AC: The Decline of Western Civilization has only been screened once before in Austin, at your retrospective during SXSW 2001, although there have been bootleg copies floating around for at least that long.

PS: Yeah, not legal, rentable copies. I think I know where that came from because there are some punks that were in Decline III that I gave VHS copies to. And in the pure, punk rock spirit they probably, anarchically, copied it and let people see it. So I’m glad on the one hand, but on the other hand, that copy has got to look really shitty.

AC: Are there plans for a Decline IV?

PS: Yeah. See, what happened was that four years ago I said to my daughter Anna Fox that I needed her to start working with me because, you know, I do a lot of different things. I write scripts, I make movies, I’ve built houses, I do all these thing. So I told her she had to come work for me and she said, “Only if the first thing we do is the Decline movies.” So we started working on Decline IV at the same time we were shopping around the box set of the first three movies. So we’ve already started [Decline IV] but I can’t say what it’s about because, you know, everybody’s got a camera these days. After we finish all these theatrical screenings [of Decline I-III] we’re going to get back into shooting the new one.

AC: You mentioned social media. It’s very punk rock that the rise of the digital era and all that that implies has allowed DIY music and zines to totally bypass the wreckage of the old-school music industry and reach straight into the heart of the audience, whomever that might be. And on top of that, YouTube is chock full of punk bands and punk music labels making their own documentaries, telling their own stories, in a way that simply wasn’t conceivable prior to the advent of prosumer media tech. But your documentary was the first. You created the template, the precedent. Which I suppose makes you the godmother to hundreds of punk filmmakers and documentaries. How cool is that?

PS: [Laughing] Well, thank you. I really haven’t looked at it like that before, but I appreciate your pointing that out and I think it’s cool. I just was at the right place at the right time and I had a family background that allowed me to relate to the [punk] movement in a way that compelled me to document it.

AC: Let’s talk a little bit about your family background.

PS: There were four children and they were all born on the carnival that my father owned. We were all born in different states because we travelled around so much. My father was murdered when I was almost 7 years old, and then my mother sold the carnival and we went to live in Arkansas. My mom got married seven times after my dad died and so I had a lot of different stepfathers. I think you can probably start putting the punk rock ethic into this story pretty soon here because, you know, we lived in trailer parks, mom and whichever stepfather was around were alcoholics, and everybody in the family was getting their ass kicked all the time. I was put in charge of the kids because I was the oldest and if anything went wrong I got the shit beat out of me, you know? In a way, I was already a punk when I was seven years old, and I think that’s why I could relate to [the punk scene].

AC: How do you think punk has changed since the first Decline film? Obviously it’s gone through iteration after integration but for you, personally, what’s different?

PS: The way that it’s changed is that it’s kind of become integrated into and bastardized by the general American mainstream. Basically what I’m trying to say is that there’s a lot of poseurs around, you know? There’s a lot of people who look the look and talk the talk but they ain’t the real thing and they don’t get what it’s really about. It’s a way of life and a philosophy, an ethos that you have to understand and practice in order to really dress up like that. In the beginning, everybody who was into it was the real deal.

AC: Final question: What kind of music do you listen to these days? What’s on Penelope Spheeris’s turntable?

PS: I fixate on things and right now I’m fixated on Willis Earl Beal. He’s an awesome musician and if you haven’t heard him yet, you really should look him up. I think he’s from Chicago but he lives in Portland and I swear to God, man, that I have not heard a voice like this guy has. He’s unbelievable. His music is so beautiful and so unusual. I just love it. The other thing I listen to – you’re gonna laugh –

AC: No, I’m not.

PS: – is zen meditation music.

AC: [Laughter]

PS: You laughed!

AC: Just teasing.

---

Penelope Spheeris will be present to discuss several of her films at four different screenings on Friday and Saturday. For tickets and more info, go to www.austinfilm.org.