Staying Fit
(Left to right) Deborah Foreman and Nicolas Cage in "Valley Girl" and Chloe Webb and Gary Oldman in "Sid and Nancy."
Atlantic Releasing/Courtesy Everett Collection; Samuel Goldwyn/Courtesy Everett Collection
This month, British director Danny Boyle, 65 — an Oscar winner for Slumdog Millionaire — releases his new FX miniseries Pistol, about the raucous and revolutionary rise of the Sex Pistols in 1970s England. Based on guitarist Steve Jones’ memoir Lonely Boy: Tales From a Sex Pistol, the six-episode series stars a quintet of relative newcomers as band members Jones, now 66 (played by Toby Wallace); Johnny Rotten, now 66 (Anson Boon); Sid Vicious (Louis Partridge); Paul Cook, now 65 (Jacob Slater); and Glen Matlock, now 65 (Christian Lees). Punk history has taken center stage in biopics before, including Sid and Nancy, but the genre and its ethos have touched every corner of cinema — from fun-loving musicals to pulse-quickening horror films, and from gritty dramas to eye-opening documentaries. Here are 10 films that will have you breaking out your favorite tattered concert T-shirt, spiking up your mohawk and queuing up some quick-and-dirty punk rock hits. Your grandkids will never believe that this is part of your past!
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Rock ’n’ Roll High School (1979)
The premise: Think of this Roger Corman–produced B-movie musical as punk’s answer to Grease. When the buzzkill principal of Vince Lombardi High School takes concert tickets away from student Riff Randell (P.J. Soles, now 71) and plans a rock-record-burning event, Riff teams up with honorary students, the Ramones, to take back the school. Expect hilarious one-liners (“Do your parents know you’re Ramones?”) and a soundtrack of punk tracks that famed rock critic Robert Christgau described as: “Two excellent new Ramones songs, plus a Ritchie Valens cover shared by the Ramones and the Paley Brothers, plus a live medley of five familiar Ramones songs, plus P.J. Soles singing one of the new ones poorly. Plus high-quality new-wavish stuff of varying relevance, most of it off albums that people who enjoy the samples would probably enjoy owning.”
Listen to: The title track, a Ramones original produced by Phil Spector for the soundtrack.
Watch it: Rock ’n’ Roll High School on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Peacock, Roku Channel, YouTube
The Decline of Western Civilization (1981)
The premise: Eleven years before she helmed Wayne’s World, director Penelope Spheeris, now 76, released this seminal documentary about the Los Angeles punk scene, which she filmed in 1979 and 1980. At a time when the genre was still ignored by the mainstream rock press, Spheeris turned her camera on underground bands including Black Flag, Fear and X. The film marked the start of a trilogy: Part Two (1988) covered the city’s heavy metal scene in the late ’80s, while Part Three (1998) offered a glimpse into the “gutter punk” lifestyle of homeless teenagers in the late ’90s.
Listen to: “I Love Livin’ in the City,” a Fear song about the underbelly of L.A. that starts with the line “My house smells just like the zoo” and gets progressively more graphic.
Watch it: The Decline of Western Civilization on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, YouTube
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Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (1982)
The premise: In this cult hit that became an urtext of the feminist riot grrrl movement, Diane Lane (now 57) and Laura Dern (now 55) star as disaffected working-class teens who form a punk band that’s more about sass and sneering than musical talent. Corinne (Lane) manages to finagle the band’s way onto a tour with the aging headliners, the Metal Corpses, and their upstart openers, the British punk band Looters, who are played by an impressive quartet: British actor Ray Winstone (now 65), Paul Simonon (now 66) of the Clash, and Paul Cook and Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols.
Listen to: The Fabulous Stains’ song “The Professionals,” which was penned by Cook and Jones.
Watch it: Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, YouTube
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