Monday, November 7, 2016

JIM JARMUSCH's GIMME DANGER STOOGES DOCUMENTARY

 Above, my photo of Iggy and The Stooges live at the Whisky A GoGo, Hollywood, California. 1973. Below, my photo of Jim Jarmusch and crew shooting Iggy and The Stooges live in Ann Arbor, Michigan at the Tribute to Ron Asheton, 2011.
 Evita Corby and I saw Jim Jarmusch's well done Stooges' documentary Gimme Danger last night. You can too no matter where you live using this LINK. I was thanked in the small print credits crawl, and Evita appeared in the film's visuals.

None of my pics were in the film, but I had brokered the live Raw Power-era Stooges' footage that wasn't Ivan Kral's, therefore 50% of the universe's known footage, which heretofore was unknown to the world (Antiques Roadshow moment!) except for my brokering its only other public appearance in The Making of Raw Power dvd that accompanied its re-release in 2009. Originally videotaped for a St. Louis, Missouri broadcast news tv program, the footage was 6 minutes long and silent. But extant, thanks to my archiving.

Gimme Danger Tech Notes: 
1) Virtually all live footage of that era, except for that of the mighty Cincinnati Pop Festival (best rock footage ever, of anyone) was indeed subject to severe technical limitations of 1960s/70s low-light photography/cinematography, and was silent unless you had a Hollywood Studio's well-funded production budget behind you. None of us did,of course, even those with great access like photographer filmmaker Leni Sinclair.  All the early footage in this film was augmented with all sorts of bootleg audio that is traceable to each show. Once a lip reader can sort out which song the singer is performing, it's not too hard to sync up the bootleg music...

2) I am guessing that despite my best efforts, they couldn't locate the original footage (mine was a copy of its maker's Betamax format that I had digitized as soon as one could. Apparently, even its maker hadn't.) It looked like what happens when computer programs try their darnedest to sharpen and resolve resolution of vintage, highly grainy low-light stage photography/videography. Can we say "Fastfilm" boys and girls?

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