Music On Film is a column from The Dissolve recommending movies fans of music should make a point of checking out.
Hi, and greetings from The Dissolve, Pitchfork’s film-obsessed sister site. We’ll be stopping by The Pitch periodically to steer readers towards movies we love that land in the overlap between the worlds of music and movies. This past week our Movie of the Week feature took a look at the 1979 comedy Rock ’N’ Roll High School starring the Ramones. If you haven’t seen that movie, then by all means correct that as soon as possible. It’s a joy, capturing the Ramones in their prime and preserving that prime in the middle of a gleefully anarchic, and unexpectedly sweet, teen comedy. But let’s assume you have. What to watch next?
How about the 2004 documentary End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones? Co-directed by Jim Fields and Michael Gramaglia, the film follows The Ramones’ story from its beginnings in the relative doldrums of the early 1970s through several decades of inspiring bands that became reached levels of success they could never imagine to the deaths of founding members Joey and Dee Dee. Fields and Gramaglia started the film in time to talk to both and they apparently reached everyone at a point when nobody cared about the real story coming out at last. That story begins happily enough, with the band tapping retrofitting the fast, catchy songs of their youth with a buzzsaw fury but then takes a turn thanks to drugs, infighting, conflicting politics, membership turnover, and perennial disappointment. Stylistically, it’s strictly meat-and-potatoes filmmaking, but with a story like this, the meat and potatoes make for a satisfying meal.
Also worth seeking out: Ramones devotees should also look for the 2002 documentary Hey! Is Dee Dee Home? It’s a short feature made up largely of interviews conducted with director Lech Kowalski for Kowalski’s Johnny Thunders doc Born to Lose. But it provides considerable insight into the most troubled—which is saying something—original member of the Ramones.