Interview with

PUNK'S NOT DEAD
[IT JUST PASSED OUT]

Crusties Take Over the Decline of Western Civilization

Reprinted with permission from Vice Magazine (Vol.7, #1)
by Melora Koepke

IN FILM SCHOOL THEY TOLD US THE ONLY WAY TO make money was to put on a pair of heels and go to work for Miramax. Then we all learned about Penelope Spheeris who wore sneakers and didn't take shit. She made a big fat cake out of Hollywood and decorated it with the testicles of everyone who ever wasted her time. She ate it too; That's why we love her. Spheeris took the millions of dollars she got from directing The Beverly Hillbillies, Black Sheep (with David Spade and Chris Farley), Wayne's World, The Little Rascals and Dudes and spent it on real movies like The Decline of Western Civilization and Decline II: The Metal Years.
Now, she's made Decline III and she's talking to punk rockers instead of drunk rockers. Not the Billy Idol fops from Carnaby Street but the European, beer-swigging, vegan stink mongers who, in the early '90s, started listening to Doom, not eating dairy and letting their hair turn into a big bun. The same people who are now lying in the gutters of LA with cloth patches and t-shirts stained brown with body odor.
In Decline III, Spheeris takes us deep inside the dirtiest subculture ever made as: Squid, Darius, Eyeball, Gizzard, Hamburger, Little Tommy the Queer, Spoon Squid and Troll, go about their daily: eating, drinking, sleeping, squatting, mating, interacting with each other and adorning themselves with tribal designs. Instead of a presenting a freak show, Spheeris makes you empathize with these underachievers. Even the girl who started an armband of infected cigarette burns around her bicep and was trying to get drunk enough to finish off the job seems like she'd be fun to hang out with. Instead of being repulsed by their abnormalities we end up admiring the only people in the city that have the courage to evolve in the opposite direction from anyone else and just say "fuck it."

HIP: Why did you choose such a smelly and dirty version of punk rock to do a movie about?
These kids are very politically sophisticated. I can see the future, where survival is an art, and they're honing their craft. It used to be that people would try to achieve financial success with their art, would try to make themselves comfortable, accumulate possessions, do all these things to indicate growth. Well, this generation has given up on growth. They're just hoping for survival.
HIP: But you're the woman that did The Little Rascals?
Well, honey, all those movies, Decline I and II and Suburbia, are dearly loved, but they never made any money. At all. I didn't even have the rights for some of them, it was all messed up. So I worked for the studios, making those, um, comedies and I found I could make enough money then to be able to do the work I was passionate about.
HIP: So, coming out of film school, with nothing but a great record collection and no experience, how did you get it together to make Decline I?
Actually, at that point I had just produced one feature and was producing shorts for SNL. I had the first music video company in LA, it was called Rock 'n Reel. Cheesy name, but fuck, it was the '70s. We made some of the first videos; we shot Fleetwood Mac, the Doobie Bros, David Essex, Charlie Rich (laughs hysterically). We shot Funkadelic!
HIP: So you basically wanted to make punk-rock music videos?
Well, I was always into music. I think everyone is when they're a teenager. As a way to drown out the world, you know. A girlfriend was approached by these guys who had money and wanted to make a porno movie and I went to see them and said, "you guys really should give me some money to make the film I want to make. Cuz punk rock is the next big thing after pornos... I swear." They bent to my will. So I made Decline, but I didn't keep the rights, and never made any money off it.
HIP: So you still don't have the rights to your stuff?
I actually picked up copies of Decline I and II at a flea market once. I walked out without paying and when the guy started yelling, "hey, you owe me money!" I said, "no, you owe me money, motherfucker" and left. I recently bought back the rights to all three, video and DVD. So I'm gonna re-release them as a boxed set.
HIP: What about Decline II: The Metal Years?
Well, I love punk rock, but I also love metal. So I got IRS records to finance what I wanted to do. It's also part of the reason I was offered Wayne's World. I was the only director around who knew how to do metal. That, and Lorne Michaels owed me a bunch of favors.
HIP: And now, there's Decline III, trickling slowly into theatres across North America.
Decline III I funded myself. From the studio money. That, and I sold a lot of drugs. Kidding. Don't print that. Nobody wanted to touch Decline III when they found out what it was about. I got numerous offers of a million plus to do a Decline, Part III about the hip hop industry. But I'm not really interested in that, it seemed to kind of defeat the purpose
HIP: Decline III is about punk but it focuses on the crusty, LA gutterpunk, squeegee scene. Why make a movie about this now? Isn't punk dead?
The first Decline I did was out of sheer love and appreciation for the music. In 1977, it was more about bands because punk was a new form of music. It was groundbreaking and political. Now, it's almost impossible to go out and do a film about a new form of music. When I started really knowing the gutterpunks I was interested in documenting their culture because they're a real foreshadowing of things to come.
HIP: So gutterpunks are the wave of the future?
Well, in other countries, it's a common thing to have outcast children running around the streets in packs, and I don't think we're so far away from it here. Most, but not all of these kids have been abused or neglected in some way. They've been given a reason to want to live on the outskirts of society but, also, their lifestyle is a choice. They want to live outside of regular capitalist culture and it's a matter of principle.
HIP: But your subjects aren't just objects of fascination for you, are they? Didn't you shack up with one of the subjects of the film?
Actually, yes. We fell in love, and he lived with me for two years. He was the most beautiful, brilliant guy, you know? So we had this relationship, but finally, it was too much for us, I mean, like many brilliant people, he was mentally disturbed. For one thing, he had been homeless for, like, 10 years before coming to live with me and I live on this nice three acres in Hollywood.
HIP: So you fell into the tortured artist thing like the rest of us... beautiful, brilliant men who turn out to be nutcases.
Yeah, I guess it got kind of out of hand. He would wander around the property and he'd do things like, if he found a dead possum or something, he would just reach down and snap off its head and put it in his pocket. And then a few days later, it would turn up in a jar in my office.
HIP: Like a present?
Yeah, and it just wasn't for me. It's like, I love you, you're beautiful, you're brilliant, you're a fabulous fucking lover, but the dead possum head on my desk has to go.
HIP: So, one last question: you're stuck in Hollywood...is it as bad as they say? Being a lady among the sharks?
Yeah it's as bad as they say. But it's hard for everybody, the lying, the insincerity, the shit. Women have it harder here because there's a lot of money to be made but men don't like women to have money and power because when men have money and power they get turned on, sexually. They get horny as hell, and I guess they want to keep all that to themselves. Can't imagine why, though. You'd think they'd want to share.

Decline of Western Civilization Part III is showing in selected theaters around North America.

Click here for a page on Darius.