Music

Garbage Day: Analyzing the 'CBGB' movie trailer

by Josiah Hughes

Like every other week since popular culture was invented by whoever invented it (probably Billy Eichner somehow), this week had no shortage of absolutely loathsome pop culture. Unfortunately, when you start off your new weekly hunt for the worst thing of the week with a comeback single from the singer of Creed, you end up getting some late-night Twitter abuse from the song’s co-writer.

Honestly, it’s nearly impossible to find that rush of pure shit every week. But it’s also sorely necessary — engaging overly terrible garbage is a way of zoning out after a week of listening to good things. It’s like meditation, if meditation involved sitting at the computer in your underwear, wondering how something this supremely terrilbe could possibly exist.

I was still searching, on the prowl for something bad enough to dedicate hours of my life to it. There it was, right in front of me — the new Chavril collaboration “Let Me Go,” which was leaked the week before, got it’s very own video.

Let’s be real — this song is pretty bad, but it could be a hell of a lot worse. When it first came out, I listened to Nickelback’s “Here and Now” for hours, trying to understand the appeal. All I got was acclimatized to loud butt-metal and the line “You and me / Sitting in a tree / F-U-C-K-I-N-G.”

Regardless, I still get flashbacks to my day with the ‘Back, and “Let Me Go” offers nothing close to the grossness of Chad’s day job. Sure, there’s a gross, Evanescence-esque chorus, and we get to watch Chad morph into an old man and fondle his new wife, but Avril is simply too palatable to make this the grand catastrophe it needs to be. It’s merely bad, putting on par with so much else out there.
Knowing they’d have something horrible to offer, I sauntered over to Tooth and Nail Records’ website. Having always been the Christian equivalent of Epitaph Records, they’ve gone through the same identity crisis, too, and are now peddling awful, over-produced shit to try and make some CD sails from less discriminating swoop-hairs.

Their latest offering is the self-titled LP from a band called Icon For Hire (though Shitty Paramore is a much more accurate band name). They look like this, and their new track “Cynics & Critics” is the kind of God-awful Christian appropriation that these kinds of bands have become known for—here a sassy, slick intro, there some grotie guitar chuggs. Throw in some horrendous lyrics and dubstep synths, and there’s no denying “Cynics & Critics” is one of the week’s worst. Unfortunately, it’s also no different from the sea of culture destroyers on the Warped Tour warpath.

Instead, to truly understand how embarrassing “punk” can be, one has to look past the present, directly to the genre’s very inception. Yes, I’m talking about the birth of American punk at CBGB, a long-dead venue that, long before it was fodder for some painfully vanilla Bono anecdotes, hosted some early performances from some important bands.

Let’s be real—even when it was still around, CBGB forfeited much of its integrity by hosting terrible modern rock shows. It’s logo became the pre-Affliction t-shirt brand for juiced-out, spray-tanned chongos to wear across their rippling chests. Still, the place has magically maintained some sort of imagined credibility, at least enough for some movie execs to make a horrendous biopic about it.

CBGB, which is available now on-demand (and maybe through some less legal sources, who even knows) attempted to tell the story of the venue via a slate of teen-beloved actors. I’m talking Rupert Grint and Alan Rickman from Harry Potter, Ashley Greene from Twilight (and also a sexting scandal), and eternal wiener Joel David Moore (who’s been in everything from Avatar to Dodgeball to Paris Hilton’s legit hot mess The Hottie & The Nottie) playing Joey fucking Ramone. Malin Akerman is here to play Blondie, though she’s had more believable casting on Adult Swim’s absurd Childrens Hospital, while The Hangover straight man Justin Bartha tries to have a go at The Dead Boys’ Stiv Bators. Also in it? Donal Logue, the VHS rack mainstay from The Tao of Steve who clearly doesn’t know how to spell “Donald” and Johnny Galecki, one of those unbearable fake nerds from The Big Bang Theory. Magically, the least offensive casting choice is Foo Fighters/Alanis collaborator Taylor Hawkins as the immortal Iggy Pop. Just let that sink in.

Basically, all of these actors wanted to feel punk for a night and dug through Value Village’s Halloween section for some wigs. I’d like to imagine that there was no makeup or warddrobe person on deck, and they hand-picked their outfits from a pile of used Old Navy t-shirts.

CBGB was directed by Randall Miller, a guy you’ve never heard of because the top thing listed on his IMDb is that he’s the cousin of comedic actress and former Mrs. Danny DeVito, Rhea Perlman. Some of Miller’s previous directorial projects include helming one episode of Northern Exposure and another of thirtysomething. Don’t worry, though, he’s also made some TV movies, including the amazing sounding family movie H-E Double Hockey Sticks, about a devil-in-training trying to steal the soul of a hot shot hockey player, and Til Dad Do Us Part, which is basically just a sad, made-for-TV Father of the Bride.

If anyone was born to direct the biopic about one of modern music’s most important movements, it was definitely the guy who made Til Dad Do Us Part.

While you wait for your CBGB torrent to finish, let’s talk about the trailer.

Utilizing the same overbearing gravitas of so many biopics and documentaries Pool Jumpers, anyone?), the film opens with some jangly guitar, some goofy graphic design and some corny dialogue while the line “THE GREATEST ROCKCLUB EVER” swoops in. This is where people with taste would turn it off, but let’s keep watching. All of a sudden, a bunch of shittily wigged actors start introducing themselves as various bands onstage at the club. It’s a quick cut, switching between the bands with little time in between, but you’ll still fit in a “No you’re not” after every “We’re the Ramones,” “We’re Blondie,” etc.

As it continues, the trailer ebbs and flows with everything that makes for a good biopic. “You’ve got to spend money to make money,” Snape says, the curls of his comical wig glistening in the fake club’s fake lighting. “You’ve got to have money to make money to spend money,” respond’s Twilight’s Alice Cullen. I’d like to think that scene goes on forever, with them adding one more mention of the money each time. You’ve got to find money to have money to make money to spend money. Really makes you think.

Of course, there’s some sort of financial problem threating the bar, and Snape needs to pay up or lose everything he’s worked so hard for. He decides to start managing some of the bands regularly playing at CBGB. Looking into a terrible fake news camera (visually created with an effect that could likely be done better on your iPhone), Snape says, “These kids have something to say.” Ugh. Then someone says, “You’re punks,” emphasizing the word like “pahhnks.” Double ugh.

Then Rupert Grint fellates a beer bottles, Snape and The Tao of Steve discuss their financial projects, and the guy from The Hottie & The Nottie attempts to make sure you’ll never hear a Ramones song title again without getting full-body embarrassment chills.

From there, the trailer editor replaces the spots where they’d normally put praise for the movie with praise for CBGB itself. I’m pretty sure Blondie didn’t say “It was dangerous & we loved it” about the CBGB movie made by the guy who made H-E Double Hockey Sticks.

The trailer closes out with some scrawny wiener in a tanktop lip-syncing the Police’s “Roxanne,” and that’s really when the trailer fully hits you. Some have dug deep into this movie, criticizing it for its inaccuracies, but that’s not the way to approach it. Approach it for the pure, unadulterated awfulness that it is. Let it wash over you. Lose yourself in it. Everything that was once good is now bad. Punk is a bad movie. Everything you love will eventually die out. Life is terrible. Life is beautiful.

Come back next Friday for another edition of Garbage Day, where we dig through pop culture’s trash cans and pick something slimy to keep forever.