If you’re looking for a movie with energy, zip over to the Revue Cinema this Thursday (May 12) for a one-night-only screening of The Damned: Don’t You Wish That We Were Dead. Shot over three years, Wes Orshoski’s documentary captures the seminal punk band – founded by David Vanian, Rat Scabies, Captain Sensible and Brian James, and since 2004 as it marks its 35th anniversary with a concert tour.
Orshoski – who co-directed the charming Lemmy a few years back – spent three years making this movie, talking to both the original Damned members and the musicians who’ve been part of it over the decades about their music and their personality conflicts – which are legion. (Scabies fell out with Sensible and James in the 80s, and hasn’t played with the band in decades.)
Messy and loud, it’s everything an aging punk fan could want. Not only is there plenty of footage of the band goofing around and grappling with their failure to become superstars while other acts blew up across the globe, but there’s four decades’ worth of archival footage, treating fans to their younger, angrier selves.
Stories are offered by virtually everyone of consequence in the punk world (including Chrissie Hynde, who played with most of the original Damned members in the band Masters Of The Backside), but the most interesting observations are made by the Damned themselves. As David Vanian points out in a voiceover, it’s a wonder that they’re all still alive – that none of them overdosed or drove a tour bus off the road. God knows they tried.
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normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
