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Hated: G.G. Allin and the Murder Junkies
(1994)
Dir: Todd Phillips
This DVD made me sick. Surprisingly, it was not video footage of a nude G.G. in cowboy boots, eating his own shit, smearing it on his face, chest and pecker then humping a wall that did this. It was the bonus footage of G.G.’s final show in NYC. Shot with a camcorder, this 50+ minute record of the three-song set, subsequent riot, police evasion and fevered quest for some post gig heroin is so herky jerky that I felt like I was hanging over the edge of a dingy during a typhoon. It is a fascinating addition, if not a bit cryptic, as G.G. fatally overdosed later the same night. His final hours were spent tramping around the city in hotpants and combat boots, with a gaggle of feeble-minded worshippers in dragging pursuit.
With this brief documentary, Phillips gives the legendary masochistic, nihilistic punker an extended, poetic, and absolutely warranted, eulogy. Culling interviews with high school friends and teachers, band mates, disgruntled former band mates, fans and G.G. himself, and blending them with footage of various live performances and some of his own time spent with the little grommet, Phillips (who went on to direct Old School and Starsky and Hutch) opens a somewhat loving window into the artist’s lonely, destructive universe. Hated touches on the blood, the poopie, the laughter, the live esthetic and the shitty tattoos.
Throughout, G.G. does all sorts of garish things that clearly outline his world vision, but in a snippet of his appearance on Geraldo, he gives it a religious edge, “My body is the rock and roll temple, and my flesh, blood and body fluids are the communion to the people, whether they like it or not.”
The film illustrates G.G.‘s emergence as something of a cult leader, with devotees who are more than willing to be the targets of his flying fists and bowel movements. Inadvertently, Hated also reveals G.G. as a bit of a Buddhist. On the same Geraldo program he gives the following as an example of his lyrics:
The song, “I Love Nothing”
People and possessions only slow me down/I’m on a burning bridge, you’re in my way, you’re going down.
Then in a hotel-room interview, he continues on the same train of Eastern thought, “I don’t think about the future, I think about what’s happening today. Fuck tomorrow, it’s really not important … as far as tomorrow, we’ll get there when we get there.”
I guess to slice your chest with torn aluminum while your own feces dribbles out of your mouth, you really have to be living in the now.
When asked to describe G.G., Dino, the naked drummer of the Murder Junkies, calls him, “An extremely outrageous and beautiful person. Likes to have fun. No hold-barred, no limits. If it were up to him, he would do anything he could do, and that includes everything, just to make himself and others laugh. He’s also a serious social comment on the problems of violence in the human race. There’s far too much violence and not enough sweetness, and that’s basically, if you ask me, what his whole act centers on.”
This is a rarefied outlook on the man, but it reminds me of the image of G.G. that I found most haunting. In the aforementioned bonus reel, G.G. goes headlong into his set wearing nothing but tiny black underwear, seemingly unaware that he has half a wedgie. Throughout the documentary, G.G. continually insists that he doesn’t give a fuck people think about him. This is impossible to believe with him putting on such an attention hungry show, traditionally going so far as to assault his crowd. But with his undies halfway up his ass crack and his pasty, scarred flesh quivering with anticipation, it’s nice to see him as just another confused flawed person existing in a vast sea of the same.
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