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Very much looking forward to seeing this film (smallness, tenderness, and Morrissey notwithstanding): http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/movies/28doll.html(via Metafilter) Greg Whiteley's small, tender documentary portrait "New York Doll" looks at life after rock 'n' roll as experienced by Arthur (Killer) Kane, the original bassist for the legendary glam-punk band the New York Dolls. After the Dolls broke up in 1975 amid the standard rock madness of drink, drugs and excess, Mr. Kane labored in miserable obscurity on the West Coast, living from hand to mouth, battling drugs, alcohol, depression and poverty, until he went into recovery and found religion.
As "New York Doll" sweetly reveals, Mr. Kane belatedly found a kind a peace that culminated with a sweet moment of recognition. Filmed last year, the bassist, in his mid-50's, comes across as a soft-spoken, damaged soul who has found refuge and hope in the Mormon Church, in whose Family History Center library he works.
Since his days as a New York Doll, the band's legend has only grown. To hear musicians like Chrissie Hynde, Bob Geldof and Morrissey tell it in the movie, the Dolls were a beacon of light pumping adrenaline, sass and originality into a scene bogged down in the pretensions and formulas of progressive rock and heavy metal. Unleashing their assault while wearing platform heels, skin-tight pants, towering hair, smeared lipstick and mascara, the Dolls affected the defiant stance of sloppy transvestite hookers.
Last year, Morrissey, the morose, misanthropic singer-songwriter who first heard the Dolls when he was 13, invited Mr. Kane to participate in a concert reunion of the three surviving Dolls at the 2004 Meltdown Festival in London. The movie follows his cautious re-entry into the rock 'n' roll life. He redeems his guitars from a pawnshop, meets his former band mates David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain, and travels to London for an event that he describes in the film as literally an answered prayer. The bad feelings he has harbored toward Mr. Johansen, after he went on to have success as Buster Poindexter, evaporate. And Mr. Kane, who died of leukemia shortly after the concert, drinks in every delicious second of his last hurrah.Film site: http://www.newyorkdollmovie.com/
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