It's impossible to overstate the impact of The Stooges. They mined a tough vein, and brought to the surface something wild and feral. Iggy Pop calls the group "Dionysian". In the timeline of Rock, one could say that The Doors pointed the way, The Stooges barreled down the path where, at the far end, lurked the Pistols. In that sense, The Stooges bridged two generations, psychedelic and punk, and maintain relevance well into the following century.

Jarmusch is well placed to tell their story. He's best where the bands' origins and early years are concerned: working class kids creating something together under insurmountable odds. The Stooges aggression, their preference for cold-cocking an audience with short, industrial, bursts, rather than meandering album-side long songs popular at the time, sets them far apart from their contemporaries. Jarmusch does a good job with this material. I found myself really caring about these guys.

But once The Stooges are settled into the comparably mundane role of a studio act, the narrative tends to drift. There are inklings of what pulled the band apart. These are mentioned but not explored. There is next to nothing about Iggy's solo career, which would have filled a huge gap in the timeline. As it happens, The Stooges are presented in their ferocity as youths in the Sixties and Seventies, and then there is a leap through time to Coachella 2003. Now they're ready to be your grandparents.

It feels to me that Jarmusch missed his mark. He's done so much other work with Iggy. This could have been a wild ride. Instead it starts well, and then settles into the tropes of a PBS profile. It could be that Jarmusch's usual detached, ironic style simply cannot match the in-your-face, ferocity of The Stooges. Hence a straightforward documentary.

Gimme Danger is a documentary about Iggy and the Stooges by Jim Jarmusch. At the start Jarmusch says he’s making a movie about “The greatest Rock ‘N’ Roll band in history.”

The movie covers Iggy’s early exposure to music and how that led to his first bands in high school. How the Stooges were formed. How they weren’t political and yet they were. For instance he said they lived in a squat together in Detroit and were Communists because they lived together and shared everything. Mc5 came along and helped them sign a music deal but Iggy was disillusioned with the business believing it was exploited by record companies and managers to put out puffy pop music. Then drugs wrecked everything.

At the same time it’s really apparent that they couldn’t really play for a long time and they tried to have free form songs like Jazz going on and on that were really bad. They were trying to experiment and were under the influence of drugs but when they can’t play making long songs just ends up sounding like garbage.

There’s old photographs, archival footage, random shots of the 50s and 60s, and music by the Stooges thrown in to push the story along. The major drawback is that the vast majority of the movie is just Iggy talking. It’s a traditional approach but maybe they could have done somethings just a little different.

Good. But…There’s so many holes in the story presented here…. By most accounts, early on (post his “blues drummer period”) Iggy was highly influenced performance-wise by seeing the Doors (specifically Jim Morrison) but no mention…The whole demise of the Raw Power era Stooges is totally glossed over in about 60 seconds. The making of this seminal record is given short shrift as is the actual release of Raw Power - watching this, it would appear the album more or less never even came out, there should be more about the band’s demise and descent into drugs in Hollywood - tons of good stories there (The “Murder of a Virgin” incident at Rodney's with Ig & Ron anyone???), but we get little on this pivotal band ending... No mention at all of Scott Thurston being added to the band on piano (but we see him pictured in a band photo), or the "infamous" Metallic K.O. gig/album etc... some of the most interesting bits of the story are just M.I.A .here. Another minute or two on Iggy's late 70's -80's and on solo work could've really helped get us get up-to-date, putting the return of the Stooges in better context. I could go on… A little added content and better chronology would vastly improve this doc's historical timeline. Jarmusch dIdn't go deep here (when going deep might've made for much more interesting film) this is more like a fireside (or laundryroom chat as the case may be) with Iggy & some of the boys AND unfortunately not a deeper exploration into the FULL story of this band who were ahead of their time & changed how we hear rock & roll.

Jim Jarmoush did a great job of telling the story and getting out of the way--the film had a few animations and other nice directoral touches, but mainly let the Stooges themselves and their friends, families, and management speak and the footage rock.
I was a bit disappointed that the film focused on just The Stooges--their initial run from 1967 to 1974...5(?) and then the "reunifications" as Iggy calls them, skipping over any bit of Iggy's solo career. However, that makes for a better film because there was definitely enough material there. The solo careers of the other Stooges are covered in brief.

This is a must for any Stooges fan, or for any fan of rock/punk. The Stooges were one of the most under-rated and under-appreciated acts of all time. The idea that this music didn't become mainstream boggles the mind. This is a great documentary that takes you on the Stooges journey and gives Iggy's perspective of things. Above and beyond the great music, one of the things that will really jump out at you is the respect and love of playing together that the different members of the band had for each other. This is a fascinating journey of a group of individuals who did it their way and were all the better for it. Long live the Stooges; their legend will only grow.

Pretty good documentary about a very interesting performer, Iggy Pop. I'd only recently discovered him and was hoping for more live footage - most of the performance footage in the film has no sound and is only subtly connected to the music playing. It's unsatisfying. You crave a live connection and that disconnection of sound and image creates a barrier. I've seen it twice and both times found it interesting but a bit disconnected and uninspiring.

I grew up outside of Detroit and was just hitting my teenaged years when the Stooges started getting airplay. Their music felt just right to me, as opposed to some other local musicians like Nugent or Bob Seeger. I can't begin to imagine the kind of big money Osterberg could've raked in over the years if he'd played along with record company execs, but he always stayed true to himself. Even then he always managed to stay relevant. I respect the hell out of him for never selling out and can't think of another artist who can say the same.

....Iggy Pop as Charles Manson doing Peter Pan...the world is still not quite ready..?
This is a remarkable film on many levels in what it reveals about it's era, the music business, trying to get a band
together, growing up in a trailer and getting to know your parents, artistic desire, having a great band that falls apart...
the best part of it is that some dudes in the mid-west dug rocknroll and went for it