Gimme Danger: Iggy Pop

BY: Howard Karren

“We are in an undisclosed location, interrogating Jim Osterberg about the Stooges, the greatest rock ’n’ roll band ever,” says director Jim Jarmusch as he sits across from Iggy Pop (Osterberg’s nom de rock) to film his new documentary, Gimme Danger, which has been released this fall in theaters only from Magnolia Pictures and Amazon Studios. Jarmusch’s superlative description of the band fits the exuberant, celebratory tone of his movie. “Gimme Danger is more an essai than a document,” he says. “It presents the story of the Stooges, their influences and their impact, complete with some never-before-seen footage and photographs. Like the band and their music, Gimme Danger is a little wild, messy, emotional, funny, primitive and sophisticated in the most unrefined way.” Jarmusch is not overstating it: The Stooges, which hailed from Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1967, were together for seven years (they reunited in 2003), and in that time came to define the rawness and boundless energy of rock—as well as its unadorned directness—clearly inspiring the punk and alternative music movements that followed. (They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010.) Front and center was Iggy, gyrating like a baboon (his word) zapped with electricity, yelling till his voice gave out, jumping into the crowd, inviting abuse. He was and is a phenomenon unto himself. “I don’t wanna belong to the bland people, alternative people, to any of it,” Osterberg says. “I don’t wanna be a punk—I just wanna be.”