The Decline of Western Civilization (1981)

"Dirty and loud, this film put a face to the music that represented the ultimate freedom from the suburbs. Pre-YouTube, footage of these bands was super hard to come by. There were only a couple videotapes floating around… and once in a while, you could see something truly outré on “120 Minutes”… but in truth, if you weren’t in LA/NY/DC, you missed out on most of the scene. Like water to the desert, Penelope Spheeris’s film brought the culture into our lives. And shortly thereafter, I had myself a hideous painted leather jacket — just like Darby Crash."

"She made three in the series, this, then II and III. This one is about hardcore punk in L.A. in the early ’80s so there’s a lot of Black Flag and that whole scene. Its aesthetic was one of the main influences that Chris Blauvelt and I used for Mid90s – for the way things looked, the way the backstage in the apartment looked, for the 16 mm. It’s a remarkable and encompassing snapshot of a scene that I’m personally drawn to, and the ethics and aesthetics of the film are as fucked up and raw as what it’s depicting. The crazy thing is that Penelope Spheeris started as a punk doc maker and ended up directing broad ’90s comedies - she made Wayne’s World (1992)! She also made Suburbia (1983), which is amazing, and another influence for Blauvelt and I. The main thing I did when I became a known as a an actor and had access to people and filmmakers, was me saying, like, “Hi, I’m the kid from Superbad, can I please have all the Decline movies?” That’s how I abused fame at that time."