(Beth B, USA, 2019, 77 minutes)
New York filmmaker Beth B has been documenting, fictionalizing, and re-contextualizing underground culture since the late-1970s, perfectly positioning her to take on a profile of no wave performer and spoken word artist Lydia Lunch.
For the most part, Beth cedes the stage to Lunch, whose interview forms the spine of the film. If her stories can be unsettling, she has a compelling way of telling them. It isn't just her nicotine-burnished voice or her bluntly poetic words, but the wry humor that underpins most everything she says. As with her lyrics and poetry, she sounds like someone who emerged from the womb knowing the score.
Lunch explains that she grew up in Rochester, NY during an era of protest, and took inspiration from those who stood up for their beliefs. It led her to trade the constraints of suburbia for the no-holds-barred freedoms of pre-gentrification NYC. Performances by Suicide and Mars inspired her to start her own band, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, through which she channeled her rage at patriarchy, authority, and bourgeois complacency.
The group secured their reputation through an appearance on 1978's Eno-compiled No New York alongside other heavy hitters, like DNA and the Contortions. While some colleagues downplayed their image with nondescript outfits, Lunch played up her crimson-lipped, Bettie Page-meets-Anna Karina good looks. Other groups, releases, video projects, and musical collaborations followed with Nick Cave, Rowland S. Howard, and Jim "Foetus" Thirlwell. Though not mentioned in the film, she would also collaborate with Einstürzende Neubauten, Swans, and Sonic Youth on 1985's immortal "Death Valley '69."
Alongside her music career, Beth covers Lunch's years as a Richard Kern collaborator. Though she helped to shape the material, Kern expresses disappointment that Village Voice critic J. Hoberman found their sexually-explicit 1985 film The Right Side of My Brain "misogynist." If anyone was exploiting Lunch, both participants agree, it was Lunch herself. She and Kern also worked with Beth B; Kern appears in 1991's American Nightmare and Lunch appears in 1996's Visiting Desire. (I've reviewed two other documentaries by the filmmaker, but haven't seen any of her short films.)
As the documentary unfurls, it becomes clear that there isn't much difference between Lunch in person and Lunch on stage.
Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and L7's Donita Sparks reminisce about the wilder moments they spent with her, though band mate and future Bad Seed Jim Sclavunos's story goes furthest in ways I won't spoil here. Other speakers include the Geraldine Fibbers' Carla Bozulich, the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black's Kembra Pfahler, performance artist Ron Athey, and Darkside's Nicolas Jaar, an ardent fan who would become a friend.
If some of her peers have mellowed out--or died in the case of Howard--Lunch isn't likely to follow suit any time soon. As Nick Soulsby puts it in the film's companion book, "A devotion to nomadism, physical and intellectual, seem to have made her immune to the drag factors that tell humans to buy a couch, sit down, shut up, and repeat themselves ad infinitum."
Forty years after she began, she's been performing with her band Retrovirus featuring guitarist Weasel Walter, bass player Tim Dahl, and former Sonic Youth and Pussy Galore drummer Bob Bert, a friend for 36 years.
I doubt Beth B will mellow out any time soon either, though I wish she had explored Lunch's entrepreneurial side as the founder of her own recording and publishing company. It may represent the less sexy part of her story, but when it comes to sticking it to the man--Lunch's modus operandi--acting as her own boss was one of the most punk things she ever did.
Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over is available via Kino Marquee and the usual digital operators (Google Play, YouTube, Vudu). Nick Soulsby's book is out via Jawbone Press. Images: portrait from Kino Lorber, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks from Discogs, and Lunch-as-seen-by-Kern from Subbacultcha.