Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (2013–2018): Season 12, Episode 7 - Lower East Side - full transcript
Bourdain takes a personal journey through this formerly bohemian New York City neighborhood, as he meets, shares meals and reflects with music, film and art trailblazers.
[static crackling]
[soft music]
♪
- New York City
during the 1970s
was a beautiful,
ravaged slag...
[loud distortion]
[soft music resumes]
Impoverished and neglected
after suffering from decades
of abuse and battery.
She stunk of sewage, sex,
rotting fish,
and day-old diapers.
She leaked from every pore.
- [screams]
[punk rock music,
early hip-hop music]
[soft music resumes]
No wave was the waste product
of "Taxi Driver,"
Times Square, the Son of Sam,
the blackout of '77--
the desperate need
to violently rebel
against the complacency
of a zombie nation
dumbed down
by sitcoms and disco.
♪
We were howling with delight,
laughing like lunatics
in the madhouse
that was New York City...
♪
Thrilled to be rubbing up
against the freaks
and other outcasts
who somehow...
for some unknowable reason,
had all decided
to run to land's end
and, all at once,
scream their bloody heads off.
[loud distortion]
all: [chanting]
It's our fucking park!
[upbeat rock music]
both: ♪ I took a walk
through this ♪
♪ Beautiful world
♪ Felt the cool rain
on my shoulder ♪
♪ Found something good
in this ♪
♪ Beautiful world
♪ I felt the rain
getting colder ♪
♪
- ♪ La, la
- ♪ Sha la, la, la, la
♪ Sha la, la, la, la
- ♪ Sha la, la, la
- Sha la, la, la, la ♪
♪ Sha la, la, la, la, la
[loud beep]
[sirens wailing]
[horns honking]
- Nothing but
a bunch of crack heads,
Dope fiends and
motherfuckers
- This is a show
about a very special place...
[whirring]
A very special time...
[horn blaring]
And some very special people.
So much happened,
so much began
on New York's Lower East Side.
Those buildings
are still there.
Yeah, all of them.
Yeah, I mean, I know
every corner I ever drank
by order of, like,
preference, you know,
'cause there was some,
you know,
you'd really rather
not to go to.
That was, like, sort of, like,
you know, a last resort.
- Yeah.
- Somewhere, uh...
there was a hole, a big hole
in the wall right there.
Basically like a car-sized
hole in a wall.
You'd step into
an abandoned space.
I didn't know
any spots down there.
I mean, people would take me,
of course.
- Yeah, yeah.
- But it was not my regular.
My regular was here,
at Executive and Laredo
were my preferred.
But for a while,
I had to go specifically--
- Hot zone.
- Yeah.
[film reel clicking]
[jazzy rock music]
♪
The Lower East Side
was in many ways
the cradle of New York.
[clears throat]
The Lower East Side
was in many ways
the cradle of New York,
where new arrivals
first settled,
built communities,
and later, moved on,
only to be replaced by others.
♪
In the New York City
of the '70s,
nearly bankrupt,
riddled with corruption,
the Lower East Side,
particularly Alphabet City,
was left to fend for itself.
♪
Huge swaths of it abandoned,
ruined, or simply empty.
♪
Much of it became an open-air
supermarket for drugs,
whole blocks taken over
by organized drug gangs.
♪
Rents were cheap,
and the neighborhood started
to attract a newer,
highly energized,
and creative group of people
who wanted to make things--
Music, poetry,
movies, and art.
♪
It seemed at the time,
everybody was a star
and, for a while at least,
that it was a golden time.
But it was dangerous.
You lived down here,
you had to be tough
and talented
and often very quick.
♪
Now...
things are different...
very different.
- Everybody together.
Ready?
One, two, three.
Pick those feet up six inches
and hold.
Bring that arm over.
Pin the wrist, let's go.
Is everybody clear?
- Yes.
- I can't hear you.
all: Yes!
- Okay, on three.
One, two, three, let's go.
["I Love My Life"
by Harley Flanagan]
♪
♪ My love,
what's your number? ♪
♪ Don't know if I'll survive
♪ Street crime and violence
♪ All I see is grime
♪ But one thing that I know
♪ That's why I love, love,
love my life ♪
♪
So, I mean, this is pretty much
some of the last remnants
of what the Lower East Side
kind of used to be like,
you know?
Good, old-school,
no elevator.
[laughs]
- You didn't live
in this building?
- No, this wasn't the building
I lived in.
This is a squat, though,
that actually became legal.
I was actually in that building
right there.
When I lived in it,
it was--
you know, we had no windows,
no front doors, you know?
You'd find a door
in the street.
You'd put it up and chain it up
yourself, you know?
No running water, I used to...
bathe in the fire hydrant
in front of the building,
and I used to sleep
with my pit bull
so rats wouldn't get too close
to me at night.
- Right?
- You know?
[sirens wailing]
[soft music]
- You actually grew up here.
What was that like growing up--
growing up here?
Being a little kid here?
- My main problem
growing up down here
was that I lived
on a gang block.
- Right.
- The gang on my block
was called the Hitmen,
and, you know,
they were no joke, right?
And I remember, they would be
hanging out on the stoop
on the church across
the street, smoking dust.
All of them
with their golf clubs
and 007 knives, and everybody'd
be listening to...
of all things, Kraftwerk.
- Right.
- "Trans-Euro Express."
- Right.
- They'd be out there screaming
"we're going to kill
the next [...] that comes out
of that building,
and I'm laying there,
thinking, "Oh, I got to go
to school tomorrow, man."
♪
I was never a violent person.
You know, Christ,
I was raised by hippies,
but I was thrown
into a crazy environment
where I had no choice
but to fight my way through it.
I always had a cue ball
and a sock in my pocket.
I'd split your head open
quicker than you could
say "What the--"
[loud distortion]
And it did turn me into a bit
of a problem as a teenager,
you know?
- I would guess.
Wait a minute, I don't
have to guess, I know.
- [laughs]
[heavily distorted punk music]
- The first time I saw you,
you were, famously, that 12-year-old drummer
in the Stimulators.
Your aunt was in the band.
- Yeah.
That was the only reason
we were allowed to play
at most of the clubs
is because
I had a "relative" who was
basically my legal guardian.
I need to get
a vanilla egg cream.
What are you getting?
- Chocolate egg cream.
- Chocolate egg cream.
- Yeah.
One vanilla, one chocolate.
- I got PTSD, man.
It's like, I just feel like
I'm seeing ghosts
when I'm down here, man.
I miss it, though. I tell you--
as much as I paint it
as this horror story,
which it was, I loved it.
You know, it'll always be
a part of who I am.
My man.
- Cheers.
- All right, Ray,
thanks for the egg cream.
- That is a superb egg cream.
- They don't make them
no better.
[static crackles]
[haunting soft music]
♪
- You're always talking
about what?
- I had a signed "The Last"--
What is it? "The Last Words
of Dutch Schultz."
You came here first
as a writer, as a poet.
New York, in your mind, was
where the writer's life was?
- Yeah, well, it was
just the place
that had the most stimulation.
- Was music even
in the back of your head,
or was poetry and writing?
- My model was Dylan Thomas
when I was a teenager.
You know, so being
a drunken womanizer,
that was my ambition.
[laughter]
[upbeat rock music]
♪
- You woke up
in your own lifetime,
open up a paper,
and realized,
"There's, like, a million kids
in Britain dressing like me
and cutting
their hair like me."
And you have this inadvertent,
tectonic effect
on kids all over the world.
- Well, it wasn't inadvertent,
but it was indirect.
I mean, I wanted
to have that effect.
[slow rock music]
♪
Other bands who responded
to the way I was doing things got famous,
so it ended up having this
huge impact and influence.
When I first saw a picture
of the Sex Pistols,
it was like--
I just had to laugh.
- That's a charitable
interpretation of events.
Malcolm McLaren came to
New York and saw the Voidoids
and went back
and built a boy band,
and said, "You're going
to dress like that guy."
- Yeah, I don't really
look at it that way.
- [speaks indistinctly]
- Yeah.
- All right.
- I mean, ideas are free.
I never resented that.
- Mm-hmm.
- But it was funny and strange.
♪
- Cheap rent brought
a lot of people together.
It wasn't just
living spaces were cheap.
There were venues
where you could put
whatever it was
you did out there.
- Yeah, CBGB's didn't exist
until we created it.
I mean, we went and proposed
that we be
the house band there.
- This next number
is called
"I Belong To
The Blank Generation"
[crowd shouting, applause]
One, two, three!
[bright horn music]
♪
- And then your band,
the Voidoids--
what were your expectations?
- I wanted everything
that anybody
who starts a band wants,
but I didn't even quite realize
how weird and uncommercial I was.
[static crackles]
I thought what I was doing
was really catchy.
[laughs]
- Do we over-romanticize
that period?
Was it special?
- I think the creation
of the mythology of the '70s
kind of began
in the mid-'90s.
I can see why people who weren't there
wish they were there, but it goes
against all my instincts
to think that way
just because the idea is
we didn't like
where things were,
so we decided to change them.
- Why are you here tonight?
- I guess we're just interested
to see what's going on.
We saw a bit in--I think
it was "The New Yorker."
More or less,
to see what was happening.
Simple as that.
- How about you?
- It's a fascinating place,
I must say.
It's probably one of the most
interesting places in New York.
Just simply the...
the neon lights
and the crowd here--
it's all very interesting.
- Would you come here again?
- No.
[laughs]
[raucous percussion]
♪
- Have you ever considered
writing a dish-y memoir?
I mean, my God,
it would be 800 pages long.
- Yeah, you know why?
Because so many people
are still alive.
- I mean, people love you.
- Yeah.
They have to say that.
How can you say something mean
about somebody
who might be mean back at you?
- It's an industry.
Are you kidding me?
[groovy music]
♪
- People will ask,
"What was it like
the first time you saw Iggy?"
And I didn't see him.
I heard the music
from down the hall.
I mean, I thought,
"This is the rock and roll
I always wanted to hear"--
something
that was this fierce.
And yet, you could sense--
there was a tune there.
- When I bought "Funhouse"
in high school...
- Yeah.
- I was immediately
ostracized.
- Yeah.
- This was defining music.
And normal people
didn't like it.
- The Ramones met because
they were poor outcasts
in a high school of 5,000
people who liked "Funhouse."
- Right.
- Okay?
They had it all figured out,
that they would sell
as many records
as the great record sellers
would sell,
and in a few years,
they would have so much money
that they would retire
and never have to work again.
- Right, especially
with each other.
- Yeah.
[both laugh]
Guess what. They had to say on the road for another...
- 25 years.
- Yes.
You know where their greatest
financial success
has come from?
"Hey, ho, let's go"...
- Right.
- Sung in football and soccer
stadiums around the world.
The Ramones' estates
are gathering in more money
from five seconds than they
ever made in their--
Is that the measure
of greatness or eternity?
It's one of them.
[calm music]
♪
- So many people died.
So many people
didn't get recognized.
Richard Hell's still living
in the same apartment
he lived in 40 years ago.
- Who likes to move
in New York?
He got a good deal.
The neighborhood got all better
around him, you know?
Iggy was supposed the one
who didn't make it most of all,
and he's still there--
the most dangerous.
- [chuckles]
- God sends us these signs
that there are miracles,
don't give up hope.
What you believe is beautiful
probably is,
but not everyone
will know it in time.
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
- Okay, my name's
Hugh Mackie.
I moved over here in '81
and started this shop in '86.
[metal clatters]
When we opened this shop here,
we were the only, like,
business on the block.
We were the only,
like, real thing
apart from just mayhem
down here.
[metal clatters]
Basically, it's been
a one-man show
with one person helping me,
and we still fix
old British bikes.
We're really into it,
but nowadays,
there aren't so many people
into it anymore,
and the supply of bikes
is dwindling.
[hammer pounding]
It's gotten to the point now
where I'm the only
bad thing on the block.
I'm now the mess.
I'm now the noise.
I'm the scruffy building.
[indistinct chatter]
It's not that anymore.
It's just not.
I mean, it's super-expensive
restaurants,
which come and go
every five years.
High-heeled girls
with mink coats
are out getting into fancy
schnitzel restaurants,
and they're standing on rats,
and they think that's cool.
What they don't know is that
before the restaurants were
here, there were no rats.
So now all these, like, rich
people are coming down here
and standing on rats
and think
that's East Village,
and it never was, you know?
So...
[engine revs]
[tense music]
♪
- How hard was it to--
if you're coming to New York,
a section of New York
that's completely broke--
You are broke.
You're going to be an artist,
and not just art,
but fairly confrontational.
How committed do you have to be
to do that,
particularly at that time?
- I think that...
contrarily, it hasn't
been that hard.
I feel like
I've been very fortunate
to have got
to stay alive here, so...
And I have everything I need.
Look around us.
[mellow rock music]
♪
It's a wonderful
amusement park
of good and bad ideas
all happening at once.
You know how people
immigrate here
to start a new life
and to dream big?
I felt like I needed
to do that as well,
just like the way
that people did
at the turn of the century.
You move to New York
to immigrate to a new land,
to start...a new life.
And that's really what the
Lower East Side is all about.
♪
You know, it was an extremely
rare and wonderful time.
I think only now do I realize
how fortunate I was
that I got to experience
a neighborhood
that had Jack Smith
on 1st Avenue,
that had the Living Theatre,
that had Jonas Mekas
on 2nd Street.
- Who thrilled you back then?
Who was doing stuff
that you just thought
just, "Holy shit,
this is really incredible
and inspiring"?
- Um, well, gosh.
Um, luckily, my friends
that I was working with
were very inspiring.
I loved Joe Coleman's work.
[slides clicking]
[haunting soft music]
♪
- The Lower East Side
at that time
was a destination for me.
There was something,
you know, that compelled me,
you know, to just be there,
and I would paint it.
Squeeze in.
- Yeah. Wow.
Wow.
Oh, yes, you were telling me
about this guy.
- Yeah, yeah, and here,
if you want to use this...
- It's beautiful.
[dramatic music]
♪
- You know, all the paintings are novels, you know?
You know, so it's a dense story,
and the more that you look, the more that you learn.
And it's in nonlinear time,
you know?
Like, you're exploring, you know, at your own pace,
whatever you want to look at.
And someone else might start in a different place,
and, you know, it might tell a different story.
♪
- The performance art,
at what point--
So you came to paint, or did
you come to paint before?
- No, I came to paints,
but the paintings were...
like, implosions, where I was
studying the world around me
and myself inside,
and the performances
became literal explosions.
[screaming wildly]
[heavy rock music]
♪
I learned violence
from my old man.
So I was angry, you know?
When your house is on fire,
you know,
you don't read poetry,
and you don't, you know,
sing a folk song.
You know, you got to scream.
[screaming wildly]
♪
[indistinct chatter]
- I missed all the great art
of the time.
I came for heroin,
and I came for music.
Other than that,
I didn't live here.
But, man, a lot of people
didn't make it,
and I remember,
I guess around 1980,
it was like...
something is happening,
and no one knows what it is.
- You mean the AIDS?
- AIDS.
- Yeah, yeah,
a lot of that time
exists in my mind like a dream,
like an opium dream.
[slowed distorted speech]
[ominous music]
I have these people
that I love
that would just, like,
drop out and fall out.
I'm a little bit sad
that I wasn't there.
I wasn't present,
you know, for them,
because I was too off
in this other world.
[distorted screaming]
♪
But for me,
it was still something
of great beauty
to see that time.
You have Wall Street tycoons
fighting for huge amounts
of wealth,
and you have, like, bums
fighting over, like, pennies.
And it has, like...
you know,
a primal, like, awe.
- It's for Passover,
matzo brei--
special matzo, special days.
[dishes clattering]
[indistinct chatter,
cash register bell dings]
[clattering continues]
[man speaking native language]
[upbeat music]
[man speaking native language]
- [laughs]
- Yes, sir.
- I've been coming here
since 1966.
- Over 50 years.
- Only 5 years.
- It's family.
[man speaking native language]
[upbeat rock music]
So everyone should come,
but not too many people.
- Yeah.
[man speaking native language]
[dramatic opera music]
♪
- This is one of the places that Keith, Harry, and I
would love to come here.
Jean-Michel would join us,
and we would have good meals here on the regular.
And it was consistently
the exact--
you know it's great
when you can go someplace--
they have the exact same food.
Come on, this is it?
- It's still the same?
- Still exactly the same.
- That's encouraging.
- Which is great, it's great.
I mean, you know, even though
there's a hotel
three doors away...
- Right.
- And high rises going up,
we can still have
a decent meal.
[groovy music]
♪
- You brought hip-hop culture
to a very finite number
of people initially
on the Lower East Side.
- Yeah. Mm-hmm.
- Totally changed the world.
- ♪ Everybody get funky
[funky music]
♪ Everybody get funky
♪
- Teenagers at that time were
doing something interesting,
so I wanted to find some people
that would listen
to these ideas,
and that's what lead me
to the Lower East Side
and to connect with--
- I guess you met
Glenn O'Brien.
- Glenn O'Brien, yeah.
- ♪ Everybody get funky
- Glenn was key to it all,
because I would read
his column
in "Interview" magazine,
and it was just brilliant,
and I met him,
and he embraced me
and invited me to
be a part of "TV Party,"
which was this underground--
- Oh, I remember it well.
I watched it at the time.
- Hi, and welcome
to "TV Party."
Fred, why don't you tell us
a little bit about what
the Holy Land looks like?
- I want you to know...
[groovy music]
That I've been
to the Holy Land,
and the Holy Land is so funky.
- How funky is it?
- It's funky!
It's funky!
And through that connection is where I met
all these people that listened
to all these ideas I had,
and that was David Byrne, Chris Stein and Debbie Harry,
and so many amazing people that were just like,
"Yeah, tell me more."
[distorted speech]
[indistinct chatter]
[energetic electro music]
♪
- What I think
is under-celebrated
about you guys in particular
was your kindness.
You were famously
really, really supportive
of the people
you came up with--
your contemporaries
and people around you
who weren't doing as well.
You know, let each other sleep
on each other's floors.
- Well, there was nothing
at stake.
both:
There was nothing at stake.
- And I mean this
in a good way.
You were writing hits
from the beginning.
I mean, these are
enduring songs
that people are still
listening to and hold up.
I just think a lot of people
had low expectations.
You didn't.
I mean, you had a plan, yes?
- Well, no. If we had a plan,
we would have made more money
and not got
so completely fucked over...
- Yeah.
- By the industry, as it were.
- We had a plan to survive.
- Yeah.
- We had a plan
to keep going, doggedly.
[electronic music]
♪
But I think the thing that was
so attractive about that period
was you weren't locked in
to one format or one form, you know?
It was just--
everybody was doing everything.
♪
- You introduced the entirely
revolutionary notion
that street art...
- Mm-hmm.
- Was in fact, really art.
♪
- The painting that we did on the street
was coming from a place that pop art came from as well--
like popular culture,
magazines, advertising, comics.
And so some of the first people
to buy paintings from me and Jean-Michel
was Chris and Debbie from Blondie.
And then they also commissioned
me, Lee Quiñones,
and Jean-Michel
to do sets and art
and participate
in their music videos--
some of the very first.
♪
- Your support and work
with Fab 5 Freddy--
I mean, look at the soundtrack
to the whole world now.
It's hip-hop.
That connection,
that crossover there,
you guys put considerable
muscle and gravitas.
- I talked to all these
record company guys,
and I'd say 98% of them
told me it was a fad.
- It's not going to last.
- It's going to go away
in five years.
- And you recorded a song
that was hugely...
[light music]
- Well, I will say,
you know, like, we're--
I'm very proud of the fact
that, you know,
we created a format
that didn't exist in rap
until then,
and that is that we wrote
a song that had a rap in it.
- Yeah, those guys
were sampling still.
- The rapping was only
scratching and sampling,
so we, you know,
made it viably commercial.
[groovy music]
- And then, you know,
you had another
earth-shattering event--
"Wild Style."
- I had an idea
that we could make a movie
and show that this rapping,
this dancing,
and this DJ'ing was one thing.
- ♪ Electro
- So I was on a trip
to Germany
not long after
the film had aired,
and I see these kids break-dancing.
I'm like, "What the hell is going on?"
[music skipping]
As I got closer, I noticed
the moves the kids were doing
were the exact same moves
that the Rock Steady Crew
does in "Wild Style."
But I then knew that this was
going to translate globally.
♪
- I remember
that film opening.
That was a nuclear bomb.
- Yep.
- And it ended up being, like,
the second-highest grossing--
- Second to
"Terms of Endearment,"
which not many people
think about now,
but, yeah, we did well.
- You got to love that moment
of corporate terror
in the film industry
when people are looking
at the weekend grosses,
and it's like, "What's this?"
- [laughs]
- "Who is this audience that
did not appear in our metrics?"
- Yeah, it was
a great experience.
- ♪ Electro
[tense music]
♪
[groovy music]
♪
- I came to the
Lower East Side back in 1964.
[siren wailing]
When I came here, the changes
was already in motion.
♪
There was the heroin epidemic,
the beginning
of the homeless epidemic.
And there I was,
witnessing all these changes.
[horn blares]
That's the history
of the Lower East Side.
They did not have to
go back and find themselves
on the Lower East Side.
Probably every day,
or every week,
just by walking through it...
[door creaks]
That's my connection
to the neighborhood.
That's the neighborhood
connecting to me--
you know, to photograph
that before that change.
They have
that running history.
My main thing now
is to keep a running record.
So I started the 4th Street
Photo Gallery here,
and it's been history
ever since.
[camera shutter clicks]
I'm still here. I'm surviving.
[laughs]
♪
[loud distortion]
[tense rock music]
♪
- You started making films
before you knew
how to make films.
- Yeah, yeah, the oddball thing
about it is,
knowing so little,
being an amateur
was so helpful.
Who knew that you could hire
a casting director?
No, it was just like,
"Hey, you play that,
you play that," you know.
- "Which one of our friends are
going to be around for this?"
- Exactly, "are you going to be
around next Tuesday?
'Cause I"--you know...
[rock music]
- I saw myself more as like an experimental filmmaker.
You know, like
the Godard films, for example,
they were inspiring 'cause I could say, "I could do that."
♪
- I owe a lot to Amos.
No, I saw "The Foreigner."
It was amazing.
The whole scene was there.
Everybody was there.
It was really--
- Yeah, that was a big night.
- I got so charged up.
And I was sure I was
going to make films.
♪
- And your first film
as a student film?
- My first film was
a student film--
"Permanent Vacation."
- They say people like myself
are crazy, you know,
'cause, well, you know...
- NYU film school
made a mistake,
so I had a $12,000 budget
for my first film.
- Which is enormous
for the time.
- It was huge for me.
But the root
of the word "amateur"
is "the love of a form,"
and "professional" means
you are doing it for money.
So I still hope
that I consider myself
an amateur, for sure.
♪
- What was the budget
on your first film?
- Oh, man.
- $12.
- Yeah.
Well, it depends on
what you call "first film,"
but "Blank Generation"
was like, $2,200.
[rock music]
I started shooting bands, and it was more,
"How do you shoot music with a silent camera?" basically.
And then, "Unmade Beds" was, like, my first narrative film.
It was, like, about $4,000.
- I think on "Unmade Beds,"
someone from
"The New York Times" called it
"the cinematic equivalent
of kindergarten scribbling."
And Amos put that on his
posters--"New York Times."
And that was the most,
like, punk-ass move.
♪
- So, yeah,
so what do you think now
when you walk around
the neighborhood?
You know, you paid some dues
to walk down back in the day,
and now it's
projectile-vomiting frat boys
with baseball caps
on backwards.
- Oh, man.
- Does this give you
a sinking feeling,
make you angry,
or are you just resigned?
- I wish I would have bought
real estate, that's for sure.
[laughter]
- The thing that
I always tell myself
is, "Look at the history
of New York City."
And it's always
about hustling and--
- Change.
- Change.
[groovy music]
And if you want it
to stay the same,
man, you got
the wrong historical spot,
because they're used to be
a Native American trading post
on the tip of Manhattan.
It's now Wall Street,
you know?
- ♪ I just don't want to go
♪ Out in the streets no more
[funky rock music]
♪ I just don't want to go
♪ Out in the streets no more
♪ Because these people,
they give me ♪
♪ They give me
the creeps anymore ♪
♪ Too many creeps,
too many creeps ♪
♪ Too many creeps,
too many creeps ♪
♪ Too many creeps,
too many creeps ♪
♪ Too many creeps, yeah
- Do you want to
come in for a minute?
- Yeah, sure,
I'd love to take a peek.
I'd be interested in looking
at your dope bags.
- Yeah, here's some.
I got this guy
who was a bank robber,
and he was going to jail.
He hooked me up with this.
This is from the early '80s.
- Oh, wow.
Air Mail.
- Air Mail.
- Yeah, with 12th Street.
- Yep.
- Oh, I might have
to put my glasses on
for this.
- It's a treasure.
- DOA, I remember.
- Poison, you must remember.
- Poison, yes, of course.
Evidence, the Psycho.
I remember all of those.
- Did you ever do Hellraiser?
- No, I don't remember, ever.
Toilet.
- There it is.
[camera shutter clicks]
Classic, right?
- You know, you were--
you knew you
were doing something bad
when you bought a product
called "Toilet"
and, you know,
shot it in your arm, or--
Oh, man, memories.
- Yeah.
[rock music]
♪
- I mean, basically,
your reputation is
the godfather archivist
of all things Lower East Side.
You were here pointing your camera at stuff
since the early '80s.
♪
- I probably have
one of the largest
inner-city photograph
collections of anybody.
I used to know
everybody that went by.
That neighborhood thing is,
like, really important to me.
So I photographed
the Puerto Ricans,
the Dominicans,
the drag queens
from the Pyramid Club,
basically the whole
hard-core scene in '87.
I was more interested
in, like,
the eccentric people,
the unique people.
♪
- You were at the battle
of Tompkins Square Park,
which is sort of the Gettysburg
of the Lower East Side.
[tense music]
I remember it had essentially become clogged
with nodding junkies...
- Right.
- Homeless people who'd set up permanent camp.
- It was dangerous.
- It was genuinely dangerous.
When the police came down and decided to clean the park,
the question is, who won?
- Well, in the beginning,
we did.
all: [chanting]
It's our fucking park!
It's our fucking park!
It's our fucking park!
[siren wails]
- You know, you have
to remember, in 1988,
they couldn't close
a 10 1/2-acre-square park
on the Lower East Side,
not with 450 riot cops...
[indistinct shouting]
Horses, helicopters--
they couldn't do it.
- Maybe we get the better city.
- We don't got no weapons.
They got 9 millimeters
down there!
They got shotguns
and machine guns!
- There were big bomb fighters
in the middle of Avenue A.
Buses couldn't come down,.
Cars couldn't come down.
They were stuck.
- You were on the news a lot,
I remember.
- A lot, yeah.
- You were the most, like,
despised man in--
- Yes, yes.
- NYPD, you were not their favorite photographer.
Let's put it that way.
[heavy rock music]
♪
- This went on for four years.
There were multiple riots,
hundreds and hundreds
of arrests.
♪
Four years here
of real, solid conflict.
The cops eventually
got organized.
♪
I think this was the beginning
of the sort of police-state
mentality in America.
♪
- I remember Tompkins Square.
After the police fenced it off,
it was, in a lot of people's
minds, the end of an era.
- And, yeah, when they
cleared off the drugs,
a lot of people think,
"Hey, great.
"We're now going to have
a neighborhood,
and everything's
going to be safe."
And then in came
the gentrification,
and so the whole concept of
America is being wiped out,
because you can't pull yourself
up by the bootstraps anymore
'cause you can't
get in the game.
[soft music]
Gentrification has affected
the whole city.
You have to now make a huge
amount of money to be here.
You know, they got
the skyscrapers in Midtown
that are sold--millions
of dollars apartments,
and nobody lives in them,
and they're empty.
- I live in one of those
big, empty buildings...
- Yeah.
- With absentee owners.
Is that all that's going to be left in New York?
- Yes. New York,
there was always something
that brought it back,
but once you fill it
with the corporate world,
it's never going back.
So we turned a corner that
we will never go back again.
And so it's over.
- It's over.
- It's over.
[somber music]
[tiles snapping]
[dramatic music]
♪
[heavy rock music]
[jazz music]
[heavy rock music]
[calm music]
♪
[heavy rock music]
[calm organ music]
♪
[tense music]
♪
[upbeat music]
♪
[heavy rock music]
- You know I have my eye
on the octopus.
- Okay, then I'm going to go
straight into the...
- Straight, you're going
to go straight?
You're finally going straight.
- A little too late for that.
- Oh, my God, I'm impressed.
Can you verify exactly
what "straight" means?
- No.
- No way, honey.
Even when you're straight,
you're not straight.
[rock music]
♪
- Did you expect to
make a living from your art?
- No, of course not.
- How do you--
- No, I just was happy
I didn't have to suck dick
in an Iranian shoe store.
[rock music]
♪
First of all, I thought
I would come to New York
to do spoken word,
but spoken word
didn't really exist,
so I started
Teenage Jesus and the Jerks.
♪
I really had to make the most
hideous yet precise den
I possibly could as a tantrum
against all of music
and all of society.
♪ Little orphans running
through the bloody snow ♪
♪ Little orphans running
through the bloody snow ♪
♪ Little orphans running
♪ Through the blood, through
the blood, through the-- ♪
- There were a lot of freakish,
"never could have happened
at any other time"--
it seems to me--bands
who had a ready-made audience,
okay, as you did.
You could basically say,
"I am a rock star"--
- Well, hang on, wait, wait,
reel it back, wait.
- "I am a star."
- No, no, no.
First of all, I never said
I was a fucking star.
- No, but, I mean, not by word,
but by deed and deportment.
- We are great, aren't we?
[scattered cheers]
First of all, I'm not a star.
I'm not an icon.
That might be
your midnight fantasies.
- You walked into a club,
people knew who you were.
- I didn't walk into any place
thinking I'm a star.
I walked in thinking
I had shit to do.
But I wouldn't say
I was a catalyst.
I'd say I was a cattle prod
to get people to do shows.
Booking shows, curating shows,
it's just what I do.
It's like, "Let's go,
let's do it."
And when people would ask me
to do things,
I'd go, "Yeah, I want
to do it, of course."
- Pardon me.
- People were--Beautiful--
doing things
because they had to do it,
not because
of any other grand idea.
- So what made you happy
back then?
I mean, did you
have any happy moments?
- Happiness was not the goal.
Satisfaction was the goal,
as it still is.
My anger is on a global level.
It's never on a personal level.
I'm very happy.
I'm happy to have octopus
with you tonight, my dear.
Thank you very much
for inviting me.
- Um...
- Mmm.
- Good?
- Perfect.
- Yeah.
- When was the last time
you had something
this good in your mouth?
I know you eat well,
but this is, like...
- Yeah, it's been a while.
This is pretty incredible.
- Mmm.
- Why are you here tonight?
- To see the Dead Boys.
- Why?
- 'Cause they're great fucks.
- How do you know?
- 'Cause I fucked them.
[laughs] Who do you want
the run-down on?
- Did you throw the, uh--
- Yeah, I did.
It was my present.
I'm Lunch.
They do a song called
"I Need Lunch."
I'm Lydia Lunch.
- Why did you throw that?
What was it? What was it?
- They were used tampons.
Genuinely used, new ones.
Why did I give them to them?
Because they're going to eat
them in the second set.
[discordant music]
♪
- You were featured prominently
in many of the best-known films
of the era.
- Most of which sucked.
- [laughs]
- I was trying to be
a reflection
of the reality at the time.
This why I made
the films I made,
especially with Richard Kern.
- Just drop me off.
Where are you
taking me, anyway?
- My house.
- So we did this horribly
violent film
called "Fingered"
that was based on real things
that had happened to me.
- [screams]
[indistinct shouting]
It was not glamorous.
It was not pretty.
It was offensive,
but I'm trying to work out
my psychosexual problems,
because I know
I'm not alone in them,
by making films and speeches
that will address the situation
that I know
other people suffer from.
- Okay, this was a film,
very influential,
far beyond the imaginings
at the time.
- We didn't think that
when we did it.
We didn't give a shit.
We just wanted to make a film
and get it out there because
we had to do something
because we were burning
and our blood was on fire.
[lounge music]
♪
- Looking back, though,
was it all that?
Was it a golden period?
Are you nostalgic?
- No.
- Okay.
- I am golden.
It's always
a golden period for me.
Look, we have a golden piece
of asparagus, it's golden.
- So do you have any sense of--
- No.
I fucking don't.
Those were
the bad old days, baby.
You try living on peace
of black beauties.
You try giving hand jobs
under the table today,
take your first band to Europe.
- Oh!
- You want to go back to that,
you go back to that.
How were you living?
I know the same, hand them out.
- So no sentimentality?
No nostalgia at all?
- I'm doing too much shit
all the time.
I still have shit to do.
Why am I boo-hooing
when I've just been on tour
from October from next October?
I'm not stopping.
- Youth--would you want
to go through that again,
or is it that overrated?
- Youth?
Don't I look good for my age?
- Hell, yeah.
- Shit, well, then
what do you want from me?
The older I get,
the better I taste.
What can I say?
It's like wine, baby.
- Did something special
happen then, or am I just--
- My whole life is special,
because I'm still alive,
doing what I want to fucking do
with who I want to do it with.
To me, I'm not living
in the past
because I'm living
in the present.
It's in New York,
get used to it.
It has never changed.
It had a golden moment here.
It probably had a golden moment
in the '40s, too.
I'm not sure.
I wasn't here.
Maybe the '60s,
we weren't here.
- So it was all bullshit?
- No, none of it was bullshit.
It happens when it happens,
and things change,
and time is not what it
once was as anywhere.
If you've done one thing,
you're living in the past,
and that's your glory day,
that's your glory day.
This is my glory day.
I'm here, talking to you,
eating octopus.
♪
I got my boots on his knees.
- And I'm like...
- And if only his dick
was big enough,
he'd be fucking me now, but we'r
going to go have a cigarette.
Got that?
Thank you.
- We'll be back.
[jazz music]
♪
- I try to make paintings
that are so beautiful
that I get lost
while I'm doing them.
♪
And you just hope
that other people
get lost in it the same way.
♪
- You know I have
a John Lurie over my bed.
- Oh, you posted that.
That was nice
that you posted that.
Sometimes, you know, you get
these letters and stuff.
It's like, "Your painting
saved my life," duh-duh-duh.
- Yeah.
- But then sometimes,
because I don't have
any shows...
- Oh, that's great.
- It feels pathetic, you know?
- Well, this is
incredible to me.
- What?
- You don't have shows,
like, regularly.
- That's insane.
And it's sick, and it's wrong,
and I don't even
want to complain about it.
You complain about it.
- I'm complaining about it.
- Yeah, okay.
- I am bitter.
- Because I'm going to die
one day,
and they're going to be worth
a lot of money.
- Right.
- So my paintings are going
to be on the same TV station
as Wolf Blitzer.
- Oh, they are, yes.
- This is really
a breakthrough for me.
- He's a big art fan.
- He is not.
- [laughing]
I don't--
[jazz music]
♪
- I, like, came to New York
'cause I was kind of, like, on this Coltrane thing.
I wanted to find God through music.
Like, I started meeting all these amazing people.
They were irreverent.
♪
The energy was enormous,
and it was probably more fun
than anybody's ever had
in human history
for about a year or two.
But there was no discipline, which--
I mean, I've like people who
can play their instrument
like they just found it
on the street.
- Mm-hmm.
- But they can't
just do it once--
they got to work on it.
♪
I mean, I was a serious saxophone player.
I came here as a saxophone player.
I had to hide the fact that--
- I know, right?
- I had to hide.
I mean, I really did.
I would practice
for two hours every day,
but I would, like-- I wouldn't tell people.
♪
So these are eggs...
- Mm-hmm.
- Which you could get,
you know, at the store.
If you live in
a good neighborhood,
they will even deliver them
to your house.
And then you take water...
which...
I know you go to
all these exotic places,
but they used to say that
New York had the best water.
- That is true.
- You think it's still true?
- I haven't heard anything
to say otherwise.
- Do you drink it?
- Yeah, I do.
- And then you boil them.
[igniter clicking,
flames whoosh]
And then I serve them to you.
- Outstanding.
I am grateful and honored.
- What I'm really curious--
because I've seen your show,
and I watch you sit down.
You eat, like,
some mouse head soup,
and then you go
"Mmm, it's delicious."
Just curious to see when you
eat the hard-boiled egg
if you're going to say,
"This is delicious."
- As long as there's not, like,
a half-term chicken fetus
in there,
which wouldn't be the first
time for me, by the way,
I'll be thrilled.
[groovy music]
♪
- We really felt like the universe
was between Houston and 14th Street
and Bowery and Avenue C, you know?
And if you went outside there,
you were a phony,
you were a traitor.
It's like, "We're done with you."
You might as well be an accountant.
- What about film?
I mean, as it turned out,
you ended up appearing in work
by Amos Poe, Jim Jarmusch.
All very seminal films.
- And I made my own.
I made my own films, too.
But it was
kind of just like...
you go downstairs,
you run into a friend.
You say, "You want to get
a cup of coffee?"
Then that's--
you know what I mean?
Like, there's nothing to it,
and everybody's
making these movies,
and so I do
a little music for that,
I act in that one, and I'll
hold the boom on that one.
You know, like, I didn't
think about it that much.
You know?
- Right.
- And so...
Look at that.
♪
I'm not eating this shit.
Here's a plate.
- Thank you.
Eggs, the perfect food.
Thank you, sir.
- Eat that.
I don't think I've ever
cooked for anybody before.
- Oh, well, I'm honored, sir.
So, looking back...
is there a danger
of over-romanticizing
that place and that time,
given the downside
and the body count?
- I don't know.
Does it have to end badly?
I mean, I'm glad I survived it.
I'm glad I still
got my own liver.
I'm glad I lived through it,
but it's kind of--
I don't know. I don't know
how to add that up.
- Mm-hmm.
- I'm sure glad
I didn't miss it.
["You Can't Put Your Arms
Around a Memory" plays]
- ♪ It doesn't pay to try
♪ All the smart boys
know why ♪
♪ It doesn't mean
I didn't try ♪
♪ I just never know why
♪
♪ Feel so cold
and all alone ♪
♪
♪ Baby, you're not at home
♪ And when I'm home
♪ Big deal, I'm still alone
♪
♪ Feel so restless, I am
♪
♪ Beat my head
against a pole ♪
♪ Try to knock some sense
♪ Down in my bones
♪ And though they don't show
♪ The scars aren't so old
♪ And when they go
♪ They let you know
♪ You can't put your arms
around a memory ♪
♪ You can't put your arms
around a memory ♪
♪ You can't put your arms
around a memory ♪
♪ Don't try
♪
♪ Don't try
♪
♪ You can't put your arms
around a memory ♪
♪ You can't put your arms
around a memory ♪
♪ You can't put your arms
around a memory ♪
♪ You can't put your arms
around a memory ♪
♪ You can't put your arms
around a memory ♪
[distorted rock music]
♪
- You didn't say
the egg was delicious.
- Oh, no, you're right.
- You did not.
- But I ate two of them.
- You ate two of them.
- Silence is
the highest compliment.
Just the gnashing of my jaws...
- You didn't say they--
- On those delicious,
delicious eggs.
[soft music]
♪
- New York City
during the 1970s
was a beautiful,
ravaged slag...
[loud distortion]
[soft music resumes]
Impoverished and neglected
after suffering from decades
of abuse and battery.
She stunk of sewage, sex,
rotting fish,
and day-old diapers.
She leaked from every pore.
- [screams]
[punk rock music,
early hip-hop music]
[soft music resumes]
No wave was the waste product
of "Taxi Driver,"
Times Square, the Son of Sam,
the blackout of '77--
the desperate need
to violently rebel
against the complacency
of a zombie nation
dumbed down
by sitcoms and disco.
♪
We were howling with delight,
laughing like lunatics
in the madhouse
that was New York City...
♪
Thrilled to be rubbing up
against the freaks
and other outcasts
who somehow...
for some unknowable reason,
had all decided
to run to land's end
and, all at once,
scream their bloody heads off.
[loud distortion]
all: [chanting]
It's our fucking park!
[upbeat rock music]
both: ♪ I took a walk
through this ♪
♪ Beautiful world
♪ Felt the cool rain
on my shoulder ♪
♪ Found something good
in this ♪
♪ Beautiful world
♪ I felt the rain
getting colder ♪
♪
- ♪ La, la
- ♪ Sha la, la, la, la
♪ Sha la, la, la, la
- ♪ Sha la, la, la
- Sha la, la, la, la ♪
♪ Sha la, la, la, la, la
[loud beep]
[sirens wailing]
[horns honking]
- Nothing but
a bunch of crack heads,
Dope fiends and
motherfuckers
- This is a show
about a very special place...
[whirring]
A very special time...
[horn blaring]
And some very special people.
So much happened,
so much began
on New York's Lower East Side.
Those buildings
are still there.
Yeah, all of them.
Yeah, I mean, I know
every corner I ever drank
by order of, like,
preference, you know,
'cause there was some,
you know,
you'd really rather
not to go to.
That was, like, sort of, like,
you know, a last resort.
- Yeah.
- Somewhere, uh...
there was a hole, a big hole
in the wall right there.
Basically like a car-sized
hole in a wall.
You'd step into
an abandoned space.
I didn't know
any spots down there.
I mean, people would take me,
of course.
- Yeah, yeah.
- But it was not my regular.
My regular was here,
at Executive and Laredo
were my preferred.
But for a while,
I had to go specifically--
- Hot zone.
- Yeah.
[film reel clicking]
[jazzy rock music]
♪
The Lower East Side
was in many ways
the cradle of New York.
[clears throat]
The Lower East Side
was in many ways
the cradle of New York,
where new arrivals
first settled,
built communities,
and later, moved on,
only to be replaced by others.
♪
In the New York City
of the '70s,
nearly bankrupt,
riddled with corruption,
the Lower East Side,
particularly Alphabet City,
was left to fend for itself.
♪
Huge swaths of it abandoned,
ruined, or simply empty.
♪
Much of it became an open-air
supermarket for drugs,
whole blocks taken over
by organized drug gangs.
♪
Rents were cheap,
and the neighborhood started
to attract a newer,
highly energized,
and creative group of people
who wanted to make things--
Music, poetry,
movies, and art.
♪
It seemed at the time,
everybody was a star
and, for a while at least,
that it was a golden time.
But it was dangerous.
You lived down here,
you had to be tough
and talented
and often very quick.
♪
Now...
things are different...
very different.
- Everybody together.
Ready?
One, two, three.
Pick those feet up six inches
and hold.
Bring that arm over.
Pin the wrist, let's go.
Is everybody clear?
- Yes.
- I can't hear you.
all: Yes!
- Okay, on three.
One, two, three, let's go.
["I Love My Life"
by Harley Flanagan]
♪
♪ My love,
what's your number? ♪
♪ Don't know if I'll survive
♪ Street crime and violence
♪ All I see is grime
♪ But one thing that I know
♪ That's why I love, love,
love my life ♪
♪
So, I mean, this is pretty much
some of the last remnants
of what the Lower East Side
kind of used to be like,
you know?
Good, old-school,
no elevator.
[laughs]
- You didn't live
in this building?
- No, this wasn't the building
I lived in.
This is a squat, though,
that actually became legal.
I was actually in that building
right there.
When I lived in it,
it was--
you know, we had no windows,
no front doors, you know?
You'd find a door
in the street.
You'd put it up and chain it up
yourself, you know?
No running water, I used to...
bathe in the fire hydrant
in front of the building,
and I used to sleep
with my pit bull
so rats wouldn't get too close
to me at night.
- Right?
- You know?
[sirens wailing]
[soft music]
- You actually grew up here.
What was that like growing up--
growing up here?
Being a little kid here?
- My main problem
growing up down here
was that I lived
on a gang block.
- Right.
- The gang on my block
was called the Hitmen,
and, you know,
they were no joke, right?
And I remember, they would be
hanging out on the stoop
on the church across
the street, smoking dust.
All of them
with their golf clubs
and 007 knives, and everybody'd
be listening to...
of all things, Kraftwerk.
- Right.
- "Trans-Euro Express."
- Right.
- They'd be out there screaming
"we're going to kill
the next [...] that comes out
of that building,
and I'm laying there,
thinking, "Oh, I got to go
to school tomorrow, man."
♪
I was never a violent person.
You know, Christ,
I was raised by hippies,
but I was thrown
into a crazy environment
where I had no choice
but to fight my way through it.
I always had a cue ball
and a sock in my pocket.
I'd split your head open
quicker than you could
say "What the--"
[loud distortion]
And it did turn me into a bit
of a problem as a teenager,
you know?
- I would guess.
Wait a minute, I don't
have to guess, I know.
- [laughs]
[heavily distorted punk music]
- The first time I saw you,
you were, famously, that 12-year-old drummer
in the Stimulators.
Your aunt was in the band.
- Yeah.
That was the only reason
we were allowed to play
at most of the clubs
is because
I had a "relative" who was
basically my legal guardian.
I need to get
a vanilla egg cream.
What are you getting?
- Chocolate egg cream.
- Chocolate egg cream.
- Yeah.
One vanilla, one chocolate.
- I got PTSD, man.
It's like, I just feel like
I'm seeing ghosts
when I'm down here, man.
I miss it, though. I tell you--
as much as I paint it
as this horror story,
which it was, I loved it.
You know, it'll always be
a part of who I am.
My man.
- Cheers.
- All right, Ray,
thanks for the egg cream.
- That is a superb egg cream.
- They don't make them
no better.
[static crackles]
[haunting soft music]
♪
- You're always talking
about what?
- I had a signed "The Last"--
What is it? "The Last Words
of Dutch Schultz."
You came here first
as a writer, as a poet.
New York, in your mind, was
where the writer's life was?
- Yeah, well, it was
just the place
that had the most stimulation.
- Was music even
in the back of your head,
or was poetry and writing?
- My model was Dylan Thomas
when I was a teenager.
You know, so being
a drunken womanizer,
that was my ambition.
[laughter]
[upbeat rock music]
♪
- You woke up
in your own lifetime,
open up a paper,
and realized,
"There's, like, a million kids
in Britain dressing like me
and cutting
their hair like me."
And you have this inadvertent,
tectonic effect
on kids all over the world.
- Well, it wasn't inadvertent,
but it was indirect.
I mean, I wanted
to have that effect.
[slow rock music]
♪
Other bands who responded
to the way I was doing things got famous,
so it ended up having this
huge impact and influence.
When I first saw a picture
of the Sex Pistols,
it was like--
I just had to laugh.
- That's a charitable
interpretation of events.
Malcolm McLaren came to
New York and saw the Voidoids
and went back
and built a boy band,
and said, "You're going
to dress like that guy."
- Yeah, I don't really
look at it that way.
- [speaks indistinctly]
- Yeah.
- All right.
- I mean, ideas are free.
I never resented that.
- Mm-hmm.
- But it was funny and strange.
♪
- Cheap rent brought
a lot of people together.
It wasn't just
living spaces were cheap.
There were venues
where you could put
whatever it was
you did out there.
- Yeah, CBGB's didn't exist
until we created it.
I mean, we went and proposed
that we be
the house band there.
- This next number
is called
"I Belong To
The Blank Generation"
[crowd shouting, applause]
One, two, three!
[bright horn music]
♪
- And then your band,
the Voidoids--
what were your expectations?
- I wanted everything
that anybody
who starts a band wants,
but I didn't even quite realize
how weird and uncommercial I was.
[static crackles]
I thought what I was doing
was really catchy.
[laughs]
- Do we over-romanticize
that period?
Was it special?
- I think the creation
of the mythology of the '70s
kind of began
in the mid-'90s.
I can see why people who weren't there
wish they were there, but it goes
against all my instincts
to think that way
just because the idea is
we didn't like
where things were,
so we decided to change them.
- Why are you here tonight?
- I guess we're just interested
to see what's going on.
We saw a bit in--I think
it was "The New Yorker."
More or less,
to see what was happening.
Simple as that.
- How about you?
- It's a fascinating place,
I must say.
It's probably one of the most
interesting places in New York.
Just simply the...
the neon lights
and the crowd here--
it's all very interesting.
- Would you come here again?
- No.
[laughs]
[raucous percussion]
♪
- Have you ever considered
writing a dish-y memoir?
I mean, my God,
it would be 800 pages long.
- Yeah, you know why?
Because so many people
are still alive.
- I mean, people love you.
- Yeah.
They have to say that.
How can you say something mean
about somebody
who might be mean back at you?
- It's an industry.
Are you kidding me?
[groovy music]
♪
- People will ask,
"What was it like
the first time you saw Iggy?"
And I didn't see him.
I heard the music
from down the hall.
I mean, I thought,
"This is the rock and roll
I always wanted to hear"--
something
that was this fierce.
And yet, you could sense--
there was a tune there.
- When I bought "Funhouse"
in high school...
- Yeah.
- I was immediately
ostracized.
- Yeah.
- This was defining music.
And normal people
didn't like it.
- The Ramones met because
they were poor outcasts
in a high school of 5,000
people who liked "Funhouse."
- Right.
- Okay?
They had it all figured out,
that they would sell
as many records
as the great record sellers
would sell,
and in a few years,
they would have so much money
that they would retire
and never have to work again.
- Right, especially
with each other.
- Yeah.
[both laugh]
Guess what. They had to say on the road for another...
- 25 years.
- Yes.
You know where their greatest
financial success
has come from?
"Hey, ho, let's go"...
- Right.
- Sung in football and soccer
stadiums around the world.
The Ramones' estates
are gathering in more money
from five seconds than they
ever made in their--
Is that the measure
of greatness or eternity?
It's one of them.
[calm music]
♪
- So many people died.
So many people
didn't get recognized.
Richard Hell's still living
in the same apartment
he lived in 40 years ago.
- Who likes to move
in New York?
He got a good deal.
The neighborhood got all better
around him, you know?
Iggy was supposed the one
who didn't make it most of all,
and he's still there--
the most dangerous.
- [chuckles]
- God sends us these signs
that there are miracles,
don't give up hope.
What you believe is beautiful
probably is,
but not everyone
will know it in time.
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
- Okay, my name's
Hugh Mackie.
I moved over here in '81
and started this shop in '86.
[metal clatters]
When we opened this shop here,
we were the only, like,
business on the block.
We were the only,
like, real thing
apart from just mayhem
down here.
[metal clatters]
Basically, it's been
a one-man show
with one person helping me,
and we still fix
old British bikes.
We're really into it,
but nowadays,
there aren't so many people
into it anymore,
and the supply of bikes
is dwindling.
[hammer pounding]
It's gotten to the point now
where I'm the only
bad thing on the block.
I'm now the mess.
I'm now the noise.
I'm the scruffy building.
[indistinct chatter]
It's not that anymore.
It's just not.
I mean, it's super-expensive
restaurants,
which come and go
every five years.
High-heeled girls
with mink coats
are out getting into fancy
schnitzel restaurants,
and they're standing on rats,
and they think that's cool.
What they don't know is that
before the restaurants were
here, there were no rats.
So now all these, like, rich
people are coming down here
and standing on rats
and think
that's East Village,
and it never was, you know?
So...
[engine revs]
[tense music]
♪
- How hard was it to--
if you're coming to New York,
a section of New York
that's completely broke--
You are broke.
You're going to be an artist,
and not just art,
but fairly confrontational.
How committed do you have to be
to do that,
particularly at that time?
- I think that...
contrarily, it hasn't
been that hard.
I feel like
I've been very fortunate
to have got
to stay alive here, so...
And I have everything I need.
Look around us.
[mellow rock music]
♪
It's a wonderful
amusement park
of good and bad ideas
all happening at once.
You know how people
immigrate here
to start a new life
and to dream big?
I felt like I needed
to do that as well,
just like the way
that people did
at the turn of the century.
You move to New York
to immigrate to a new land,
to start...a new life.
And that's really what the
Lower East Side is all about.
♪
You know, it was an extremely
rare and wonderful time.
I think only now do I realize
how fortunate I was
that I got to experience
a neighborhood
that had Jack Smith
on 1st Avenue,
that had the Living Theatre,
that had Jonas Mekas
on 2nd Street.
- Who thrilled you back then?
Who was doing stuff
that you just thought
just, "Holy shit,
this is really incredible
and inspiring"?
- Um, well, gosh.
Um, luckily, my friends
that I was working with
were very inspiring.
I loved Joe Coleman's work.
[slides clicking]
[haunting soft music]
♪
- The Lower East Side
at that time
was a destination for me.
There was something,
you know, that compelled me,
you know, to just be there,
and I would paint it.
Squeeze in.
- Yeah. Wow.
Wow.
Oh, yes, you were telling me
about this guy.
- Yeah, yeah, and here,
if you want to use this...
- It's beautiful.
[dramatic music]
♪
- You know, all the paintings are novels, you know?
You know, so it's a dense story,
and the more that you look, the more that you learn.
And it's in nonlinear time,
you know?
Like, you're exploring, you know, at your own pace,
whatever you want to look at.
And someone else might start in a different place,
and, you know, it might tell a different story.
♪
- The performance art,
at what point--
So you came to paint, or did
you come to paint before?
- No, I came to paints,
but the paintings were...
like, implosions, where I was
studying the world around me
and myself inside,
and the performances
became literal explosions.
[screaming wildly]
[heavy rock music]
♪
I learned violence
from my old man.
So I was angry, you know?
When your house is on fire,
you know,
you don't read poetry,
and you don't, you know,
sing a folk song.
You know, you got to scream.
[screaming wildly]
♪
[indistinct chatter]
- I missed all the great art
of the time.
I came for heroin,
and I came for music.
Other than that,
I didn't live here.
But, man, a lot of people
didn't make it,
and I remember,
I guess around 1980,
it was like...
something is happening,
and no one knows what it is.
- You mean the AIDS?
- AIDS.
- Yeah, yeah,
a lot of that time
exists in my mind like a dream,
like an opium dream.
[slowed distorted speech]
[ominous music]
I have these people
that I love
that would just, like,
drop out and fall out.
I'm a little bit sad
that I wasn't there.
I wasn't present,
you know, for them,
because I was too off
in this other world.
[distorted screaming]
♪
But for me,
it was still something
of great beauty
to see that time.
You have Wall Street tycoons
fighting for huge amounts
of wealth,
and you have, like, bums
fighting over, like, pennies.
And it has, like...
you know,
a primal, like, awe.
- It's for Passover,
matzo brei--
special matzo, special days.
[dishes clattering]
[indistinct chatter,
cash register bell dings]
[clattering continues]
[man speaking native language]
[upbeat music]
[man speaking native language]
- [laughs]
- Yes, sir.
- I've been coming here
since 1966.
- Over 50 years.
- Only 5 years.
- It's family.
[man speaking native language]
[upbeat rock music]
So everyone should come,
but not too many people.
- Yeah.
[man speaking native language]
[dramatic opera music]
♪
- This is one of the places that Keith, Harry, and I
would love to come here.
Jean-Michel would join us,
and we would have good meals here on the regular.
And it was consistently
the exact--
you know it's great
when you can go someplace--
they have the exact same food.
Come on, this is it?
- It's still the same?
- Still exactly the same.
- That's encouraging.
- Which is great, it's great.
I mean, you know, even though
there's a hotel
three doors away...
- Right.
- And high rises going up,
we can still have
a decent meal.
[groovy music]
♪
- You brought hip-hop culture
to a very finite number
of people initially
on the Lower East Side.
- Yeah. Mm-hmm.
- Totally changed the world.
- ♪ Everybody get funky
[funky music]
♪ Everybody get funky
♪
- Teenagers at that time were
doing something interesting,
so I wanted to find some people
that would listen
to these ideas,
and that's what lead me
to the Lower East Side
and to connect with--
- I guess you met
Glenn O'Brien.
- Glenn O'Brien, yeah.
- ♪ Everybody get funky
- Glenn was key to it all,
because I would read
his column
in "Interview" magazine,
and it was just brilliant,
and I met him,
and he embraced me
and invited me to
be a part of "TV Party,"
which was this underground--
- Oh, I remember it well.
I watched it at the time.
- Hi, and welcome
to "TV Party."
Fred, why don't you tell us
a little bit about what
the Holy Land looks like?
- I want you to know...
[groovy music]
That I've been
to the Holy Land,
and the Holy Land is so funky.
- How funky is it?
- It's funky!
It's funky!
And through that connection is where I met
all these people that listened
to all these ideas I had,
and that was David Byrne, Chris Stein and Debbie Harry,
and so many amazing people that were just like,
"Yeah, tell me more."
[distorted speech]
[indistinct chatter]
[energetic electro music]
♪
- What I think
is under-celebrated
about you guys in particular
was your kindness.
You were famously
really, really supportive
of the people
you came up with--
your contemporaries
and people around you
who weren't doing as well.
You know, let each other sleep
on each other's floors.
- Well, there was nothing
at stake.
both:
There was nothing at stake.
- And I mean this
in a good way.
You were writing hits
from the beginning.
I mean, these are
enduring songs
that people are still
listening to and hold up.
I just think a lot of people
had low expectations.
You didn't.
I mean, you had a plan, yes?
- Well, no. If we had a plan,
we would have made more money
and not got
so completely fucked over...
- Yeah.
- By the industry, as it were.
- We had a plan to survive.
- Yeah.
- We had a plan
to keep going, doggedly.
[electronic music]
♪
But I think the thing that was
so attractive about that period
was you weren't locked in
to one format or one form, you know?
It was just--
everybody was doing everything.
♪
- You introduced the entirely
revolutionary notion
that street art...
- Mm-hmm.
- Was in fact, really art.
♪
- The painting that we did on the street
was coming from a place that pop art came from as well--
like popular culture,
magazines, advertising, comics.
And so some of the first people
to buy paintings from me and Jean-Michel
was Chris and Debbie from Blondie.
And then they also commissioned
me, Lee Quiñones,
and Jean-Michel
to do sets and art
and participate
in their music videos--
some of the very first.
♪
- Your support and work
with Fab 5 Freddy--
I mean, look at the soundtrack
to the whole world now.
It's hip-hop.
That connection,
that crossover there,
you guys put considerable
muscle and gravitas.
- I talked to all these
record company guys,
and I'd say 98% of them
told me it was a fad.
- It's not going to last.
- It's going to go away
in five years.
- And you recorded a song
that was hugely...
[light music]
- Well, I will say,
you know, like, we're--
I'm very proud of the fact
that, you know,
we created a format
that didn't exist in rap
until then,
and that is that we wrote
a song that had a rap in it.
- Yeah, those guys
were sampling still.
- The rapping was only
scratching and sampling,
so we, you know,
made it viably commercial.
[groovy music]
- And then, you know,
you had another
earth-shattering event--
"Wild Style."
- I had an idea
that we could make a movie
and show that this rapping,
this dancing,
and this DJ'ing was one thing.
- ♪ Electro
- So I was on a trip
to Germany
not long after
the film had aired,
and I see these kids break-dancing.
I'm like, "What the hell is going on?"
[music skipping]
As I got closer, I noticed
the moves the kids were doing
were the exact same moves
that the Rock Steady Crew
does in "Wild Style."
But I then knew that this was
going to translate globally.
♪
- I remember
that film opening.
That was a nuclear bomb.
- Yep.
- And it ended up being, like,
the second-highest grossing--
- Second to
"Terms of Endearment,"
which not many people
think about now,
but, yeah, we did well.
- You got to love that moment
of corporate terror
in the film industry
when people are looking
at the weekend grosses,
and it's like, "What's this?"
- [laughs]
- "Who is this audience that
did not appear in our metrics?"
- Yeah, it was
a great experience.
- ♪ Electro
[tense music]
♪
[groovy music]
♪
- I came to the
Lower East Side back in 1964.
[siren wailing]
When I came here, the changes
was already in motion.
♪
There was the heroin epidemic,
the beginning
of the homeless epidemic.
And there I was,
witnessing all these changes.
[horn blares]
That's the history
of the Lower East Side.
They did not have to
go back and find themselves
on the Lower East Side.
Probably every day,
or every week,
just by walking through it...
[door creaks]
That's my connection
to the neighborhood.
That's the neighborhood
connecting to me--
you know, to photograph
that before that change.
They have
that running history.
My main thing now
is to keep a running record.
So I started the 4th Street
Photo Gallery here,
and it's been history
ever since.
[camera shutter clicks]
I'm still here. I'm surviving.
[laughs]
♪
[loud distortion]
[tense rock music]
♪
- You started making films
before you knew
how to make films.
- Yeah, yeah, the oddball thing
about it is,
knowing so little,
being an amateur
was so helpful.
Who knew that you could hire
a casting director?
No, it was just like,
"Hey, you play that,
you play that," you know.
- "Which one of our friends are
going to be around for this?"
- Exactly, "are you going to be
around next Tuesday?
'Cause I"--you know...
[rock music]
- I saw myself more as like an experimental filmmaker.
You know, like
the Godard films, for example,
they were inspiring 'cause I could say, "I could do that."
♪
- I owe a lot to Amos.
No, I saw "The Foreigner."
It was amazing.
The whole scene was there.
Everybody was there.
It was really--
- Yeah, that was a big night.
- I got so charged up.
And I was sure I was
going to make films.
♪
- And your first film
as a student film?
- My first film was
a student film--
"Permanent Vacation."
- They say people like myself
are crazy, you know,
'cause, well, you know...
- NYU film school
made a mistake,
so I had a $12,000 budget
for my first film.
- Which is enormous
for the time.
- It was huge for me.
But the root
of the word "amateur"
is "the love of a form,"
and "professional" means
you are doing it for money.
So I still hope
that I consider myself
an amateur, for sure.
♪
- What was the budget
on your first film?
- Oh, man.
- $12.
- Yeah.
Well, it depends on
what you call "first film,"
but "Blank Generation"
was like, $2,200.
[rock music]
I started shooting bands, and it was more,
"How do you shoot music with a silent camera?" basically.
And then, "Unmade Beds" was, like, my first narrative film.
It was, like, about $4,000.
- I think on "Unmade Beds,"
someone from
"The New York Times" called it
"the cinematic equivalent
of kindergarten scribbling."
And Amos put that on his
posters--"New York Times."
And that was the most,
like, punk-ass move.
♪
- So, yeah,
so what do you think now
when you walk around
the neighborhood?
You know, you paid some dues
to walk down back in the day,
and now it's
projectile-vomiting frat boys
with baseball caps
on backwards.
- Oh, man.
- Does this give you
a sinking feeling,
make you angry,
or are you just resigned?
- I wish I would have bought
real estate, that's for sure.
[laughter]
- The thing that
I always tell myself
is, "Look at the history
of New York City."
And it's always
about hustling and--
- Change.
- Change.
[groovy music]
And if you want it
to stay the same,
man, you got
the wrong historical spot,
because they're used to be
a Native American trading post
on the tip of Manhattan.
It's now Wall Street,
you know?
- ♪ I just don't want to go
♪ Out in the streets no more
[funky rock music]
♪ I just don't want to go
♪ Out in the streets no more
♪ Because these people,
they give me ♪
♪ They give me
the creeps anymore ♪
♪ Too many creeps,
too many creeps ♪
♪ Too many creeps,
too many creeps ♪
♪ Too many creeps,
too many creeps ♪
♪ Too many creeps, yeah
- Do you want to
come in for a minute?
- Yeah, sure,
I'd love to take a peek.
I'd be interested in looking
at your dope bags.
- Yeah, here's some.
I got this guy
who was a bank robber,
and he was going to jail.
He hooked me up with this.
This is from the early '80s.
- Oh, wow.
Air Mail.
- Air Mail.
- Yeah, with 12th Street.
- Yep.
- Oh, I might have
to put my glasses on
for this.
- It's a treasure.
- DOA, I remember.
- Poison, you must remember.
- Poison, yes, of course.
Evidence, the Psycho.
I remember all of those.
- Did you ever do Hellraiser?
- No, I don't remember, ever.
Toilet.
- There it is.
[camera shutter clicks]
Classic, right?
- You know, you were--
you knew you
were doing something bad
when you bought a product
called "Toilet"
and, you know,
shot it in your arm, or--
Oh, man, memories.
- Yeah.
[rock music]
♪
- I mean, basically,
your reputation is
the godfather archivist
of all things Lower East Side.
You were here pointing your camera at stuff
since the early '80s.
♪
- I probably have
one of the largest
inner-city photograph
collections of anybody.
I used to know
everybody that went by.
That neighborhood thing is,
like, really important to me.
So I photographed
the Puerto Ricans,
the Dominicans,
the drag queens
from the Pyramid Club,
basically the whole
hard-core scene in '87.
I was more interested
in, like,
the eccentric people,
the unique people.
♪
- You were at the battle
of Tompkins Square Park,
which is sort of the Gettysburg
of the Lower East Side.
[tense music]
I remember it had essentially become clogged
with nodding junkies...
- Right.
- Homeless people who'd set up permanent camp.
- It was dangerous.
- It was genuinely dangerous.
When the police came down and decided to clean the park,
the question is, who won?
- Well, in the beginning,
we did.
all: [chanting]
It's our fucking park!
It's our fucking park!
It's our fucking park!
[siren wails]
- You know, you have
to remember, in 1988,
they couldn't close
a 10 1/2-acre-square park
on the Lower East Side,
not with 450 riot cops...
[indistinct shouting]
Horses, helicopters--
they couldn't do it.
- Maybe we get the better city.
- We don't got no weapons.
They got 9 millimeters
down there!
They got shotguns
and machine guns!
- There were big bomb fighters
in the middle of Avenue A.
Buses couldn't come down,.
Cars couldn't come down.
They were stuck.
- You were on the news a lot,
I remember.
- A lot, yeah.
- You were the most, like,
despised man in--
- Yes, yes.
- NYPD, you were not their favorite photographer.
Let's put it that way.
[heavy rock music]
♪
- This went on for four years.
There were multiple riots,
hundreds and hundreds
of arrests.
♪
Four years here
of real, solid conflict.
The cops eventually
got organized.
♪
I think this was the beginning
of the sort of police-state
mentality in America.
♪
- I remember Tompkins Square.
After the police fenced it off,
it was, in a lot of people's
minds, the end of an era.
- And, yeah, when they
cleared off the drugs,
a lot of people think,
"Hey, great.
"We're now going to have
a neighborhood,
and everything's
going to be safe."
And then in came
the gentrification,
and so the whole concept of
America is being wiped out,
because you can't pull yourself
up by the bootstraps anymore
'cause you can't
get in the game.
[soft music]
Gentrification has affected
the whole city.
You have to now make a huge
amount of money to be here.
You know, they got
the skyscrapers in Midtown
that are sold--millions
of dollars apartments,
and nobody lives in them,
and they're empty.
- I live in one of those
big, empty buildings...
- Yeah.
- With absentee owners.
Is that all that's going to be left in New York?
- Yes. New York,
there was always something
that brought it back,
but once you fill it
with the corporate world,
it's never going back.
So we turned a corner that
we will never go back again.
And so it's over.
- It's over.
- It's over.
[somber music]
[tiles snapping]
[dramatic music]
♪
[heavy rock music]
[jazz music]
[heavy rock music]
[calm music]
♪
[heavy rock music]
[calm organ music]
♪
[tense music]
♪
[upbeat music]
♪
[heavy rock music]
- You know I have my eye
on the octopus.
- Okay, then I'm going to go
straight into the...
- Straight, you're going
to go straight?
You're finally going straight.
- A little too late for that.
- Oh, my God, I'm impressed.
Can you verify exactly
what "straight" means?
- No.
- No way, honey.
Even when you're straight,
you're not straight.
[rock music]
♪
- Did you expect to
make a living from your art?
- No, of course not.
- How do you--
- No, I just was happy
I didn't have to suck dick
in an Iranian shoe store.
[rock music]
♪
First of all, I thought
I would come to New York
to do spoken word,
but spoken word
didn't really exist,
so I started
Teenage Jesus and the Jerks.
♪
I really had to make the most
hideous yet precise den
I possibly could as a tantrum
against all of music
and all of society.
♪ Little orphans running
through the bloody snow ♪
♪ Little orphans running
through the bloody snow ♪
♪ Little orphans running
♪ Through the blood, through
the blood, through the-- ♪
- There were a lot of freakish,
"never could have happened
at any other time"--
it seems to me--bands
who had a ready-made audience,
okay, as you did.
You could basically say,
"I am a rock star"--
- Well, hang on, wait, wait,
reel it back, wait.
- "I am a star."
- No, no, no.
First of all, I never said
I was a fucking star.
- No, but, I mean, not by word,
but by deed and deportment.
- We are great, aren't we?
[scattered cheers]
First of all, I'm not a star.
I'm not an icon.
That might be
your midnight fantasies.
- You walked into a club,
people knew who you were.
- I didn't walk into any place
thinking I'm a star.
I walked in thinking
I had shit to do.
But I wouldn't say
I was a catalyst.
I'd say I was a cattle prod
to get people to do shows.
Booking shows, curating shows,
it's just what I do.
It's like, "Let's go,
let's do it."
And when people would ask me
to do things,
I'd go, "Yeah, I want
to do it, of course."
- Pardon me.
- People were--Beautiful--
doing things
because they had to do it,
not because
of any other grand idea.
- So what made you happy
back then?
I mean, did you
have any happy moments?
- Happiness was not the goal.
Satisfaction was the goal,
as it still is.
My anger is on a global level.
It's never on a personal level.
I'm very happy.
I'm happy to have octopus
with you tonight, my dear.
Thank you very much
for inviting me.
- Um...
- Mmm.
- Good?
- Perfect.
- Yeah.
- When was the last time
you had something
this good in your mouth?
I know you eat well,
but this is, like...
- Yeah, it's been a while.
This is pretty incredible.
- Mmm.
- Why are you here tonight?
- To see the Dead Boys.
- Why?
- 'Cause they're great fucks.
- How do you know?
- 'Cause I fucked them.
[laughs] Who do you want
the run-down on?
- Did you throw the, uh--
- Yeah, I did.
It was my present.
I'm Lunch.
They do a song called
"I Need Lunch."
I'm Lydia Lunch.
- Why did you throw that?
What was it? What was it?
- They were used tampons.
Genuinely used, new ones.
Why did I give them to them?
Because they're going to eat
them in the second set.
[discordant music]
♪
- You were featured prominently
in many of the best-known films
of the era.
- Most of which sucked.
- [laughs]
- I was trying to be
a reflection
of the reality at the time.
This why I made
the films I made,
especially with Richard Kern.
- Just drop me off.
Where are you
taking me, anyway?
- My house.
- So we did this horribly
violent film
called "Fingered"
that was based on real things
that had happened to me.
- [screams]
[indistinct shouting]
It was not glamorous.
It was not pretty.
It was offensive,
but I'm trying to work out
my psychosexual problems,
because I know
I'm not alone in them,
by making films and speeches
that will address the situation
that I know
other people suffer from.
- Okay, this was a film,
very influential,
far beyond the imaginings
at the time.
- We didn't think that
when we did it.
We didn't give a shit.
We just wanted to make a film
and get it out there because
we had to do something
because we were burning
and our blood was on fire.
[lounge music]
♪
- Looking back, though,
was it all that?
Was it a golden period?
Are you nostalgic?
- No.
- Okay.
- I am golden.
It's always
a golden period for me.
Look, we have a golden piece
of asparagus, it's golden.
- So do you have any sense of--
- No.
I fucking don't.
Those were
the bad old days, baby.
You try living on peace
of black beauties.
You try giving hand jobs
under the table today,
take your first band to Europe.
- Oh!
- You want to go back to that,
you go back to that.
How were you living?
I know the same, hand them out.
- So no sentimentality?
No nostalgia at all?
- I'm doing too much shit
all the time.
I still have shit to do.
Why am I boo-hooing
when I've just been on tour
from October from next October?
I'm not stopping.
- Youth--would you want
to go through that again,
or is it that overrated?
- Youth?
Don't I look good for my age?
- Hell, yeah.
- Shit, well, then
what do you want from me?
The older I get,
the better I taste.
What can I say?
It's like wine, baby.
- Did something special
happen then, or am I just--
- My whole life is special,
because I'm still alive,
doing what I want to fucking do
with who I want to do it with.
To me, I'm not living
in the past
because I'm living
in the present.
It's in New York,
get used to it.
It has never changed.
It had a golden moment here.
It probably had a golden moment
in the '40s, too.
I'm not sure.
I wasn't here.
Maybe the '60s,
we weren't here.
- So it was all bullshit?
- No, none of it was bullshit.
It happens when it happens,
and things change,
and time is not what it
once was as anywhere.
If you've done one thing,
you're living in the past,
and that's your glory day,
that's your glory day.
This is my glory day.
I'm here, talking to you,
eating octopus.
♪
I got my boots on his knees.
- And I'm like...
- And if only his dick
was big enough,
he'd be fucking me now, but we'r
going to go have a cigarette.
Got that?
Thank you.
- We'll be back.
[jazz music]
♪
- I try to make paintings
that are so beautiful
that I get lost
while I'm doing them.
♪
And you just hope
that other people
get lost in it the same way.
♪
- You know I have
a John Lurie over my bed.
- Oh, you posted that.
That was nice
that you posted that.
Sometimes, you know, you get
these letters and stuff.
It's like, "Your painting
saved my life," duh-duh-duh.
- Yeah.
- But then sometimes,
because I don't have
any shows...
- Oh, that's great.
- It feels pathetic, you know?
- Well, this is
incredible to me.
- What?
- You don't have shows,
like, regularly.
- That's insane.
And it's sick, and it's wrong,
and I don't even
want to complain about it.
You complain about it.
- I'm complaining about it.
- Yeah, okay.
- I am bitter.
- Because I'm going to die
one day,
and they're going to be worth
a lot of money.
- Right.
- So my paintings are going
to be on the same TV station
as Wolf Blitzer.
- Oh, they are, yes.
- This is really
a breakthrough for me.
- He's a big art fan.
- He is not.
- [laughing]
I don't--
[jazz music]
♪
- I, like, came to New York
'cause I was kind of, like, on this Coltrane thing.
I wanted to find God through music.
Like, I started meeting all these amazing people.
They were irreverent.
♪
The energy was enormous,
and it was probably more fun
than anybody's ever had
in human history
for about a year or two.
But there was no discipline, which--
I mean, I've like people who
can play their instrument
like they just found it
on the street.
- Mm-hmm.
- But they can't
just do it once--
they got to work on it.
♪
I mean, I was a serious saxophone player.
I came here as a saxophone player.
I had to hide the fact that--
- I know, right?
- I had to hide.
I mean, I really did.
I would practice
for two hours every day,
but I would, like-- I wouldn't tell people.
♪
So these are eggs...
- Mm-hmm.
- Which you could get,
you know, at the store.
If you live in
a good neighborhood,
they will even deliver them
to your house.
And then you take water...
which...
I know you go to
all these exotic places,
but they used to say that
New York had the best water.
- That is true.
- You think it's still true?
- I haven't heard anything
to say otherwise.
- Do you drink it?
- Yeah, I do.
- And then you boil them.
[igniter clicking,
flames whoosh]
And then I serve them to you.
- Outstanding.
I am grateful and honored.
- What I'm really curious--
because I've seen your show,
and I watch you sit down.
You eat, like,
some mouse head soup,
and then you go
"Mmm, it's delicious."
Just curious to see when you
eat the hard-boiled egg
if you're going to say,
"This is delicious."
- As long as there's not, like,
a half-term chicken fetus
in there,
which wouldn't be the first
time for me, by the way,
I'll be thrilled.
[groovy music]
♪
- We really felt like the universe
was between Houston and 14th Street
and Bowery and Avenue C, you know?
And if you went outside there,
you were a phony,
you were a traitor.
It's like, "We're done with you."
You might as well be an accountant.
- What about film?
I mean, as it turned out,
you ended up appearing in work
by Amos Poe, Jim Jarmusch.
All very seminal films.
- And I made my own.
I made my own films, too.
But it was
kind of just like...
you go downstairs,
you run into a friend.
You say, "You want to get
a cup of coffee?"
Then that's--
you know what I mean?
Like, there's nothing to it,
and everybody's
making these movies,
and so I do
a little music for that,
I act in that one, and I'll
hold the boom on that one.
You know, like, I didn't
think about it that much.
You know?
- Right.
- And so...
Look at that.
♪
I'm not eating this shit.
Here's a plate.
- Thank you.
Eggs, the perfect food.
Thank you, sir.
- Eat that.
I don't think I've ever
cooked for anybody before.
- Oh, well, I'm honored, sir.
So, looking back...
is there a danger
of over-romanticizing
that place and that time,
given the downside
and the body count?
- I don't know.
Does it have to end badly?
I mean, I'm glad I survived it.
I'm glad I still
got my own liver.
I'm glad I lived through it,
but it's kind of--
I don't know. I don't know
how to add that up.
- Mm-hmm.
- I'm sure glad
I didn't miss it.
["You Can't Put Your Arms
Around a Memory" plays]
- ♪ It doesn't pay to try
♪ All the smart boys
know why ♪
♪ It doesn't mean
I didn't try ♪
♪ I just never know why
♪
♪ Feel so cold
and all alone ♪
♪
♪ Baby, you're not at home
♪ And when I'm home
♪ Big deal, I'm still alone
♪
♪ Feel so restless, I am
♪
♪ Beat my head
against a pole ♪
♪ Try to knock some sense
♪ Down in my bones
♪ And though they don't show
♪ The scars aren't so old
♪ And when they go
♪ They let you know
♪ You can't put your arms
around a memory ♪
♪ You can't put your arms
around a memory ♪
♪ You can't put your arms
around a memory ♪
♪ Don't try
♪
♪ Don't try
♪
♪ You can't put your arms
around a memory ♪
♪ You can't put your arms
around a memory ♪
♪ You can't put your arms
around a memory ♪
♪ You can't put your arms
around a memory ♪
♪ You can't put your arms
around a memory ♪
[distorted rock music]
♪
- You didn't say
the egg was delicious.
- Oh, no, you're right.
- You did not.
- But I ate two of them.
- You ate two of them.
- Silence is
the highest compliment.
Just the gnashing of my jaws...
- You didn't say they--
- On those delicious,
delicious eggs.