Summary:
A look at the rise and fall of Creem Magazine.
My Thoughts:
Creem Magazine was a monthly publication that ran from March of 1969 until 1989. It was a magazine that made its mark by sticking it to the man and being blatantly offensive just for the purpose of getting attention. The people that worked for this publication were outcasts, misfits, drug addicts, and temperamental characters with bi-polar tendencies; in the words of this documentary, they were “a bunch of maniac kids whose mothers have forgotten them.” The workspace they created was, at times, dangerous, sexist, and downright unsanitary, but it was also incredibly real. The work they did there inspired a generation of rock and rollers and writers, and their influence can’t be overstated. There’s something so alluring about this raw, unfiltered energy that arose at Creem and indeed about the rock scene in general, and that makes it easy to fall into the documentary “Boy Howdy: The Story of Creem Magazine.” The footage pulled from 16 mm and 8 mm cameras and implemented into the doc is often scratchy and ill-maintained, and it helps us drift right into the roughness of the film.
Creem Magazine: America’s Only Rock and Roll Magazine
For huge fans of classic and punk rock, like myself, there will be a lot to love. There are interviews with Joan Jett, Paul Stanley, Chad Smith, and so many more, and many of these artists talk specifically about how Creem affected their lives in certain ways. Chad Smith talking about riding his bike five miles to Creem’s headquarters to be rewarded with seeing Alice Cooper walk out the front door was a great story. There are also insights into the films namesake; Boy Howdy was faux beer label designed by Robert Crumb (comics artist behind Fritz the Cat), which later went on to be implemented in many of the magazine’s photoshoots. There are tons of little bits of information, gossip, and insults tossed around involving all sorts of characters from the 70s and 80s music scene, some of them juicer than others, and I expect that fans of the genre will just eat it up.
I think some of the best parts of the documentary revolved around the internal arguments surrounding the magazine’s founders, editors, and writers. So many of the people involved with this magazine were absolute geniuses, but they also had diametrically opposed views as to what direction the magazine should take. This led to some seriously poor work conditions, some of which reminded me of some of the living conditions seen in Penelope Spheeris’s “The Decline of Western Civilization” trilogy. These punk rock writers were living like punk rockers themselves, and the degradation they put themselves through in order to put out their magazine monthly took a toll on their health. Watching something great come out of this toxic environment was amazing; it just goes to show that when you have ideas, hardworking people, and a want to create, the possibilities are endless.
While I loved this rawness, this realness that was so front and center of Creem, this documentary only half succeeds in bringing a story to the front of the chaos that often pervaded their office space. In a way, the unfocused nature of the documentary matches the aesthetic of the magazine it’s about, but unfortunately, when the focus is so here and there, it’s hard to find a through-line or follow themes. Oftentimes it feels as if we’re just jumping from one story to the next, without any clear motivation (other than a progressive timeline) of why we’re moving on to that story in particular.
Much of the editing was really well constructed, combining the interview footage with the archival footage and animated reenactments of some of the stories being told, but when it came to the actual interviews with rock stars or former writers, the technical aspects were all over the place. In at least five interviews, it sounded as if the LAV mics weren’t turned on, so in post they were forced to use the camera audio and bump up the levels. There were also a lot of shots that looked as if the cameras were just set on autofocus, so sometimes the people would be in focus and then they would shift in their chairs and the cameras would struggle find focus again. Likewise, framing in some interviews looked like it was shot by a professional, and in other interviews it looked as if the tripod was bumped and never readjusted.
Verdict:
Overall this is a compelling documentary that falls short only in the technical aspects and in finding focus. If you just want to hear stories about rock stars and their interactions with the creators of a magazine that was just as a wild as some of those they wrote about, there’s plenty to like here. However, I can’t imagine this will ever be touted as a groundbreaking documentary. If you’re coming for the subject matter only, I imagine you’ll be willing to deal with some of the technical mishaps. A rough and raw aesthetic is nothing new to fans of classic rock.
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