MC5: A True Testimonial (2002)

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

No, this is NOT a rock'n'roll spoof. I had never heard of MC5 before, so I wasn't sure if this film was for real, or whether I had another potentially great rock satire on my hands. At least 80% of this documentary could easily pass off as a mockumentary: there are loads of sophomoric rock, hippie, and 60s-politics clichés that should have you shaking your head in disbelief. "It really WAS this bad?..." I've been listening to metal and hardcore for over 20 years: MC5 aren't the granddads of anything. Their music is simplistic hard rock of the dullest kind. Their infantile lives are incomparably more interesting than their dated riffs.Wayne, perhaps the most puerile living band member, muses what "MC5" might stand for. How about Moron Club 5? Mongoloid Children 5? Minimalist Cretins 5? These guys make Manowar look like nuclear physicists. They make Spinal Tap seem like a real band.This rockumentary should serve as a dire warning just what being a hippie and smoking weed all day can do to you. There isn't a single brain cell in the entire "cast" of real-life characters. Real-life! (Shocking but true.) Already at the start, Wayne displays some rather juvenile modes of thinking when he raves about his shoddy Detroit as if it were the center of the universe. I'd even understand if he were 15, but this guy is pushing 60! The others happily join in later, but if MC5 and Eminem are Detroit's best exports, then I've got to wonder what kind of polluted factory air this unappealing city is providing for its pity-worthy inhabitants. Later on, Dennis the drummer also gets rather hyper about Detroit and everything else connected with the band, until his face reddens and his head nearly explodes. Was he showing rehab symptoms or is he genuinely mad? Usually a decadent 60s or 70s band has 1 out of its 4 or 5 members dead. We find out right from the start that no less than TWO MC5'ers have already been long-dead. Rob, the first one to meet his maker, looks like a bloated, geeky accountant with a bird's-nest stuck onto his empty head - but I guess hippies could get away with these kinds of silly-looking, unconvincing frontmen. Did women really swoon when they saw this fatso on stage? Or were they just so high on drugs that they pretty much hallucinated anything they wanted... From what I could gather, Rob is the dumbest MC, which is a feat in itself. There isn't much interview footage of him, but whenever he appeared I was convinced I was watching a semi-retarded person. Sonic Fred isn't much better. Both of them have some rather stupid ex-wives/widows; these two are like the middle-aged female versions of Beavis & Butthead (minus the cussing). Talk about the computer-like efficiency those hippie communes had in brainwashing their members! To make things even worse, Fred eventually married Patti Smith, a quasi-female, after the band split up. Being married to that mustached, talent-free, pseudo-punk piece of grotesquerie would have driven anyone to an early grave.Yet, it's not just the band members and their groupies-turned-wives that provide the fun. Take a look at this Tim-Leary-like charlatanic hippie guru, John Sinclair, who took these clueless, barely educated five morons under his smelly wing. He rants on about "the pigs", the "Fascist Establishment" EXACTLY the way one expects it from a true hippie caricature. Sinclair, like any other sect leader, needed to find hordes of idiots; apparently, 60s Detroit was a fertile ground. He is a walking stereotype, to the extent that he almost seems scripted, unreal. He is the embodiment - like no other person that appears here - of everything that was wrong with the 60s political "student" movement. (Those Kremlin psychopaths must have been rubbing their hands in delight, laughing all the way to Vietnam...) 30 years later, and this demented, hypocritical, self-centered, egomaniacal "flower child" looks like a cross between Leon Trotsky and Il Duce from the Mentors, complete with a recently acquired speech impediment that perhaps resulted from falling asleep with a bomb in his mouth, on some sleepy, potentially deadly Detroit day in the early 70s... He was married to one of those sociopathic West German (wannabe?) terrorists; that pretty much completes the picture... Sinclair is so confused that he mourns the deaths of John and Bobby Kennedy, seemingly unaware of the fact that it was the Democrats who were "the Establishment" when the Vietnam War started! So Sinclair is anti-Vietnam-war, yet he supports those who sent the first troops there?? Hippie logic can be rather mystifying.Or how about this Crawford character. These sublimely gullible five buffoons even had a "spiritual adviser"; Crawford would come on stage, and in true Al Sharpton fashion deliver idiotic "motivational" (in reality hate-mongering) speeches that probably served as a mere warm-up for his later career (?) as a TV evangelist.I bust a gut laughing when I heard about the White Panthers! Wayne, the deluded ex-junkie that he is, talked about "continuing the work of the Black Panthers" - as if the blatant fact that BP were anti-white had never entered his tiny, chaotic, confused head. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in the BPs calling the WPs "psychedelic clowns", which to my knowledge is the first and last time that the BPs were right about anything.Over 30 years have passed since his beloved non-Revolution (more like a well-off kids' Whiners Collective), yet Dennis the drummer still screams "Freedom!" at the top of his lungs - and that's just during interviews. What does he do when is alone? (Again: just say "no" to dem da drugs...) Later on, he gets so frustrated with a question he isn't able to answer, that he draws a gun and mock-shoots the interviewer. So much for "peace and flowers"; there is plenty of gun-waving going on here.

This is one of my 10 favorite films of all time. In the "truth is stranger than fiction" vein, this documentary was more like a narrated movie for me. The MC5 was your stereotypical 60's band that imploded due to various abuses. The stories range from hysterical to tragic. The Greek tragedy continues, as apparently the filmmaker and wayne kramer are at odds over rights to the film. The public is being denied a 4 star DVD with hours of deleted footage from some rock 'n roll greats giving testimonials on the MC5's influence. It amazes me that this movie got no fanfare at the academy awards for best documentary - proving what a sham the academy is. For classic rock fans and punk fans, this is a must see - if the DVD ever sees the light of day.

This long overdue documentary tells the (abridged) tale of one of the most threatening and dangerous bands ever to grace the American music scene. Sporting the level of desperation only recognized by true cast-out socially degenerate miscreants, The MC5 proved over their short existence that even the most lost and hopeless souls will have a voice.And it's a voice that absolutely refuses to be ignored.While still widely hailed in the underground scene as the 'Grandfathers of Punk Rock' (though often just mentioned as a footnote to Iggy Pop and the Stooges, a band that would never have existed had it not been for the MC5), few people know much of the history that has earned The 5 such acclaim.This film aspires to correct that little disparity. From their humble Lincoln Park, MI beginning (where working in an auto factory was 'a birthright') to their ironic coup de grâce (back in the Grande Ballroom, the same theater that gained them what little notoriety they achieved during their being), 'A True Testimonial' manages to seamlessly reinforce the urgency of the music with the urgency of day-to-day life in Detroit at that time. Here we stretch from a bunch of high school kids playing VFW halls to a slightly older band so associated with the threat of a 'revolution' that the FBI actually videotapes their performance at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Later, we see the band's first album rejected from a prominent Detroit department store because of 'objectionable content' (kinda like Wal-Mart does now, 35 years later). The band's reaction is true and the rest is another glorious chapter of rock n roll history.This film is above all a classic example of the connection (and, more importantly, the discrepancy) between rock n roll and political activeness. Differences between the band and the management (not to mention the band members themselves) ultimately over-power the spirit that brought the MC5 into existence in the first place.8.5 out of 10

This documentary, made over a period of eight years, tells the remarkable story of an extremely influential rock'n'roll band. Starting from their mid-60's garage band roots (sounding amazingly like the Sonics), the Motor City 5 deveoped into an icon for a brand of loud, crushing music reflecting their industrial roots. Even if you don't care for their music (and you're bound to like even a few of their songs), their story is fascinating. It combines 60's protest, youthful braggadocio, and a style of music that would help carry one to the likes of Iggy and the Stooges (not to mention certain aspects of punk rock). This film is clearly a labor of love, combining extraordinarily rare live shows, still shots, a nearly-continuous backdrop of MC5 tunes, penetrating interviews with the remaining members and their spouses, and even FBI surveillance shots. It's the ultimate testimonial to a band that only gains in stature as time goes on.