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v/a - 924 Gilman St.: Let’s Talk About Tact and Timing

posted by: Joost78 on 12 September 2008

Alternative Tentacles

924 Gilman Street, often simply referred to as “Gilman”, is a legendary punk rock venue in Berkeley, California. Ever since opening in 1986, Gilman has been a volunteer-run, non-profit project with a strict DIY ethic.

“924 Gilman St.: Let’s Talk About Tact and Timing” is a documentary on DVD about this remarkable venue, by debuting filmmaker Jack Curran. In about 85 minutes, you see countless short interviews with musicians and volunteers and several live clips. Unfortionately, despite an interesting subject and contributions from big names such as Jello Biafra, Ian MacKaye, Lars Frederiksen, Matt Freeman, Jesse Michaels, Dexter Holland and Noodles it turns out to be a pretty dull watch.

The very dry, humorless approach of the interviews gets downright tedious after a while. What it basically comes down to is that everyone gets about a minute or two to say how much they like Gilman and how things work over there - and that’s pretty much it. The live clips that are randomly scattered over the feature maybe could’ve saved things, but unfortionately they are too short, too amateurishly shot and too muddy sounding to be all that enjoyable.

On the positive side, Curran definately succeeds in giving a clear picture of what Gilman is all about. But unfortionately he seems to have forgotten that while documentaries indeed should be informative in the first place, they work better if they have some entertainment value as well.

Rating:

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