Bing Theater
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90036
New 35mm print
Penelope Spheeris returns to the punk scene she first documented in 1981 and finds new bands equally as inflammatory as their predecessors. The powerful final chapter in Spheeris’s Decline of Western Civilization trilogy again not only focuses on these newer underground bands – such as the politically-charged Naked Aggression – but also the concertgoers and club owners that sustain them. Spheeris pays special attention to their fans, particularly the young and homeless “gutterpunks.” Raised in broken homes, they live drink to drink, squatting in derelict Hollywood buildings and panhandling, or “spanging,” on Hollywood Boulevard to get by.
1998, 86 minutes, color, 35mm | Directed by Penelope Spheeris; with Final Conflict, Litmus Green, Naked Aggression and The Resistance.