Jim Jarmusch Mythologizes the Stooges in Gimme Danger

The Stooges are hardly the type of band to be given the preening rock-doc treatment. Despite the esteem they accrued in the years after their 1974 breakup, the abrasive Michigan proto-punkers were woefully underappreciated in their time. They were under-documented, too—something that’s maybe a little too apparent in Jim Jarmusch’s documentary on the Stooges, Gimme Danger, which uses what scant primary sources exist, but fills the bulk of its runtime with of recent interviews with the band. The Stooges’ mouthpiece, Iggy Pop, gets the most words in, and as enjoyable as it is to hear him self-mythologize, the end result feels oddly perfunctory and severely lacking in context.