Blank Generation

For archival value alone, this is a great document of one of the originators of US punk, Richard Hell. But like most New York downtown hipster footage from that era, as a film it's pretty lame. Badly acted but with some interested ideas and commentary on the news media. Part of this is justified by theorizing about punk as romantic decadence, throwing out the notion of quality for the sake of "keeping it real". Well, twenty five years on, a lot of the punk "honesty" is just plain boring. Basically, get this movie for the live clips of the Voidoids playing in CBGB's, and forget the rest. Even Andy Warhol can't save this one. What I want to know is, how much of this movie was based on the relationship between Hell and Lizzy Mercier?