Once you get used to Brendan Toller’s scattershot direction, this profile of Danny Fields—the editor, publicist, and manager who helped launch the Stooges and the Ramones—is a compelling look at the New York underground of the late 60s and early 70s. Fields parlayed a youth spent hanging out at Andy Warhol’s Factory into jobs editing the teen zine Datebook (infamous for publishing John Lennon’s “more popular than Jesus” remark) and handling publicity for Elektra Records (the forward-looking label of Love and the Doors). A handful of great talking-head moments—from Iggy Pop and a giddy Jonathan Richman, among others—are interspersed with Fields’s tales of rock-star antics, which are occasionally illustrated with animation (the meeting between Jim Morrison and Nico is especially good). Fields’s recollections of managing the Ramones are the best, though, and Toller includes a priceless audio clip of a floored Lou Reed as he hears the band on vinyl for the first time.
Danny Says
1 hour 44 min
