New York Doll director Greg Whiteley

New York Doll director Greg Whiteley

By Daniel Robert Epstein
Apr 12, 2006

Ever wonder what happened to your favorite punk rockers? well perhaps they became a Mormon like Arthur “Killer” Kane of the New York Dolls did. Perhaps that was why Kane allowed Mormon filmmaker Greg Whiteley follow him around for months including to the New York Dolls reunion in London. Greg Whiteley turned all of his footage into a great documentary, New York Doll, which is coming out on DVD very soon.

Check out the official website for New York Doll

Daniel Robert Epstein: How has the response to New York Doll been up to now?
Greg Whiteley: Both the Sundance and the LA film festivals were remarkable. They turned out to be difficult tickets to get which surprised me. The LA screening was in a 600 seat theatre and they were turning people away at the door. I never thought we would fill the place in the first place. At Sundance it was the same thing and it is very flattering, overwhelming and unexpected.
DRE:
What do the other members of the New York Dolls think of the movie?
GW:
They love it as far as I can tell. It’s what they tell me anyway, unless they were just trying to be nice to this kid who was following them around with a camera. They’ve been unbelievably generous and gracious in their compliments.
DRE:
Would you like to see this spark a revival for them?
GW:
The film is not a rockumentary and is less a retrospective of the New York Dolls. I think part of the purpose of a rockumentary is to spark that revival of the band that’s been forgotten. I certainly think that New York Dolls deserves any commercial success that can be given them. I think they’re already getting it. If this film never came out, they would already get it. They’re deserving of it. We were just thrilled to see the reunion in London happen and come off as well as it did.
DRE:
When you first started pointing a camera at Arthur, what did you see coming of it?
GW:
I thought what would be great is to just to come up with something that I can show my friends at church who had no idea that he was part of this fabulous band in the early ‘70s. I was a graduate film student, so the natural inclination when you’re a graduate film student is just to film something. I don’t think I really knew what we were going to get. I just found Arthur’s story to be compelling so I knew I wanted to film it.
DRE:
How many hours of footage did you shoot total?
GW:
I think we’re at 120 now. There are a couple things that we want to grab for the DVD release. We found some old friends of Arthur’s that have some other great stories about him, so we’ll document those. We have so many more stories that don’t fit into the timeline of the story so this particular film will be great for a DVD.
DRE:
How many different ways could the film have gone?
GW:
When we were coming back from the reunion in London, we knew we’d witnessed something that was just amazing. I immediately began to worry because I thought knew there was a couple of ways this could end, and not all of them good. One of them is Arthur simply returning to his really lonely life at his little apartment off the Sunset Strip, only now minus the dream of getting back together one day with the New York Dolls. Another way would be if the Dolls continued to tour, there would be an album, they’d be rich and famous, like he always wanted. I was shocked by what actually happened.
DRE:
Did Arthur ever wonder what you were trying to get out of him by pointing the camera at him so much?
GW:
No, it was his idea. He and I when we first met four years ago and I wanted to make his life into a screenplay. When he was going to the reunion and the idea to film him came about he was pretty gung-ho. I felt I could give this whole movie to him as a present so he could show it to his friends.
DRE:
How did you first come to be a fan of the Dolls?
GW:
I wasn’t until I met Arthur. I was a fan of the bands who were fans of the New York Dolls. When I was growing up the bands for me were The Ramones, The Clash, bands like that. You do any sort of research on them, they always reference this almost mythical band, legendary, almost like a rumor, this band called the New York Dolls. I was fascinated with the name and the story, but I wasn’t familiar with their music at all until I met Arthur.
DRE:
When you found out who David Johansen was, were you like, “Wait, wait, Buster Poindexter was in a seminal band?”
GW:
I actually knew that because you couldn’t watch the video of Hot Hot Hot in the 80’s without an MTV veejay saying he was formerly of the New York Dolls. It wasn’t Arthur who told that to me. I just simply was not familiar with the New York Dolls.
DRE:
Do you see yourself wanting to write a screenplay of Arthur’s life or of the Dolls?
GW:
With enough ambition one could make three or four movies about them. I think they are that interesting. There are worse things I can do with my life than making films about the New York Dolls, whether they’re narrative or documentary. There’s so much material there.
DRE:
What was the nuttiest thing that happened with you and Arthur while making the movie?
GW:
It was one thing after another. We were backstage when Arthur asked if I wouldn’t mind leading the band in prayer. I said, “I may not be the best choice for that. Why don’t you do it?” Up until that time I don’t think I ever heard Arthur pray vocally even though he was a religious person, but he agreed. I was nervous because I didn’t know what the rest of the band was going to think of it. I remember being there with the camera and feeling almost sacrilegious filming it. I don’t feel that way now because I’m glad we did it. What was surreal and nutty about it was not that it felt awkward or strange, but how easy and natural it felt for all these guys to join hands in a circle in prayer. You could’ve closed your eyes and felt like you were at a Mormon service.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

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