New York Doll

Rank

Top 20% of all time (see others with this rank)

Festival Year

2005 (click here to see all competition films from this year)

Category

Documentary Competition

Non-Cast Credits

Greg Whiteley, Ed Cunningham, Seth Gordon, Rod Santiano, Jake Young, Tristan Whitman, Chris Vernole

Description

New York Doll relate the meteoric rise, resounding fall and recent all-too-brief resurrection of the seminal New York glam-rock-punk band, the New York Dolls, but it is foremost a story about the band's amazing bassist and leader, Arthur "Killer" Kane. With empathy, respect, and humor, director and friend Greg Whiteley follows Kane and interviews key musicians, friends, and colleagues to uncover the legacy of the Dolls and their significant impact on the London music scene in the dizzying heyday of the early 1970s.

After Kane and his band bottom out on drugs and alcohol, he disappears from music, embracing a surprisingly different path when he becomes a born-again Mormon. When rocker Morrissey organizes a London reunion of the New York Dolls, Kane buys his guitar back from a pawnshop, takes leaves of his Family Center library job, and heads back to New York City to prepare for an unlikely comeback.

How will the reconstituted band pull off its first performance in 30 years? Can these musicians possibly recapture the energy and elan that made them legends in their own brief time? What awaits Kane after his short reprise in the spotlight? The answers make New York Doll an entertaining, exhilarating, warmly human, and ultimately bittersweet paean to an era and the man lovingly described by friend and band member David Johansen as "the miracle of God's creation."

Reviewer

Diane Weyermann (see other films reviewed by the same reviewer)

Film Takes Pace.