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| Gudrun Gut on her new plans with Bettina Köster and Malaria! to Anne-Katrin Titze, 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman, and B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979-1989 co-director Heiko Lange: “We have a plan for a movie.” |
In the second instalment with Gudrun Gut (creative director and star of the miniseries GUT; founding member of Mania D; Malaria!; Matador), B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979-1989 co-director Heiko Lange (with Jörg A. Hoppe and Klaus Maeck), plus music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman, we discuss the work of editor Alexander von Sturmfeder; B- Movie’s ringmaster Mark Reeder (who is also the composer here with Micha Adam and for Hermann Vaske’s Can Creativity Save The World?), Blixa Bargeld and Nick Cave on the end of an era; a Buzzcocks concert in New York City (on November 10, 1989 at the old Studio 54 space); Public Image Ltd and ESG (at the Pasadena Convention Center on November 8, 1982); Danny Boyle’s Pistol (his fictional miniseries on the Sex Pistols), Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters, and Malaria!, the film. Gudrun on Friday, May 3 will make a guest performance at the Philharmonie in Berlin and on Saturday, May 4 during Museumsnacht in Chemnitz. ESG will be performing as the headliner at the Queen’s Park Spring Weekender '24, produced by Melting Pot & Optimo, in Glasgow on Sunday, May 5.
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| Blixa Bargeld with Nick Cave and Thomas Wydler at the start of what would become Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Photo: Heiko Lange |
From Berlin, Heiko Lange and from outside Berlin, Gudrun Gut joined us on Zoom for an in- depth conversation on B-Movie: Lust & Sound In West-Berlin 1979-1989.
Anne-Katrin Titze: It is clearly a fascinating snapshot of a time and a place, which makes it timeless. It has been nine years since the film premiered but it hasn’t aged.
Heiko Lange: As you said, it’s a snapshot and it’s timeless.
Gudrun Gut: It’s not timeless, it’s the Eighties.
HL: Timeless to watch! You’ll watch it in twenty years or thirty years, because I think nobody else will do this work again. Even if Berlin changes and the reason why people are coming here is changing, they’ll watch it. I mean, it’s a walled-in city, it’s a lost place. Like Yugoslavia, it’s not there anymore, it’s gone.
Ed Bahlman: Also the way the film is structured. There’s a bookend. At the very start, for me, all the influences were coming from West Berlin. It was reversing what was coming from New York before in the Seventies, CBGBs, Richard Hell, everybody, Pattie Smith. Then it was for me coming from West Berlin to New York, because I had all the music directly in 99. Everybody was DJ-ing Malaria! in the clubs before Malaria! came.
GG: Yeah!
EB: And then in the end it’s about Mark Reeder’s Trance label. Again it’s a futuristic thing, but in the middle the rap and the scratching which was definitely coming from New York again. The plot points hit me so strongly.
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| Gudrun Gut on meeting with Bettina Köster for an upcoming Malaria! project: “”Last time we started doing what we call interviews, where we talk about our times and our story and I transcribed it.“ Photo: Heiko Lange |
HL: Thanks, yeah. A lot of good stuff came together, all the people who worked on it. My editor, I’ve worked for ten years with him, he’s perfect for this job. Unfortunately this was our last job together because he couldn’t stand the emotions of doing film, but he’s a great editor.
GG: He’s a great editor. Who is it?
HL: Alexander von Sturmfeder. I had a company with him, but it was too much for him working in this freelance film business, not getting the money. You know, people are different.
GG: What is he doing now?
HL: He is living in Cologne, he is still an editor but doing TV projects.
EB: You have Mark Reeder and Blixa, and Nick Cave too making that point about what happened at the end.
GG: For me the space which is described in the movie ended in ’87. We all wanted to leave the city, it was no good anymore. The atmosphere was not so good, the community wasn’t there anymore, it was very drug oriented, very dark, really kind of not very nice anymore. For me that was kind of the end of the thing. It was super exciting at the beginning of the Eighties and then it was going really down. We all wanted to leave and then the Wall came down. For me that was kind of the wow, okay, Berlin did it again! So I stayed.
EB: When the Berlin Wall came down actually there was a link to the C-SPAN channel in the club, The New Ritz. Buzzcocks were playing that night in New York and they cut to the cable station showing the Wall coming down in real time while Buzzcocks were playing.
GG & HL together: Wow!
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| Mark Reeder clues Muriel Gray in on the West Berlin music scene: “The bands they don’t concentrate so much on being in just one group.” Photo: Heiko Lange |
EB: It was a beautiful screen that was above the band and they were performing with the Wall coming down.
GG: I’m getting shivers!
HL: Is there footage of that?
EB: I never looked for that.
HL: I haven’t heard of that! Amazing!
EB: They didn’t know it was going to happen. They didn’t know it was being projected until I told them afterward. That was one crazy night.
HL: Gudrun, have you already mentioned that we are trying to do a Malaria! fictional film?
GG: No.
AKT: Please tell us!
HL: We just started. Gudrun, you started with Bettina [Köster] to write the script.
GG: I was in Italy at Bettina’s place twice already. She lives near Naples. Last time we started doing what we call interviews, where we talk about our times and our story and I transcribed it. Now we have a plan for a movie.
EB: Do you have any actors in mind?
GG: Yes, but I don’t want to [jinx it]. It’s kind of a mockumentary, more like a film. Not us in it but actors.
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| The announcement of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's death on June 11, 1982 seen in B-Movie: Lust & Sound In West-Berlin 1979-1989 Photo: Heiko Lange |
HL: All actors. Have you seen the Danny Boyle Sex Pistols series [Pistol]?
EB: I didn’t like it.
HL: Was it too glossy, too mainstream?
EB: They were too forced, the performances. Knowing them, I don’t know what people feel who never met them.
HL: I think it’s made for those who never met them.
AKT: A great mix of fictionalised and documentary is Tunisia’s Oscar entry for 2024. It’s called Four Daughters. The director Kaouther Ben Hania mixes the real family with actors playing the absent daughters who are in prison, plus a double for the mother. She is countering all the clichés of reenactments in a wonderfully original way. While you were talking, I thought that maybe the actors could be interacting with you, Gudrun.
HL: That’s funny! Another dimension.
AKT: A dimension to make it transparent. That’s why the Danny Boyle was so annoying, because it felt fake.
EB: And they didn’t resemble any of them also.
HL: I mentioned it because they had some real documentary footage in there sometimes. The idea is where it makes sense there could be some original footage from back in the time, but it’s played by actors.
EB: Also it [Pistol] doesn’t deserve a series. That’s really milking it.
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| Gudrun Gut at the Berlin Philharmonie on Saturday, May 3, 2024 Photo: Heiko Lange |
HL: It’s too long, yeah.
GG: I hate John Lydon, so I didn’t want to watch it.
EB: He’s a character alright.
GG: I love PiL; Public Image was great, but it can’t be him, must have been the others.
EB: When ESG opened for Public Image at the Pasadena Convention Center I did the sound. They showed up for the sound check to watch ESG and Keith Levene told me, it’s the only band on their US tour that they wanted to see the sound check. I had to give ESG an advance course on what Public Image was and the history where the members came from.They had no idea, they were invited by them and flown out and everything.
The night before it was Savage Republic opening for PIL, great West Coast band. I flew out two days early so I could watch the first show. I noticed that they had a different set up and mixing board for the opening act. I said, we’re using the main board. The levels were all marked from the night before for Public Image but they let us use it. What we did in New York was we printed Public Image T-shirts and ESG wore them when they came on stage and then after each song one of them took off the shirt and threw it in the audience and that crowd went crazy for them. That was ’82.
AKT: I think your film project sounds great. I think the fictional/non-fictional mix would work well. Try and see Four Daughters!
EB: Also why Four Daughters is such an important way of filmmaking - it was Oscar-shortlisted for Best International Feature Film and it received a Best Documentary Oscar nomination too. That rarely happens.
AKT: That it has both.
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| Gudrun Gut to perform May 4 at Museumsnacht in Chemnitz |
HL: Clever!
AKT: Kaouther’s previous film, The Man Who Sold His Skin, also received an Oscar nomination.
Read more on what Gudrun Gut, Heiko Lange, and Ed Bahlman had to say on B-Movie: Lust & Sound In West-Berlin 1979-1989.
