“We want to start where we began,” Tina Weymouth said.

“He kept us alive,” Weymouth said of the inscrutable club owner. “He fed us and he supported us in every way possible.”

“He told us we needed to expand our sound and get a little more interesting,” she said. “And he taught us a lot about ethics, about how to treat people.”

One of the best moments in CBGB involves Talking Heads. The band takes the stage in the nearly empty dive and launches into “Psycho Killer.” And then Kristal and the handful of listeners catch each others’ eyes, as if it’s just now occurring to them that they’re watching something historic.

The testimonies from Weymouth and David Byrne are shown during the closing credits of CBGB, but — bizarrely — we never see Kristal, (played by Alan Rickman) interact in any way with the band. He doesn’t even talk to them — much less feed them or teach them about ethics.

And that’s sort of the pattern of the entire new film CBGB: fabulously interesting figures from the history of punk and rock pass before us, but we pretty much never see any real human interaction between those musicians and Kristal, the man responsible for so much of their future success.

Sure, there were a lot of major stars who came out of CBGB, and not all of them can be fully realized characters in a feature film.

But only rarely does the script allow any of those musicians to live and breathe, even for a moment — rarely do they become more than just mimics or caricatures.

Later in the movie, as Kristal, now manager of The Dead Boys, tries to respond to the stabbing of Johnny Blitz, he yells at Stiv Bators (Justin Bartha) and Cheetah Chrome (Rupert Grint):  “Iâ€m not your father! Iâ€m just your manager! I canâ€t do this anymore!”

Huh?

We haven’t seen anything remotely paternal in Kristal’s relationship with the young punk band. The sudden outburst comes from somewhere out beyond left field.

The lack of human contact between Kristal and the musicians is perhaps the most puzzling of all the choices in the script by husband and wife team Jody Savin and Randall Miller (Miller also directs).

The poor character development is especially notable in the brief appearances of Iggy Pop (Taylor Hawkins) and Lou Reed (Kyle Gallner), both of whom come across as self-obsessed buffoons.

Terry Ork (Johnny Galecki) gets even worse treatment. A band manager, label owner, and something of a visionary, Ork was largely responsible for Television and deserves considerable credit for putting both the band and the club at the vanguard of American music. But in CBGB, all we see of Ork is his slightly smarmy attempt to get the band on stage and his offer to give  Iggy Pop a blow job.

So, if we aren’t seeing Kristal interact with the musicians, what takes up all the screen time?

Ashley Greene as Hillyâ€s daughter Lisa is especially unlikable. We donâ€t see a single moment of true warmth between father and daughter, and there’s even an embarrassing moment when Greene seems to be channeling Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny.

Twice in the film, characters fall asleep with the water running, flooding the floor below. Really?

We’re treated to several uninteresting scenes with Kristal interacting with a stereotypical cop.

The club might have been legendary for Hillyâ€s dog Johnathan taking dumps everywhere, but dog shit jokes wear thin pretty fast on screen. Ditto for jokes about rats and roaches.

And do we really need to see a montage sequence of a character buying a pair of boots?

The filmmakers have tried to deal with the episodic nature of the script by using comic book imagery reminiscent of Punk magazine to leap from one scene to another. At first this seems like a clever framing device, but it quickly wears thin, further diminishing the already shallow story.

But the music is at least great, right?

The film uses studio versions of classic songs even when there are existing live recordings from the club — raw renditions that might have given CBGB a much-needed jolt.  (Click here for a post with a number of live videos from CBGB’s early days.)

And, inexplicably, hardly any of the performance scenes in the film continue for more than 30 seconds without being interrupted by distracting dialogue, running jokes about the club’s seediness, or other extraneous elements. Viewers are given only the briefest of chances to immerse themselves in the music; we never have a chance to feel either the innocent wonder or the sordid seediness at the heart of the story.

I could go on and on.

As negative as this sounds, I’ll say that I didn’t find the movie boring — it moves too fast for that.

And there are a few touching moments here and there, and a few stirring musical sequences, and I don’t think I could ever get tired of watching Alan Rickman, who famously made drinking tea a work of art.

But you’ll likely walk out of CBGB feeling like you felt after one particularly mediocre night at some second-rate club.

You’ll feel like you just missed all the good stuff that surely must be going down at some other club down the street — one with better music, better sex, better drugs, and better conversation.

These shots begin with a couple of evening shots on set, including one of Alan Rickman talking to famed Savannah producer and ice cream man Stratton Leopold, and another of Estelle Harris.

The rest of the pics here were from one of the less exciting days (and, as I recall, one of the hottest) on the CBGB set on West Congress St. last July in Savannah.

You’re seeing Alan Rickman as club founder Hilly Kristal on the ladder talking to Terry Ork (a fabulously interesting music promoter and band manager played by Johnny Galecki), who is with the young members of the great band Television, played by Max Reinhardsen, Evan Alex Cole, and Luke Dressler.

Then Ork is walking out of the club to speak with Kristal and Merv Ferguson (Donal Logue).

This moment — the one when Ork gets Television onto the CBGB stage — could have been one of the most interesting and dramatic in the movie.

XLrator Media has acquired U.S. rights to distribute CBGB, the film about the iconic New York City club that gave rise to the punk movement in America.

It will be released during the CBGB Musical Festival, which runs from Oct. 9-13 in the Big Apple.

The Randall Miller-directed film stars Alan Rickman as CBGB founder Hilly Kristal and Ashley Greene as his daughter, Lisa. Also: Malin Ackerman as Debby Harry; Rupert Grint as Cheeta Chrome; and Joel David Moore as Joey Ramone, among others.

Here’s the slightly too long preview video about the CBGB Festival:

I noted the good reception at a recent private screening here in Savannah for CBGB, but it will be interesting to see if the movie truly catches the flavor of the historical scene and if moviegoers propel it to screens nationwide.

While I’d say it’s still likely that CBGB could play at the Savannah Film Festival in the last week of October, the timing of the release might mean that the film has already been seen widely in theaters.

Click on through to find CBGB on Facebook:

The color correction is being done by Fotokem.

I’m just going to embed a single image from that album in this post, but you can see more by clicking here or by clicking “View on Facebook” in the image below, which shows Alan Rickman as Hilly Kristal and Donal Logue as Merv Ferguson.

I took a lot of photos of the production last summer.

But I’ve got more.

This morning around the house I’ve been listening to Television, one of the earliest bands to develop a synchronous relationship with the iconic Bowery club owned by Hilly Kristal.

I had quite a lot to say about Television in a previous post in which I mentioned Terry Ork, played by Johnny Galecki in CBGB, the openly gay producer whose Ork Records released singles by Television, Alex Chilton, The Feelies, and others. Ork is hardly a household name — he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry! — but he was one of those figures who just made things happen. (Click here for a nice picture of Ork along with other key CBGB figures and the actors portraying them.)

Ork died in 2004. From Richard Hell’s website, where he refers to the deaths of other old friends including Bob Quine:

We’re very sorry to hear of the death on October 20th, in San Diego, of Terry Ork. He’d been ill with cancer for a while. Richard says, “Good grief. That’s three this year. What is up? We’re not that old. I saw Terry a couple of years ago when he was in New York for a little show of some art he’d made. He was laughing a lot, as always. He’s about the only person I can think of who whenever I think of him it’s with a big smile on his face. I actually got a longish email from him the day before he died. I’d written inviting him to speak at the Quine memorial. What to say about Terry? He was a troublemaker, and some of the trouble he made was the band Television–he suggested his blond boy Richard Lloyd as second guitar which made the live band possible, and he gave us his loft to rehearse in which made it probable. He had lots of shady dealings. He ended up in jail for a while. He was a movie freak. That’s how Verlaine and I got to know him — he was managing Cinemabilia in New York when we worked there. Godard was his main man, and Guy Debord. When I left the Heartbreakers he brought out my first music release, a three song EP featuring ‘Blank Generation,’ on his new Ork Records. He’d started the label one EP before that, with Television’s ‘Little Johnny Jewel.’

Here’s a shot of Johnny Galecki as Terry Ork, talking to Hilly Kristal (Alan Rickman with the curly hair) and Merv Ferguson (Donal Logue).

And here’s a lot of Television, which we may not ever have heard were it not for Terry Ork:

And check out this great song off Television’s 1992 self-titled album:

Relics from New York City’s bygone CBGB club – including “Smithsonian-quality pieces” like its bar, the phone booth, chunks of the walls and those stained toilets, all pulled from storage – will reunite on the big screen next year in CBGB, which indie filmmakers confirmed they finished shooting in August.

Forty years after CBGB opened its doors on the city’s Lower East Side, writer Jody Savin and director Randall Miller of Unclaimed Freight Productions tell Rolling Stone they are now editing the 100-minute feature. It tells the story of how the late Hilly Kristal [Alan Rickman] offered his club’s cramped stage to bands playing original songs, which attracted groups like the Ramones, the Patti Smith Group and Talking Heads. In 1974 Television became the first act to play CBGB, and gigged there every Sunday for years before recording their album Marquee Moon. The club closed in 2006.

Much of the film was shot in Savannah this past summer, as most people reading this already know. The Rolling Stone piece contains a number of details likely to be of interest to those who have followed the project.

But will the film feature the soundtrack that it really should? That’s a question that has been nagging those of us who hope CBGB is both a critical and commercial success.

From Rolling Stone:

Produced for less than $10 million, CBGB will feature more than 40 songs of the period, though Savin admits “the music decisions are not done yet,” because “some bands are more cooperative than others.”

40 songs = good
uncertainty about which songs = bad

The Dead Boys (l-r): Justin Bartha as Stiv Bators, Rupert Grint as Cheetah Chrome, Bronson Adams as Johnny Blitz

The piece notes that the filmmakers have been consulting with both Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, so one could reasonably expect that Television songs might be in the final cut. Ditto for The Dead Boys, since Cheetah Chrome (played in the film by Rupert Grint) even had a brief role as a cab driver picking up Hilly Kristal’s mom (Estella Parsons). I’m betting songs by The Shirts will be available too — the film is a great chance to boost sales and visibility for some bands that have largely faded from public consciousness.

Given Patti Smith’s reaction to the film, I don’t expect to hear any of her music, but what about the Ramones? What about Talking Heads? What about Blondie?

From Rick Campanelliâ€s Rockin†‘CBGB†Set Visit:

I had never travelled to Savannah, Georgia before – Atlanta numerous times, but never to the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts. I wasnâ€t there for those tasty little cookies, although I would have bought a few boxes if the opportunity presented itself. I was there on a work assignment – possibly my favourite on-set since being here at ET Canada – to visit the set of the movie CBGB and the cast including Malin Akerman, Ashley Greene, Johnny Galecki and Alan Rickman. Thatâ€s right, the legendary music club CBGB (Country, Bluegrass and Blues), which opened in 1973 at 315 Bowery in New York City.

Ashley Greene from ET Canada on the set of CBGB

Here’s the full interview:

Click here for all my posts on the filming of CBGB.

There’s a regrettably cloying soundtrack behind the video, and I’m a little surprised that Ackerman treats Deborah Harry and Blondie as absolute synonyms.

Still, there are a few images from the set that give a little sense of the look of the film.

From ET’s Malin Akerman Feels Pressure Playing Blondie

Fresh off of her musical role in Rock of Ages, Malin Akerman returns to back to the music scene in the upcoming film CBGB. However, this film is based on a true story, and she will play the role of punk rock pioneer Blondie, which pressures her to execute an accurate portrayal.

“There is so much pressure to do it right,” Akerman said. “I’ve been watching copious amounts of YouTube videos, interviews, and stage performances…There’s such a huge…population in the world who know who she is and who watched her, so you want to get it as right as possible. There is, obviously, pressure. You want to do her justice, so hopefully she’ll be happy.”