"Room 37: The Mysterious Death of Johnny Thunders" — a "supernatural horror-thriller" written and directed by brothers Vicente and Fernando Cordero Caballero — makes its U.S. theatrical debut Friday night at Theatre 80 on St. Mark's Place.
Here's a description of the film — "based on true events" — via IMDB:
Famed rock and roll guitarist Johnny Thunders arrives in New Orleans to get his life together after a toll of hardships, but instead falls into a dark journey and trail of events that are based on his real life unexplained mysterious death.
And the trailer...
The film starts at 8 at Theatre 80, 80 St. Mark's Place just west of First Avenue. Find pre-sale tickers here.
Thunders, aka John Anthony Genzale, Jr., was a New York Doll, and later a Heartbreaker who lived for awhile in the East Village. He died in April 1991 at age 38.
Courtesy of a post at Dangerous Minds today, we have this impromptu video interview between now-former New York Dolls bandmates David Johansen and Johnny Thunders.
You can head over to Dangerous Minds for all the background… One thing: The interview was shot with photographer Bob Gruen's video camera and included on the New York Dolls DVD of Gruen footage, "Lookin’ Fine On Television."
Directed by Danny Garcia ("The Rise and Fall of The Clash"), "Looking For Johnny" is the definitive documentary on New York legendary guitar player Johnny Thunders.
In 90 minutes, this film covers Johnny Thunders career from his beginning in the early 70's to his demise in New Orleans, where he died under mysterious circumstances in 1991.
Here's an earlier trailer for the film …
You can find the new trailer and more info at the film's Facebook page.
And "Looking For Johnny" has its NYC premiere Monday at the Anthology Film Archives. Find those details here.
Johnny Thunders had an apartment on Avenue A. His closet was like — everything would be pressed and dry cleaned. He had a real unique way of dressing and picking this and this and that and putting it all together.
When we were picking names for the band, he called me, well, he called Ricky Corvette, and run names by me. 'What do you think of Johnny Thunder?' I'd was like Yeah, that's pretty cool Johnny. The phone would ring five minutes later. What about Johnny Thunders?
At the time of his death at age 38 in April 1991, Thunders — born John Anthony Genzale, Jr. — apparently had about $4k to his name. However, his sister in Queens, the administrator of his estate, parlayed that sum into several hundred thousand dollars through the years.
Since she died four years ago, none of his heirs have reportedly received any payments.
Per the Post:
Thunders’ half-Swedish daughter, Jamie Michelle Susanne Genzale, 26, was set to take over as administrator of the remaining $160,000 when all hell broke loose.
Jamie, a single mom working as a shop clerk in Stockholm, couldn’t afford the $75,000 bond that’s required by the court for her oversee the payments — so no one has been paid in four years, her Swedish lawyer told The Post.
But Thunders’ sons, Vito and Dino Genzale, are now suing to bar her from controlling the funds.
Vito , 36, of New York, has done stints in the state’s toughest lockups, including Attica and Sing Sing, for drug dealing.
Dino, 34, of Texas, has a rap sheet that spans 16 years and four states with charges ranging from marijuana and cocaine offenses to robbery, theft, indecent exposure and assault.
And now the sons are trying to track down their mother as well, whose last-known address was in Springfield, Ohio, to get her on their side in the ongoing legal fight.
[He] had an apartment on Avenue A. His closet was like — everything would be pressed and dry cleaned. He had a real unique way of dressing and picking this and this and that and putting it all together.
When we were picking names for the band, he called me, well, he called Ricky Corvette, and run names by me. 'What do you think of Johnny Thunder?' I'd was like Yeah, that's pretty cool Johnny. The phone would ring five minutes later. What about Johnny Thunders?
You can listen to a Johnny Thunders birthday special hosted by Jesse Malin from last year over at East Village Radio.
Via our friends at East Village Radio ... this afternoon at 4, "Jesse Malin will be celebrating the life and legacy of Johnny Thunders. Malin will be playing the music of Thunders, born John Anthony Genzale, Jr. on July 15, 1952, as well as the artists and sounds that inspired the Queens-born singer and songwriter."
Thunders, an original member of the New York Dolls, died in 1991.
Find more info (and videos) here at East Village Radio.
If you want more Johnny Thunders, then you can check out the annual Johnny Thunders birthday bash tonight at Bowery Electric.
In his essay on the East Village in NYPress this week, Matt Harvey spoke with East Village filmmaker Rachel Amodeo. She wrote, directed and starred in What About Me. (What About Me was filmed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with a release in 1993.) I've been meaning to write about it...so this presents a good opportunity.
Here's a passage on the film from Harvey's article:
Her film is a naturalist document of pre–Tompkins Square Park riot days. Filmed in black and white — and set to a score by [Johnny] Thunders and Bob Quine —Amodeo’s East Village is a claustrophobic, small town of decrepit storefronts, graffiti, peeling paint; cons, hookers, junkies, lowlifes. The kind of people Travis Bickle wanted the rain to sweep away. Her character is conned, raped, thrown out of her apartment and run over by a motorcycle; but somehow it’s believable. The East Village is seen as something to escape — not buy into.
She smokes crack with Nick Zedd in an unheated apartment and hangs out with bums warming themselves with trashcan fires. During filming, they tried to find real crack for the scene, but Zedd couldn’t find any, according to Amodeo. “That’s what the ’80s was about: dark lighting, and no electricity, experimenting with drugs,” Amodeo tells me in her hoarse voice.
Aside from Zedd and Thunders, the film features Richard Edson, Richard Hell, Rockets Redglare and Dee Dee Ramone, among many other familiar faces.
Here are a few shots from the film, some familiar scenes of past and present places along Avenue A, such as the Tompkins Park Restaurant on the corner of Ninth Street where Doc Holliday's is now:
There's an exterior shot filmed in front of Sophie's. Richard Hell is shown walking into the bar....
...to meet his friend Nick Zedd, though the exterior isn't Sophie's, it's, uh -- I forget.
And here's Dee Dee, in his lone scene in the film:
According to the YouTube description of this video, this scene was shot the day that Johnny Thunders died, April 23, 1991.
From Dee Dee's "Lobotomy: Surviving the Ramones": "After we finished my scene, we called it a wrap and went over to Rachel's apartment to relax and smoke some weed. When we got there the phone rang. It was Stevie (Klasson), the guitar player in Johnny's band. "Rachel, he said. "John died. He's dead".(pg 232)
Dee Dee continues: "But I was still out of control. The reality is that methadone was not blocking my craving for street drugs. I shot up quarter grams of cocaine for a couple of days. Then I went over to the Continental Divide for a tribute concert for John... It was too much for me. I went down to the Bowery and got drunk. The next day I shot up some dope. I just didn't give a damn anymore." (pg 233)
Back to the NYPress article:
Amodeo lives in two-bedroom rent-controlled apartment near Avenue A with her boyfriend, gallery owner M. Henry Jones. The rent is cheap enough that she refuses to specify it. Hell has rent-controlled turf a block west, that he -— in her words -— is “so, so grateful for.” But most of the rest of her friends have vanished from the nabe. “I think, some of them had families and they all lived in one-room studios, and they had to move, others just vanished,” she trails off as if she wasn’t too sure. “It’s kind of scary.”
I ask her when the hood started to feel different for her, and she replies: “I think when Johnny [Thunders] died, it felt like a different place. Stuff was starting to open up.”
Thunders died mysteriously in New Orleans when the film was in post-production. In other words, by the time the film was released it was already a relic of another time. “God,” she adds, “people used to live in the storefronts.”
