DEVO

2024's DEVO was acquired by Netflix and stands out from many other documentaries on the streaming channel.  While it does have its subjects sit and recount the past it benefits from a wealth of archival footage.  The documented stuff, what we turned in for.  It makes the case for the band Devo far better than its surviving members' reminiscences, interesting as they may be.  I've always said that such things are best suited to an audio commentary track.  Cutting to someone sitting and talking is a documentary sin, as far as I'm concerned.  Show, don't tell.

I'm a Devo fan, so I had a head start.  You always wonder if these docs will ever convert the agnostics, or at least pique their interest.  This sort-of punk/New Wave outfit was unique; no one can deny them that.  Their music, short films, and videos remain provocative and curious.  Odd at times.  As mentioned by founder Mark Mothersbaugh, people often found Devo funny, but the messages behind their music were mostly serious, inspired and formed by the events of the tumultuous late '60s/early '70s.  Particularly, the Kent State killings.  Mothersbaugh was there with future Devo co-founders Gerald Casale and Bob Lewis.

Devo members shot lots of video from the earliest days. Even the earliest shows, when their aural experiments left them with an audience of two.  Director Chris Smith and editor Joey Scoma create a nearly perfect assemblage of footage, which also includes some amusing TV appearances with the likes of Dick Clark and Merv Griffin.  And clips from that whacked out cult piece HUMAN HIGHWAY.  All very well sequenced.  Mothersbaugh et. al may have sought to deliver heady messages, but it doesn't take a fully developed spud to acknowledge their tongue in cheek approach.  Their theory of De-evolution posits that man evolved and then regressed.  You'd be hard pressed to disagree.

The boys managed to get a record deal with Warner Brothers, and scored a (fluke?) hit in 1980 with "Whip It", my first introduction to them.  A song interpreted in several ways, complete with a subversive video that has tickled and annoyed people for decades.  All of Devo's music videos, very popular in the early days of MTV (and glimpsed here), are sardonic, with plenty of social commentary.  The music is catchy.   As time progressed their tunes became more accessible, perhaps even enjoyed by the sort of folks being satirized.

Devo's story is similar to that of many other bands: humble beginnings, success, lack of success, creative differences, breakup, reunions.  DEVO more or less stops in the mid 80s, then offers a hasty update of the band members' later pursuits.  You know that Mark would go on to become a prolific scorer for TV and film.  I was waiting for a Wes Anderson interview that never came.