‘New York Doll’ tells story that lives beyond fiction
There are times when reality plays out in ways that fiction can’t. That is exactly the way the story of Arthur “Killer” Kane goes; a man who went from being a rock star wearing skintight pants, platform shoes, smeared lipstick and big hair, to a conservative white shirt and slacks with a missionary name badge, working at the Family History Center.
New York Doll director Greg Whiteley met Arthur Kane when they were fellow ward members in Los Angeles. Arthur, after years of alcoholism and a failed marriage, became a Mormon in 1989. Whiteley was Arthur’s home teacher. Whiteley said Arthur “indoctrinated” him about the band he played the bass for a band called the New York Dolls.
“Arthur pointed to a poster of a rock band hanging on the wall behind his couch,” Whiteley said. “The bassist in the poster had enormous hair and was wearing a skintight leotard, a feather boa and a large pair of thigh-high platform boots. ‘That’s me,’ he said.”
“I’m convinced that Arthur woke up every single day aching to get his band back together,” Whiteley said. “I think it was the number one thing on his ‘to do’ list every day.”
That opportunity did come. Arthur and the two other remaining Dolls were invited to play at the 2004 Meltdown Festival in London as a reunion show for the Dolls. This is when Whiteley said he made the last-minute decision to start filming.
The idea came to me many years ago,” Whiteley said in a telephone interview. “We started filming the day he asked me for a ride to the pawn shop – after he found out the band was going to be reunited.”
Whiteley and his cameras followed Arthur in his preparations for the reunion show.
“Along the way, things fell into place, and in many ways, it paralleled Arthur’s story,” Whiteley said on the New York Doll movie Web site production notes. “We found investors, convinced friends to skip work and make our film, and headed off to New York and London to see if Arthur’s dreams – and ours – would materialize.”
Whiteley graduated from BYU with a degree in film, then earned his MFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He said that previous to filming “New York Doll,” he had directed a few commercials and industrial films.
Many of the interviews in the film are a who’s who of famous rockers. Though the Dolls lasted only three years, they had a big influence on a generation of musicians and the beginnings of punk music. Sex Pistols, the Clash, Blondie and the Smiths, are just a few. Getting these interviews wasn’t difficult Whiteley said.
We just told them who this film was going to be about,” Whiteley said. “These famous people were just tripping over themselves to be in the film. They are great fans of the New York Dolls. They were fans of Arthur Kane.”
Whiteley said it has been amazing to see the response his film has received both from critics and audiences.
To have critics he is familiar with review his movie “just seemed ridiculous, and the fact that they liked it so much is just heartwarming. “
“I love sitting in audiences. I was just up in a theater called the Roxie in San Francisco. It was just full of ardent New York Dolls fans. We were sitting in a crowd of punk rockers, and they loved the film.”
The success of his movie has spread across the globe. This small film, which Whiteley said cost $12 to make, premiered in Los Angeles, Calif., and New York. It is now being shown in Germany, Japan, the UK and Toronto, Canada. Whiteley said they expect to release it on DVD early next year.
“It was such a small endeavor, at least in the beginning,” Whiteley said. “On the one hand, I just had no expectation for it. On the other hand, there was a feeling about it – just seemed like this could be something big. But I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to admit that to myself. I didn’t want to say it out loud for fear of jinxing it or just sounding ridiculous.”
New York Doll was nominated for Best Film in the Sundance Film Festival. According to Michael Baird of Vineyard Distribution, the movie was then bought by One Potato Productions. It has now made its way to Utah, where Baird said it has made half its box office money. It is being shown in Salt Lake, Logan, Provo and recently opened in Idaho.
People filled Logan Art Cinema to capacity Dec. 1, where it was shown for free. It opened officially on Dec. 2 and play until Dec. 15.
Matt Howard, a junior majoring in conservation and restoration ecology, went to see the film the day before it officially opened in Logan.
“I’m LDS and I like classic punk, so this was a perfect combo,” Howard said. “It was so interesting how the filmmaker found [Kane] at that point in his life. It was the best story of any recently released film.”
Arthur believed that the film would be seen by millions of people, Whitely said. “I just thought he was ridiculous.”
“Did I expect all of this?” Whiteley said. “No. But at the same time there was a feeling when we first started the project that something special was about to happen.’
ashleykarras@cc.usu.edu