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What We Do Is SecretDirected by Rodger Grossman, 2007 By Alyce Wilson At the screening of What We Do Is Secret, the Philadelphia Film Festival awarded its Rising Star Award to Shane West, star of the film, whose credits also include a variety of feature films (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, A Walk to Remember) and roles on the TV series Once and Again and ER. West is definitely the emotional heart of this movie, as the late Darby Crash, the self-destructive punk legend who strong-armed his band, The Germs, to fame and infamy in the 1970s Los Angeles punk scene. Ranging from snarky to self-loathing, he evokes multiple dimensions of Darby's personality. In fact, The Germs liked his work on the film so much that they invited him to front the band on a recent reunion tour. However, the film falls victim to numerous flaws, the most distracting of which is a terrible audio mix, which is muddy, at times making the dialogue virtually indecipherable. In fact, a club owner with a thick accent and a quirky way of speaking gets subtitles, which starts out as a reaction to a joke by another character: "He needed subtitles." Too bad everyone didn't get them. Writer/director Rodger Grossman tries unsuccessfully to blend a number of film genres, vacillating between tongue-in-cheek humor reminiscent of mockumentaries like This is Spinal Tap, to a more cut-and-dried VH1 Behind the Music-style rockumentary, to a biopic such as Sid and Nancy. The end result is a muddled mash-up of both funny and tragic moments. Anyone who didn't realize the film is based on a real person, might confuse it for an implausible dramedy. Interestingly, in the Q&A afterwards, Grossman revealed that the script was based on dozens of interviews he'd conducted with key players in the story. That might have influenced his structure of the script, as a fictionalized documentary. Perhaps the director was a little too close to the subject and, since he knew Darby's story in intimate detail, didn't realize how confusing this structure might have been to others. Shane West, though, has proved his potential as an actor. Hopefully, before this film is widely distributed (a distribution deal is reportedly underway), Grossman will return to the studio and address the audio issues, so that audiences can truly appreciate West's performance. Rating: ** (Fair) Philadelphia Film Festival 2008
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