In the early 1980s, I was a college student, visiting my parents for the weekend, staying up late and taking advantage of their large color television, flipping through channels and looking for something worthwhile to watch.
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“Wait, is that . . .” — no, it couldn’t be! — but it was. I picked up the cordless phone and dialed a friend.
“Are you watching TV? I just saw Paul Simonon. And half of the Sex Pistols! Turn on Night Flight!”
Once I got over my excitement at the presence of punk rock musicians on my television, the rest of the film pulled me in like a tractor beam because there were GIRLS PLAYING PUNK ROCK on the screen in front of me. That wasn’t necessarily rare—Patti Smith had already gone on hiatus at that point and the likes of Chrissie Hynde, Joan Jett, Siouxsie Sioux and Exene Cervenka (just to name a few) were still very much treading the boards—but it was at least infrequent enough to cause myself and my friends to take careful notice and pay attention whenever we spied another co-conspirator. Another county heard from! We weren’t alone!
The TV guide helpfully decoded what I was watching: a film called “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains,” and it was showing on Night Flight. Night Flight was a programming series that ran on basic cable via the USA Network. It began at 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights, and was miraculously the kind of place where you could see things like Neil Young’s “Rust Never Sleeps,” The Clash in “Rude Boy” and other underground films you usually had to go to a revival house to see.
“Fabulous Stains” turned out to be a movie about three young women who find a way out of their dead-end Pennsylvania town by starting a band and hopping on a rock and roll tour. They became the third band on the bill for a tour featuring (fictitious) headliners Metal Corpse — with the Tubes’ Fee Waybill doing his best Alice Cooper imitation — and support band the Looters, featuring the aforementioned Sex Pistols / Clash members, along with a lead singer played by British actor Ray Winstone. It was directed by Lou Adler, who was responsible for Cheech & Chong’s “Up In Smoke” as well as the Monterey Pop Festival (the actual festival, not the documentary).
The Stains’ motto is “Don’t put out,” which seems at odds with a woman wearing no bra and a see-through blouse. But in the ’80s, when second-wave feminism made it seem like all the battles had been won and we had absolute equality between the sexes, day-to-day reality for most women was much different.
The Stains have only rehearsed three times, but the tour’s manager is aware of them because of an accidental appearance lead singer Corinne (aka “Third Degree” Burns, as played by Diane Lane) makes on local TV news, and invites them on the road as an opener. It would make you wince except that we already know that ⅔ of the Stains (Corinne and her sister Tracy, aka “Dee Pleated,” played by Marin Kanter) recently lost their mother and that they’re on their own, so you’re rooting for them from the first minute you meet them.
On the tour bus, the Stains learn — and evolve — quickly, and before long, are playing their set in front of a shopping mall packed full of young girls and women dressed just like Corinne. This happens because when a member of Metal Corpse (Vince Welnick, also of the Tubes) dies of an overdose in a dirty club bathroom and the local news shows up, Corinne takes advantage of the TV cameras: “He was an old man in a young girl’s world,” she deadpans, knowing full well that her black and white dyed hair and dramatic eye liner (as well as her see-thru shirt) would get plenty of attention. This is because Corinne got fired from her waitress job when she lost her sh*t at a TV reporter who came to the diner, trying to get color for a story about economic anxiety. This time, though, Corinne knows how this works. She’s 16, and by now she knows how to issue perfect sound bites: “I think every citizen should be given an electric guitar on her sixteenth birthday.”
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Later, Corinne and the other Stains (a 13-year-old Laura Dern is the last piece of the trio) outright steal the Looters’ signature song, make it their own, and take over the headlining slot just long enough to briefly glimpse stardom, before the inevitable denouement about the cruelty of the music business. The original film was never released theatrically because director Adler didn’t like the original ending, where the Stains inspire women and girls across the country to start their own punk rock bands; it took two years for the ending in place on the re-release, where we see a cleaned-up version of the Stains appearing in a music video on MTV. (It’s supposed to imply that the band betrayed their ideals and “sold out,” but that phrase, as applied back then, has a very different interpretation 40+ years later, especially when it’s a man applying it to art made by women.)
While this might sound somewhat cliched or predictable decades later, a recent re-watch (thanks to the recent reissue of the film by Fun City Editions) revealed that it holds up far better than the other fictional punk rock movie of the era, 1980’s “Times Square.” Both are cult classics and both have retained a devoted following through the decades, but “Fabulous Stains” is superior for several reasons.
“Fabulous Stains” doesn’t have the fantastic soundtrack that “Times Square” features, to be sure. (That opening shot of Manhattan with Roxy Music playing in the background is utterly epic.) But that constraint means the film has to rely on action and plot to make its point. The fact that the only song we hear in full is the Jones/Cook-penned “The Professionals” means it has far more impact when the Stains steal it from the Looters and make it their own. You can compare and contrast how far the Stains have come as a band because they’ve heard the song professionally (sorry) performed by the now-headliners. The Looters’ version is solid and almost too perfectly punk, while the Stains’ rudimentary, almost atonal rendition drives the song’s message (about military recruitment) home. And coming from a dead-end town in deindustrialized Pennsylvania in the ’80s, the Stains were perfectly able to understand the context of the lyrics.
The Stains’ motto is “don’t put out,” which — as the news reporter sent to cover the death of the Metal Corpse guitarist points out — seems at odds with a woman wearing no bra and a see-through blouse. But in the ’80s, when second-wave feminism made it seem like all the battles had been won and we had absolute equality between the sexes, day-to-day reality for most women was much different.
But “don’t put out” resonates not just with the young women who flock to see the Stains but with the reporter and obviously their audience, which is why she’s able to keep reporting on the Stains’ growing success, despite the snide commentary offered by the male news anchor. This is even more meaningful when you learn from interview footage in the reissue set that screenwriter Nancy Dowd—who wrote “Slap Shot” and had just won an Academy Award for “Coming Home” — took her name off the film because of the rampant sexism she experienced on set.
The depiction of middle America in “Fabulous Stains” was precise. It didn’t valorize or glamorize the economic downturn; it just portrayed it in the way that the people who lived there experienced it. A pregnant woman talks about living in her car with her boyfriend; Corinne is working as a waitress at age 16 to support her younger sister, while her aunt drinks whiskey out of a coffee mug and insists that they weren’t as wild as Corinne or her daughter (Laura Dern) are.
The girls run away from home and no one ever seems to look for them or be concerned that they’re missing, or that they are still minors. And yeah, those are minors talking about not putting out, but any woman who was a teenager in the ’80s probably has some stories they can tell about predatory men and having to run those gauntlets at school or work. None of the aspects of the story portrayed in “Fabulous Stains” seems ridiculous or impossible because too much of it resonated with its viewers.
The depiction of middle America in “Fabulous Stains” was precise. It didn’t valorize or glamorize the economic downturn; it just portrayed it in the way that the people who lived there experienced it.
And this is the real reason behind its cult status. As the interviews in the Fun City Editions re-release will inform you, despite what felt like ubiquity on Night Flight, “Fabulous Stains” was only shown a half-dozen times on the channel and was never released theatrically. Yes, seeing punk rock on television was still a rarity, and you mostly saw it portrayed in sensational or pejorative terms, like when the Sex Pistols arrived Stateside, or worse, when Sid stabbed Nancy and then again when Sid decided to unalive himself. The novelty of that would have worn off quickly had the rest of the story not hit so close to home for so many people who saw it.
Finally, British journalist Caroline Coon—who was at Ground Zero for UK punk rock— was a consultant on the film (credited as “Designer and Production Consultant”), which is almost definitely the reason “Fabulous Stains” avoided all of the mistakes other media made when it decided to tackle “punk rock.” She gets all the credit for the Stains’ hair, makeup and fashion choices. She was brought onto the film via Nancy Dowd, who absolutely knew what she was doing, and was completely robbed.
Courtney Love has called “Fabulous Stains” “the best film ever made.” It was inspirational to people like Alison Wolfe of Bratmobile, as well as the members of Bikini Kill, who watched the movie on a video tape made by Tobi Vail’s uncle: “The three of us lay on our stomachs with our chins in our palms, transfixed as Diane Lane, playing the lead singer of the band, yelled, ‘I’m perfect! But nobody in this sh*thole gets me because I don’t put out’,“ explained Kathleen Hanna in her memoir “Rebel Girl.” “At that moment, I realized our goal. We were going to be the Fabulous Stains for real.” And Ex Hex (featuring guitarist Mary Timony) made a video for “Don’t Wanna Lose” that paid direct tribute to the Stains.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains” is still very real and still worth watching, and its raw performances could inspire yet another generation.
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from music columnist Caryn Rose
