''Crash 'n' Burn'' is an

experimental film Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that does not apply standard cinematic conventions, instead adopting Non-narrative film, non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many e ...

shot in and named after

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

, Ontario's first punk club by Canadian filmmaker Ross McLaren in 1977. (Not to be confused with

Peter Vronsky Peter Vronsky is a Canadian author, filmmaker, and investigative historian. He holds a PhD in criminal justice history and espionage in international relations from the University of Toronto. He is the author of the bestseller true crime histor ...

's 1977 documentary on Toronto Punk shot for the CBC television network.) The film, shot on

16mm 16 mm film is a historically popular and economical gauge of film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film (about inch); other common film gauges include 8 mm and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical (e.g., industrial, ...

black-and-white stock, features

punk rock Punk rock (also known as simply punk) is a rock music genre that emerged in the mid-1970s. Rooted in 1950s rock and roll and 1960s garage rock, punk bands rejected the corporate nature of mainstream 1970s rock music. They typically produced sh ...

performances by

The Viletones The Viletones were a Canadian punk band from Toronto led by Steven Leckie on vocals. Other members from the original line-up were Freddie Pompeii, (some sources list him as 'Frederick DiPasquale') on guitar; Chris Hate (Chris Paputts), on bass g ...

Dead Boys The Dead Boys are an American punk rock band from Cleveland, Ohio. The band was among the first wave of punk, and regarded by many as one of the rowdiest and most violent groups of the era. They were formed by vocalist Stiv Bators, rhythm gui ...

, Teenage Head, The Boyfriends, and The Diodes at venues such as; the ''New Yorker Theater'' in Toronto and the ''

CBGB CBGB was a New York City music club opened in 1973 by Hilly Kristal in the East Village, Manhattan, East Village in Manhattan, New York City. The club was previously a biker bar and before that was a dive bar. The letters ''CBGB'' were for ''Cou ...

'' and the ''Times Square Motor Inn'' in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

Critical response

Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture publication based in Greenwich Village, New York City, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Ma ...

'' critic

Ed Halter Ed Halter is a film programmer, writer, and founder of Light Industry, a microcinema in Brooklyn, New York. He currently teaches at Bard College, where he is Critic in Residence. Criticism His writing has been featured in '' Artforum'', '' Th ...

called the film a "self-destructive document of Toronto's eponymous punk club." The film's most frequently-quoted review, written almost one year after the initial screening, was published in ''Creem'' magazine in 1978. ''Creem'' hailed McLaren's work for "doing everything in its flickering power to self-destruct," and deemed the film a living testament that not all Canadians "bored their beef to death."Springer. "Creemedia," ''Creem'', Vol. 10, No. 4, Sept. 1978.

Versions

McLaren's original work emphasized the cacophony and riotousness of the punk scene in 1977 Toronto. In 2004, he debuted a karaoke-style version of the film – complete with syncopated subtitles corresponding to the bands' song lyrics – to a test audience at the Millennium Film Workshop in New York City.

Distribution

16mm prints of McLaren's film are exclusively distributed by

The Film-Makers' Cooperative The Film-Makers' Cooperative (a.k.a. The New American Cinema Group, Inc.) is an artist-run, non-profit organization founded in 1961 in New York City by Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol, Shirley Clarke, Stan Brakhage, Jack Smith (film director), Jack Smit ...

in the United States, and the Canadian Filmmakers' Distribution Centre in Canada. ''Crash 'n' Burn'' has never been officially released on either

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

, though several bootleg VHS versions are rumoured to have been shown publicly since the 1990s, without official authorization from the filmmaker or his distributors.

Critical response

Versions

Distribution

See also

References

Further reading