TxMike I came across this movie on Netflix streaming. I am a Rickman fan so watched it because of him. The subject turns out to be Punk Rock, a music genre that I truly hate, but the story of how all this came about is very interesting.Alan Rickman is New Jersey native Hilly Kristal who in 1973, after at least a couple of failed businesses leading to bankruptcy, decided to start yet another new business. He was certain that country music would be the next big thing so he called his place 'CBGB' which stood for 'Country, Blue Grass, and Blues.'As it turned out those musical forms never took off in his place, they took off in Nashville. But the CBGB became a magnet for alternative forms of music, like Punk Rock. Like The Ramones, or Debbie Harry, or The Dead Boys. Even The Police featuring Sting.Hilly was never much of a businessman. His place was crude and pest- infested, and he probably had the dirtiest toilets in Manhattan. He never bargained contracts for supplies and was paying too much, cutting into profits, which ended up in cash in his freezer.His daughter is played by Ashley Greene as Lisa Kristal, she recognizes his lack of business skills and sets out to make things right but Hilly was not very cooperative.All in all a pretty fascinating story, if it had been written as fiction we would have a hard time believing many of the things that are portrayed here.

alfiecycling this contains spoilers ! if you dig the music of the 70's and punk in particular you will enjoy this. I certainly did. This tells the story of the founding of the famous NY club CBGB and PUNK magazine. Hillel Kristal borrowed money from his mom to buy the Palace Bar in the Bowery.This after two bankruptcies...LOL. His daughter , Lisa, dropped out of college for lack of funds. So she is hired, fired then rehired by her father, Hillel aka Hilly. It has a superb cast and the CBGB set is spot on.Hilly and Lisa are played by Alan Rickman and Ashley Greene. I loved their performances. They are actually quite funny here.Hilly : "You gotta spend money to make money." Lisa : "You gotta have money to spend money to make money. And since you spend all the money you make,you don't have any money to spend. So you might wanna think about saving the money you make instead of spending the money you make"...Way to go Lisa ! Also, Ashley's New Yawk accent is right on the money.Freddy Rodriguez plays Idaho, a violin bowing homeless junkie that Hilly takes under his wing.We see a NY style shakedown of Hilly thwarted by his new found biker buddies, the Titans of Hell. We see The Ramones, Television, Talking Heads, The Dead Boys and, towards the very end, The Police all auditioning for Hilly to get a gig at CBGB. We also see Blondie and Iggy Pop singing, I Wanna Be Your Dog. And Patti Smith perform,Because The Night. I love this movie and have watched it numerous times because of where it takes me. Just before the closing credits Hilly says that he opened the club because he thought country music was gonna be the next big thing...and it was ...in Nashville.LOL.During the ending credits we see the real Talking Heads accepting their induction into the Rock'N' Roll Hall Of Fame and what they do to honor Hilly is so moving.That is a MUST SEE !The only negative I can talk about is the movie spends too much time on The Dead Boys. Apparently Hilly saw something in them and invested a lot of money to manage them and nearly lost his club to this band that eventually crashed and burned.

bimbowes Regardless of the inaccuracies, the music is great and the film provides a small glimpse into the scene at the Bowery club. Alan Rickman is wonderfully droll and captures the spirit of Hilly. Nice seeing a few old rockers pop up in cameos. Would have been nice to see more character development and have the bands that helped kick off the club and the punk scene be portrayed more than cardboard cut-outs. You can practically smell the stale beer and pee. I would suggest reading Legs McNeil's, "Please Kill Me" to supplement the film's account of the mid 70's NY music scene. Some casting was spot on, but the Lou Reed scene was pathetic and the actor was horrible. I like Justin Bartha, as well, but Stiv Bators was hardly adorable. The wigs were ridiculous too.

gabe-geltzer I saw this movie because I had written a screenplay about 6 years ago about The Dead Boys and CBGBs that circulated town and was never bought. I was curious - and a little suspicious - needless to say when this movie went into production. My fears were unfounded, almost nothing I wrote was in this sloppy, scotch-taped up plot less pile of scenes. First off, you have endless possibilities for interesting stories. This was a seminal period in rock n roll history. But to make the "Hilly Kristal Story" is a ridiculous choice. He simply is not the hero of this scene or this movement. He was a passive bar owner who was in the right place at the right time. He waddles around the movie with no interest in anything other than making a buck. I met and interviewed Hilly - around 2006. He seemed like he barely cared and even admitted he was in the right place at the right time. The Dead Boys are a totally interesting story and they are treated like a bunch of spoiled sh*theads. Every cameo rock star appearance is silly and embarrassing. Iggy Pop gets like one line? No lines for Dee Dee? Where was Johnny Thunders? Where was Seymour Stein and Sire Records? Why does Legs friggin McNeil use the word 'dude' constantly - remember we are in 1977? Lou Reed cameo was nauseating. Sloppy. But here's what's really awful: It feels fake and made up from half-remembered anecdotes. The fact that Hilly's daughter - incidentally an EP on the film - plays a crucial part of the story also rubs me the wrong way. CBGB was about the music, not about some guy who ate Hostess cupcakes and paid the rent. Plot: none. No climax, no resolution. No character development. Characters enter and leave and reenter and leave. The story opens on the so-called "inventors of punk" - um, no. They made a fan magazine and wrote an OK book on which the source material was based. They were witnesses, not inventors. And they served no point in the film except to irritate me with political rants every 30 minutes. By the way, that's 4 appearances, because this is a slow-moving 120 minute movie whose best scenes are between an incidental made-up cop character and the bar- owner. Nothing happens except the usual "you're on thin ice mister."The sets are vaguely realistic, though the Agnostic Front stickers really made my hair curl. The cartoons were OK. This may sound like I'm jealous because this was somehow pushed through the system with a huge catalog of punk songs (most of the budget must have gone to Sting, BTW) - but I'm relieved that there is still a good movie or miniseries to be made about this era. This just isn't it.