Hated: GG Allin and The Murder Junkies

Todd Phillips's first film. Long before Joker or The Hangover, it began as a class project while he was a student at NYU; he dropped out to finish it and raised the money himself. The budget was about $12,000 and only around two hours of footage was ever shot. The subject is GG Allin: a punk musician who cut himself on stage, threw his own faeces at the audience, fought the crowd, and risked arrest at every show. For years Allin had been announcing that he would kill himself at a concert, and using it as promotion. The film records his last months. He died of a heroin overdose in June 1993. What is honest about it is that it neither elevates Allin nor simply declares him ill. The people around him talk: his brother, the band, his fans, and people he assaulted. What emerges is not a music documentary but a portrait of addiction and exhibitionism. Before you watch, know this: it contains real violence, nudity and excrement, none of it censored. Hard to sit through for anyone without an interest in punk history.