Pretty Ugly: The Story of the Lunachicks arrives as one of those rare music documentaries that actually earns the right to tell it’s story. Director Brian Lally doesn’t settle for a highlight reel — this is a film with genuine curiosity about how a band like the Lunachicks came to exist, what held them together, and why they mattered in ways that the mainstream music industry was never quite equipped to recognize. Lunachicks are/was a punk rock band from NYC, which isn’t remarkable because all the best punk comes from NYC, but what IS remarkable is that they were an all FEMALE punk rock band. It feels shitty to say this today, as much as it did then, because who really cares if they were all girls, right? I mean, good is good, right?
Pretty Ugly: The Story of the Lunachicks is a portrait that feels honest rather than celebratory, which is ultimately the highest compliment.
Now, full disclosure, I am FAR from an unbiased person here. Way back in the last century, I was a Freshman at School of Visual Arts in NYC and at that time you couldn’t throw a stick without hitting a student that looked punk, or rock, or goth…or like me, a goofy little nothing that was a confused amalgam of all three, and added in the scope of looking homeless and hopeless (I was kind of equal parts both).
Our load of misfits, who were named (by Miggy) “The Dildo Crue” or “The Sluts”. Doug (who we called “Dougie Slut”…for good reason), Miguel (“Miggy Slut” for ironic reasons), Maria (who we called “Ma” because she was always yelling at us like a mother), Dominick (who was always in bright pastel colors and desperately wanted to shed his Long Island high school George Michael wannabe look and fit in by becoming more ‘rock’…and failing), and ME, a kid from the South Jersey suburbs who was finally able to be punk without judgement.
One day, during a smoke break from a class…I think Art History, I could be wrong… we’re all outside, seated on the sidewalk, and one of our motley group of artsy misfits, a girl named Theo handed us all a little flyer and said we should come see her band. Keep in mind, to ME, Theo was relatively quiet and reserved. Yes, she had the multicolored hair and the fashion accoutrements that screamed “punk metal rock suburban moms and ministers will hide their children’s eyes and sneer!”… but we ALL looked like that. But, in a group that included the folks listed above, Theo was simply “one of us”… I didn’t even know the persona she would take on when she hit the stage.
The reality of the Lunachicks hit us full on in the face the night we went to see them at the legendary CBGB’s the first time. I was immediately in love with this band. The image, the energy, the fuck you attitude and the absolute humor. At one point, and I remember this very vividly, during an insane version of “Octopussy”, I was on my knees in front of the stage, head back and fist pumping the air with abandon. I also developed an immediate crush on Squid, the bassist…which displays both my love of the bass, and my incessant ability to always crush on girls who prefer girls before finding out they prefer girls and abandoning said crush.
I, sometimes with my friends, sometimes by my damn self, tried to see them any time I could. One of my favorite shows being one night in some loft style room I had never been to before, where the band Freaks was having a record release show, and Lunachicks opened up for them. I got to see a show by my then fave band and hear a band I had never heard of before. I got to see a guy get hit in the head with a metal legged chair and not stop moshing for even a moment. I got to sit on a couch sloppy drunk on rum having a conversation with Joey Ramone. No, I do not remember a shred of that conversation. I remember he was cool, friendly and personable. I remember I was drunk.
What this film gets right is the texture of the band’s history — the downtown New York scene that formed them, the particular strain of chaos and commitment that defined their live show, and the way they occupied a space that punk, metal, and pure irreverence were all fighting over simultaneously. It also highlights how, even though Lunachicks was a unique band in that space, there was LITERALLY no one like them, the industry could not see the forest for the trees. They could not see past the fact that this was a “girl” group and notice that this was a “good” group, a group with a unique style, story and way of telling it. The industry couldn’t see the potential.
The archival footage in the film is exceptional, and deftly intersperses new with old. The filmmakers clearly did the work of going deep into the vault rather than relying on whatever was easiest to license. For anyone who was there, it’s a genuine time capsule. For anyone who wasn’t, it’s a convincing argument that you missed something really special.
The Lunachicks never got the cultural reckoning they deserved while they were active, and Pretty Ugly makes a quiet, persuasive case for why that matters. The talking heads are well chosen, featuring Debbie Harry, Howie Pyro, Chris Stein, Gina Shock, Donita Sparks, Miss Guy and others — people who actually have something to say rather than the usual parade of adjacently famous validators — and the band members themselves are candid in ways that suggest they’ve had enough distance from it all to be genuinely reflective.
By the end, the film has made its point without belaboring it: Lunachicks was entirely and unashamedly themselves at a moment when that was both the most radical and the most commercially inconvenient thing you could be.
And so much MORE than just an “all girl punk rock band”.
Fuck the patriarchal music industry that exists even until today.
(Now, I’m gonna go listen to Lunachicks all day….)