It’s been about a dozen years since I first viewed Hated at a friend’s house, but the images and words of GG Allin have always been stored away in a dank closet in my brain. This time around, I noticed that the first-time director and narrator is Todd Phillips, who went on to make Road Trip, Old School and Starsky & Hutch, quite a departure from this docu-film. Cursed from birth with the name Jesus Christ Allin, as verified by GG’s mom in the extras, how could his life turn out any different than it did? Hated coincidentally was wrapped up shortly before Allin’s death by overdose in ’93.
“…watch GG stick a bottle up his ass, beat up his bandmates, take a shit and roll in glass…” – Unk, a GG Allin fan.
None of us have ever lived this way. We may have been musicians or addicts or alcoholics or nudists or exhibitionists or rapists or had other trouble with the law, but never in the manner of GG Allin; at least, the stage persona of GG. One on one interview snippets reveal a calm man who can rationalize his train of thinking. These and a scarcely solemn solo cover of Warren Zevon’s “Carmelita” are the only instances that can humanize him. Perhaps the sole individual he ever opened up to was John Wayne Gacy, whose poster of GG is being offered with the DVD and whose words about Allin open the film.
Phillips either captured or was able to scrape up moments for the film which have made it infamous. Whether it’s a speaking engagement at NYU with a mic and banana, Unk’s birthday present, or the one which occasionally cracks open that closet door: a spoken word performance from Boston ending with a woman’s face meeting a wall at high velocity after she calls GG’s suicide bluff. Hated‘s sociopath subject GG Allin has his exploits on full display, and those who surrounded him have an endless amount of stories. Catch up with Merle and Dino the Naked Drummer fourteen years later, still recounting debauchery along with live show footage, director commentary on this incendiary film, and temporary GG tattoos.
