I know most of you have probably seen (or heard of at the very least) The Decline of Western Civilization and Decline II: The Metal Years, but hardly anyone has seen the third one except some film critics and a few lucky people at various film festivals in 1998 when it was released. The documentary is about the lives of a handful of homeless street punks/squatters living on the streets of Hollywood, CA from July 1996 to August 1997.
I first read about it in an issue of Rolling Stone around that time and have waited for 10 years to see the movie. I’ve searched every retail and auction website on the Internet as well as every illegal movie pirating site I could find over the last 10 years and have never found this movie. The film never was never distributed at all therefore there’s hardly any information or reviews on the film and no VHS/DVDs existed until recently. The official Decline website has said for a couple of years now that all 3 of the movies are “coming soon to DVD and video” but there had been no new news whenever I checked it out every couple of months until recently when I saw the note:
“Due to overwhelming response, we no longer have VHS copies of “The Decline III” to send out.
We hope that everyone who received one enjoys it and will show thier friends.
We’re still working on the DVDs. We just want them to be as good as they can be. Thank you for your patience.”
Basically it says “Fuck you, Josh Green. You didn’t visit our never updated website enough and missed the fucking boat, asshole. Ten years of searching down the drain. HA HA HA!”.
Well I got the last laugh, Penelope! No, I didn’t order a copy off eBay (STILL not on there!), but someone did chop the movie up into 9 10 minute long clips and post the entire thing on YouTube for everyone’s enjoyment. So, last night… instead of hanging out with everyone at Chase’s house… I finally got to watch The Decline of Western Civilization: Part III. Sorry guys, I found it at the last minute and have waited ten years to see it.
For those of you interested, here are the links to the 9 different parts. It’s worth checking out in my opinion.
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIvIY3daYwQ
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzmLt6Y5Vtw
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTwDjjcZz1M
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxWxnwZ1ho8
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=993uQSzomKw
Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dku47xcB0v0
Part 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9_9xNqvxks
Part 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkb8O8XKRV8
Part 9: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El3X2FYbzAk
