Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins, Grace Jones to Star in ‘Loudest Silent Movie’
A number of singers known for their loud mouths will appear in a film that producers are billing as “the loudest silent movie on earth.” Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins, Grace Jones and Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes have all been announced as stars in Gutterdämmerung, filmmaker Björn Tagemose’s concert-film hybrid, which will find a live rock band and narrator providing the movie’s score at screenings. The production, due out either later this year or early next, will announce more rocker-actors on August 1st.
“The film is sent in a world where God has saved the world by taking from mankind the Devil’s ‘Grail of Sin’ – the Evil Guitar,” Tagemose has said of the plot, according to Metal Hammer. “From Heaven a punk-angel, Vicious, looks upon the world with weary eyes. He sends the Devil’s guitar back to Earth – and sin returns to mankind. An evil puritan priest, Rollins, manipulates a naïve girl into retrieving the guitar to destroy it. On her quest she’s forced to face the world’s most evil rock-&-roll bastards. She has a rival in the form of a rock chick, determined to stop her.”
Pop will play the renegade angel Vicious, who sets the world on fire to test humanity, according to the movie’s website. Rollins, who also serves as the film’s co-screenwriter, will portray a “priest Svengali.” Jones portrays the “ultimate nemesis, an African goddess from Hell.” And Hughes will appear as a bounty hunter who “kills sound for money,” working for people who “use false morality as oppression.” The film will also feature appearances by Tuesday Cross, an adult-film actress who plays bass in an all-female group called Tight, and actress Olivia Vinall, who will play the movie’s heroine.
“It is primarily a visual experience with very little dialogue,” Rollins said in the video above. “And it is not a film that you will see in the traditional way of going into a movie theater and sitting down. You will be standing up for this very loud, fully immersive experience.”
The movie’s title draws inspiration from the apocalyptic-themed opera Götterdämmerung, by composer Richard Wagner whom Hughes name-checks in the video. The opera’s title translates to The Twilight of the Gods, and Wagner’s opera chronicles Ragnarök, a Norse myth about a war between gods and other various beings.