Remembering New York Dolls Frontman David Johansen

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This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies.
David Johanson, a founding member of the legendary 1970s band The New York Dolls, died last week. He was 75.
The New York Dolls never sold many records, but the band had lasting influence, paving the way for punk rock. He also performed in his persona Buster Poindexter, a pompadour-wearing lounge lizard, and he played the blues with his band David Johansson and the Harry Smiths.
Johansson was the subject of a 2022 Showtime documentary co-directed by Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi called Personality Crisis, One Night Only. Much of the documentary is built around Johansson's 2020 performance as Buster Poindexter at the Cafe Carlisle in New York City.
The film also featured newly discovered and archival interviews with him and

others. Here's a clip from the documentary with English singer and songwriter Morrissey.
He says he was obsessed with the New York Dolls as a teenager because they brought a sense of danger to rock. Their music was loud and rough, but more than that.
So here were boys who were calling themselves dolls and and they looked like prostitutes, male prostitutes, which at the time, you have to remember, it was a long time ago, and all of that kind of thing was really taboo. English singer Morrissey from the Showtime documentary about the New York Dolls.
Terry Gross spoke to David Johansson in 2004. The surviving members of

the band had just reunited at Morrissey's request for a festival in England. Their performance was

recorded on a CD and DVD titled The Return of the New York Dolls, live from Royal Festival Hall.

Terry's interview starts with a track from the album called Looking for a Kiss. The Dolls used

to play this one in the 1970s.

It was written by David Johanson, who also sings lead.

When I seem in love, you best believe I Never in a place that needs to to say to me I could go off every way to the numbers I gotta have my fun I gotta get some fun I gotta keep on moving Can't stop the lips out, dog This is never done Listen, when I tell you you got no time for this, I just got a big can of flour to miss. If there's one reason, I'm telling you this, I feel bad.
I've been looking for a kiss. So when you were on stage with the Reunited and the new version of the Dolls, and you were doing the old Dolls songs, did you have any flashbacks to things that you had totally forgotten about? Did memories surface of things that were really interesting that you had completely forgotten about until you were back in that setting again? Well, I have memories, but God, they're vague, you know.
I mean, I remember the first time we made a record with Todd Rundgren, and the only thing I remember is the lights on the control board. I thought they were really pretty.
And that's really the only memory I have of making that first record.

People think I'm kidding when they ask, well, what was it like making that first record?

Because it kind of became this benchmark kind of record. That's really the only memory I have of it.
But, you know, the thing that struck me was I had to kind of sit down and listen to the music and write the words down and learn them. Oh, you had to relearn your own songs? Yeah, because, you know, I hadn't sung them in God knows how long.
I mean, it wasn't like I had to relearn them from scratch because they kind of come back to you. But I had to have some kind of thing to look at.
And, you know, I find that when I write something, it goes into my head better than if I just try to memorize it. So I was writing, for example, like human being.
And I was thinking, God, how did I write that song? This is great. I mean, it really holds up, you know, it's kind of like a declaration that I think is great.
I mean, it really holds up. It's kind of like a declaration that I think is timeless.
So there's a lot of stuff like that in the songs. Let me explain something to you.
There was a time when we started The Dolls and we were really such a gang. And it was like us against the world, and we were really trying to evolve music into something new, and it was, you know, very kind of almost militant to us.
And then over the years, you know, in the history books, you know, like the Rolling Stone complete encyclopedia of rock and roll or something. You know, you look in the appendix and see where your name is and see what they say about you.
It's not like you buy the book. And they would always say, you know, they were trashy, they were flashy, they were drug addicts, they were drag queens, you know.
And that whole kind of trashy blah, blah, blah thing, I think over the years kind of settled in my mind as, oh, yeah, that's what it was, you know. And then by going back to it and deconstructing it and then putting it back together again, I realized that, you know, it really is art and that some critic at one time had come up with this catch-all phrase that, as you know, once somebody says it, then everybody just looks it up and they say it because nobody does.
Nobody has an original idea. In spite of the fact that you don't remember a whole lot about parts of the early days of the dolls, do you remember writing the song Personality Crisis? Well, you know, I don't remember exactly sitting down and writing the words, but I remember where I got the name because I was kind of like an acolyte in Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theater when I was a kid.
This is when I was, you know, 17, 18, 19. And let's just describe what Charles Ludlum's theater was.
He used to dress in drag a lot as the leading lady in these like Greta Garbo kind of roles. Yeah, but it was so much more than that.
It was really very intelligent stuff that he used to do, and he used to combine a lot of genres of classical playwriting.

Like Moliere, he would put in with something kitschy that was present-day stuff.

He would make this melange of ideas that would come out so original and know, people throw the word genius around, but he was actually a genius. He was one of the most intelligent people I think I've ever met.
But I think one day we were at a rehearsal or something and he just said, oh God, I'm having a personality crisis. And I just thought, oh, that's really good.
And I wrote it down, you know, personality crisis.

And that's really all I remember about writing a song,

and the song came from that.

Well, why don't we hear Personality Crisis as performed by the New York Dolls

at the Meltdown Festival over the summer.

So this is from The Return of the New York Dogs.

I'm your mother. We can't take this way.
Offense of one another in Spain. Only more of that's our thing.
The humanity's got us say. All about that personality crisis.
Body while it was hot. Come on.
Double, double, double. Frustration, heartache.
Is that what you got? What you got? Personality. In the liner notes for the DVD and the CD, you write about Arthur Cain.
This was his last performance. He was the bass player of the band.
And it was Arthur Cain who knocked on your door and recruited you to be in the Dolls when the band was being formed. He died just a few weeks after the concert.
Did you even know he was sick? No, and neither did he. You know, he had had this incredible life, Arthur.
And he was just this really brilliant guy who had this incredible insight into reality that was just one step to the left of probably the most radical people I had ever met at that point. And I don't even mean, you know, politics.

I just mean the way he saw things. And they were always spot on.
And he was just so brilliant to me. And then he kind of, he had come from this family that was just like hell on earth.
and he got a taste for the booze

and went through like a lot of years

of just being drunk all the time. like hell on earth.
And he got a taste for the booze

and went through a lot of years

of just being drunk all the time.

And I remember he got to this point

where you would just say,

Hi, Arthur.

And he would just say,

Woof.

His only word became woof.

Anyway, he went through all this stuff.

I mean, I can't begin to tell you. In his life, he fell out a window.
He did this. He got hit by a car.
He did this. He did that.
And then he came out the other side, and he got involved with the Mormons and became the librarian at the family history office at the Mormon Tabernacle. And he was like this Mormon, but with this really kind of demented, uh, outlook on life that, so he wasn't, you know, like a proselytizer, but, um, he just was so wonderful.
And, uh, he had this very high voice And he just was so wonderful, and he had this very high voice. And he was 6'5 or something.
Let's talk about how he did recruit you for the band. He knocked on your door in your apartment in Manhattan.
You were, what, around 19 or something? What did he tell you about this new band? Well, there was a guy who lived in my building and I used to kind of, you know, jam with and strum guitars and he was this Colombian guy who played bongos and we used to just sit around and play music and he knew Billy Murcia who was the original drummer in the Dolls and told these guys who were looking for a singer that I was a singer, and he thought I was a pretty good singer. And so one day, Arthur was just at my door with Billy, and Arthur was about three feet taller than Billy, and he just said, I hear you're a singer.
And I said, yeah, and I invited them in, and we started talking, and they said they had a band, and they were looking for a singer,

and I was looking for a band.

And we just really that day, actually, we left my apartment

and went like four blocks up the street to Johnny Thunder's apartment

where there was some drums and guitars and stuff and started to play,

and we were a band, essentially.

What were some of the things that you knew you didn't want to be about, the kind of music that you thought had dead-ended? Oh, you know, at that time, there was, like, these interminable drum solos, and you know what happens when the drum solo stops. It's the worst.
Then the bass takes a solo. And stuff like that, you know.
And we just wanted to kind of have some really wham-bam songs. I mean, for me, the whole thing was like, if you have to compare it to something like a Little Richard kind of presentation.
I can remember when I was really young and I would go to the Murray the Kay shows, you know, and I saw Mitch Ryder and, you know, these shows had 30 acts and everybody would come out and do two or three minutes. And Mitch Ryder would come out and do a medley of his three big hits.
He would come out and like kind of like a tedo, and within 45 seconds he was half naked and sweating like a pig.

We just wanted to make an explosion, you know, of excitement.

So that's what was missing.

You know, rock and roll had become very kind of pedantic and meandering,

and it was looking for something, but it was like an actor in search of a play or something. Now, on the album cover of the album, The New York Dolls, you're all dressed in this kind of trashy drag with a lot of eye makeup and lipstick.
You're wearing a bouffant wig. I assume it's a wig.
No, it wasn't a wig. It wasn't a wig? No.
You teased your hair for it? Yeah, well, somebody teased it. Somebody teased it, right.
And you're wearing what looks like capri pants and high-heeled clogs and open cardigan revealing your bare chest. And you're staring at yourself in the mirror of a makeup compact.
Right. And the band's name is written in lipstick.
Right. For those of us who didn't get to see you on stage, how did that compare with how you actually looked on stage? Well, that was probably, you know, I mean, I think, you know, to the average civilian, it probably didn't look any different.
But to us, we were like dressing up a little bit more, make it a little special for the record cover, you know. You know, Sylvain was in the rag trade with Billy.
They had this little sweater company called Truth and Soul. Well, they sold it to this company called Truth and Soul.
They used to make these poor boy sweaters. They had a loom.
And through that, they knew a lot of people who actually are very kind of famous designers now but who were just getting started. And I think it was like Betsy Johnson and these women that she used to work with, they had a store in St.
Mark's Place, and they knew a photographer, and they knew a makeup guy, and they knew this and that. You know, we didn't know anything about that.
So I think they helped to facilitate that photo

session. What inspired your interest in or willingness to be in a kind of drag for performances? I mean, you mentioned you had been with Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theater and drag was often a part of their performances in theater.
So where did you see it fitting into your music

well you know we were on we were you know, the hotbed of revolution at that time was, you know, St. Mark's Place and Second Avenue.
And through that, you know, there were so many artists there and, you know, actors and people who were doing these plays like the ridiculous people and. And there was, you know, filmmakers and poets and painters.
And we were the band of that crowd. I mean, it wasn't like we were the band of even New York City, you know.
We were the band basically of the East Village, you know. And it wasn't so much like a sexual thing because, you know, like sexuality refers to like biological aspects.
It was more like a gender thing, you know. And gender is like, you know, like the cultural differences that grow up around the biological differences.
So instead of like male and female, like gender is really masculine and feminine, right? I think the trick for us at the time was to decide which characteristics were sex and which were gender, you know, because there's certain things males do and there's certain things females do. I mean, the universe didn't make two sexes for nothing.

Did a lot of people early on assume that you were gay because of the way you dressed in performance or because of the other cover? I don't know. I don't know.
I mean, it was obviously we weren't gay. I mean, you know, but maybe to some people it was.
You know how some people, I mean, to some people everybody's gay. You know? Like you could say like you could be talking to somebody and go, oh, that Hitler.
And they go, gay. So, I mean, some people just think everybody's gay.
But I don't know. We were like these kind of street kids from, you know, from St.
Mark's Place, you know. And we just had this idea that, you know, at the time masculine meant strong and assertive.
Feminine meant weak and demure. And this was a time of like redefinition of the roles, you know.
It was overdue. And it was just part of evolution, I think, you know, and everything kind of transcends and goes beyond what went before.
And otherwise, what's the use of doing anything, you know? David Johansson, co-founder of the 1970s band of the New York Dolls, speaking with Terry Gross in 2004. He died last week at the age of 75.
Johansson is the subject of a 2022 documentary, co-directed by Martin Scorsese on Showtime, titled Personality Crisis, One Night Only. Later, film critic Justin Chang reviews Mickey 17, a futuristic action comedy by Bong Joon-ho starring Robert Pattinson.
Here's David Johansson performing in his lounge lizard persona Buster Poindexter from the documentary. We'll continue our conversation after a break.
I'm Dave Davies, and this is Fresh Air. I woke up early one day And turned on my TV.
They say they take it over. When I was asleep, well, they were breaking down doors.
They were purging and burning people just like me. Well, I fixed the drink.
I switched around the channel, but that was all I could say.

Well, it's such a boring feeling when you find that you're

falling to a totalitarian

state.

No one's left.

It don't seem right.

You just don't feel so great.

Well, the trees were

all camping and the Mexicans

was laughing. Down at the detention center center They didn't seem to care that they were there I couldn't find one dissenter I didn't feel to mute and I was into mute kind of I couldn't see it getting any better I couldn't call no one I wish I had gone I couldn't leave her and send a letter Oh, it's such a boring feeling When you find that you're falling to a toe Don't tell me you say, yeah You don't know what's left You don't see right You just don't feel so great When they came to to tell me, I'd hope they would forgive me.
I tried playing dead. I finished my drink.
Assess the situation. Put the covers up over my head.
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The band was originally so used to performing in Manhattan in the village where people knew the band, the people who came were a part of the same arts subculture that the band was a part of. But when you went on the road in America, did you start playing in places where people weren't kindred spirits in the same way and they didn't necessarily get what you were doing and didn't know how to react to it?

Yes and no.

I mean, it's very interesting.

Like, you know, there were like rust belt places, you know, like Detroit and Cleveland and places like that.

People would go crazy for us.

And they would come to the shows all dressed up, you know, in Chicago. And, you know, we were really well-received in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
And we used to play a lot in Florida, you know, Miami. And we used to play in Atlanta and be very well-accepted.
And then we used to also, you know, we were friends with Leonard Skinner at the time. We were kind of kindred spirits, and we would go on tours of, like, state fairs and, like, tertiary markets in Missouri together.
And we would have a great time, you know. I know in Memphis, I got arrested on stage one night for allegedly, you know, it was like the Alice Tully Hall of Memphis.
I mean, it was this nice, clean room, and there had been articles in the newspaper that we were coming to hide Piper, all the children, to the end of the world or whatever. We thought it was funny when we read it, but I actually got arrested on stage and went to the Husqiu in Memphis, which I was dressed like Liza Minnelli at the time, so it wasn't the most relaxing night I ever had.
How do people respond to you in prison? In jail? Yeah. I just, like, hid under these, like, Lysol-smelling, like, army blankets, and then this guy woke up, and he went like, oh, damn, you're David Johansson.
And I was like, quiet, quiet, quiet. And then he woke up this bear, and the bear was growling.
And I was like, oh, my God, my knees were like, you know, rattling under these covers. But I got bailed out at like dawn.
What were the charges? Inciting a riot. The cops, you know, the cops wanted to mess the thing up, and they started beating on kids because they got up and danced.
And I stopped the music, and I started explaining to this officer that this child, he was abusing maybe the mayor's kid or nephew or something, and his job would be in jeopardy. And then they just threw me in cuffs and dragged me away for inciting a riot.
I may not have used the exact same language. I understand.
Why did the New York Dolls break up? Inertia. I don't know.
I think we got to a point where I like to think it was a project that we finished, but there was factions in the group that were more interested in drugs than in playing music. And it just kind of became, for me, I mean, I can only speak for myself, for me it became untenable.
What did you think when you saw the Sex Pistols, the Ramones? Your band, the Dolls, preceded punk, but it was certainly influential in a lot of punk bands and had the same sensibility in a lot of ways. So when you saw that sensibility just really become so popular, what did you think? I thought every new idea begins as heresy and winds up as superstition.
I never saw the Sex Pistols, but I saw the Ramones because they used to rehearse down the hall from me. I forget if I was in the Dolls or in my next band, but I remember Joey Ramone came to the room I was rehearsing in.
They have these buildings in New York with 100 bands playing at once. It's like it would drive a monk insane.
And he came by and said that he wanted me to come down the hall and hear his band. And I went down the hall to hear his band.
And I probably said, you know, you're a nice guy. Why don't you just give up? You know, I told the talking heads they should give up.
I mean, i would be the worst a and r man in the history of show business because i tell all these bands who when they're beginning that you're a good kid why don't you get a real job and a house you know so i don't what do i know i didn't think anything about it being influenced by me or anything like that.

It was just probably I had a headache and the music was really loud.

David Johanson, who co-founded the 1970s band The New York Dolls,

speaking with Terry Gross in 2004.

He died last week.

He was the last surviving member of the band.

We'll hear more after a break. This is Fresh Air.
This message comes from Capital One. The Capital One VentureX Business Card has no preset spending limit, so the card's purchasing power can adapt to meet business needs.
Plus, the card earns unlimited double miles on every purchase, so the more a business spends, the more miles earned. And when you performed a lot as Buster Poindexter.
And, you know, the New York Dolls were so into a kind of pre-punk sensibility and were very high energy and very raw. and you know Buster Poindexter is much more of a kind of lounge more Vegas

oriented kind of persona you know

instead of and Buster Poindexter is much more of a kind of lounge, more Vegas-oriented kind of persona. Instead of in drag on the cover, the Buster Poindexter character is in a tuxedo.
It's all drag, Terry. Well, that's the thing.
No, no, but that's exactly the thing. No, I mean, Birkenstocks are drag.
Exactly. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, exactly.
Everyone is like, everybody is saying something with their clothes, you know. So have you always felt like you were standing back and knowing that, that any kind of drag that you were putting on, any kind of outfit or whatever you were putting on for a performance was always that, that you always knew it was some kind of drag or another.

Yeah. Yeah.
You know, the thing with Poindex is there was a little club, like a saloon, an Irish bar around the corner from my house. I was living in Gramercy Park.
It was two blocks from my house, and it was kind of like my watering hole. And they would have bands there like Joe Turner or Charles Brown or Big Maybel and they would do residencies there.

So they would have bands there like joe turner or charles brown or big maybelle and they would do residencies there so they would play like three or four nights a week for a month say you know and there was a room upstairs where they would live monday night the back room was dark so i had decided i was going to do this little like road barrel house kind of road house show where I could just sing whatever songs I wanted to sing. And I was going to do it for four Mondays.
And I went in there and I figured I'd use a pseudonym so people wouldn't be coming in screaming for, you know, funky my cheek. So I went in to do that, and I just picked whatever songs.
I had been listening to a lot of jump blues at the time, but I also did, you know, like the Seven Deadly Virtues from Camelot and, you know, just whatever songs I wanted to sing. And by the end of four weeks, I started doing weekends, and it just kind of organically built into this.

It started out as a three-piece band and wound up as like a 15-piece band.

So I think by the time it got to the national awareness,

it did have this kind of Vegas-y kind of idea to it,

but it started off more kind of like the Louis Prima days in the 50s of Vegas.

You know what I'm saying?

Right, right, right.

Well, that image was encouraged, like on the cover of the Busta Poindexter album, you're drinking a martini. Right.
In a tuxedo with your pinky raised. And then I was back on the...
See, I was walking to work. I was making a nice living, and then we had a hit, and, you know, we all went to hell because we had to go back on the road.
Right. I want to play something from the Buster Poindexter era.
Don't play Hot, Hot, Hot. No, no, I wasn't going to.
I was going to play. Thank God.
Were you really tired of it? It's the bane of my life. Oh.
I was going to play Bad Boy. Okay.
Tell me why you recorded this. This is a cover.

Well, I don't know. It's just a good song.
It was written by Lil Armstrong. I always liked it ever since I was a kid.
Okay, well let's hear it. This is from the Buster Poindexter album.
Bad clothes I'm taking the trouble To take my night into day You know that old hot blazing sun It ain't gonna

hurt my head

Cause you always

gonna find me

Right there in the shade

I can see all the folks

I can see they all

laughing at me Cause I'm just naturally Crazy, lazy, bad boy That's Bad Boy from David Johansson's album Buster Poindexter. David Johansson is my guest, and his first band, The New York Dolls, has a reunion concert that was just released on CD and DVD.
It seems to me that you've had so many different characters you've inhabited as a performer, and I'm wondering how much you think your career as an actor has come into play in your career as a musician. Because before you were even in the New York Dolls, you were with the Ridiculous Theater Company in New York, and over the years you've been in a lot of movies as well.
Yeah, I guess there's a lot of kind involved i you know i have this friend elliot murphy who's a singer he lives in paris now i remember when i i started doing buster poindexter he used to say to me david you know buster poindexter is so much more like you than david johansson is you know if you get what I'm saying. In other words, with Buster, I really kind of went on stage and really didn't edit myself and just kind of said whatever came to my mind and didn't have many filters.
Whereas prior to that, in the period of my, I guess you would call it solo career, although, you know, you're always in a band, so it's never really a solo career. But I had the David Johansson group or band or whatever it was called.
And we used to open for a lot of bands and hockey rinks, you know. And you kind of go out there.
At that point, I was going out there and kind of presenting this, what I thought like ideal picture of myself, you know what I mean? Just this pleasant fellow, you know, whereas Buster was really kind of more warts and all, you know, and I think by doing that, it helped me to be myself more, you know. Whereas, so, now when I go on stage, I'm not like biting my nails.
I go, what am I going to do? How am I going to be? Blah, blah, blah. I just don't even think about it because I'm just going to go out there and essentially be whoever I am at that moment.
You know what I'm saying? You once said back in the Buster Poindexter era, Buster can have this great life in the public eye and take the rap for everything. And then David can go home.
Exactly. You know, it's funny because my mother, when Buster came out, she said, you know, this is the most genius idea you've ever come up with.
This is great. And I think that was her idea that, you know, Buster can take the rap and politicians should do it.
You have a show on Sirius, which is one of the satellite radio stations. Oh, yeah.
Who are you as a DJ? Are you just yourself or do you have a... I have a show called The Mansion of Fun.
Uh-huh. And I'm kind of like Sri Rama Poindexter Johansson.
And I'm very taken with Sri Ramakrishna lately because I read a biography of his and thought, man, that guy knew how to live. And he called the planet the mansion of fun.
So I named my show after that. And I play a really diverse bunch of music.
I play salsa, opera, blues, rock and roll, you name it. I play a lot of Nino Rota music.
You know, I play salsa, opera, blues, rock and roll, you know, you name it. I play a lot of Nino Rota music.
I play, you know, whatever tickles my fancy. So it's really completely freeform.
And I speak a lot of kind of Ken Wilber type forward-thinking philosophy. Well, David Johansson, great to talk with you.
Thank you so much. Thank you, Terry.
David Johansson, co-founder of the 1970s band The New York Dolls, speaking with Terry Gross in 2004. He died last week.
He was 75. He was the subject of a Showtime documentary, co-directed by Martin Scorsese, titled Personality Crisis One Night Only.
Here's David Johansson performing in his lounge lizard persona Buster Poindexter from that documentary. Tonight I'm going to do songs that I wrote or co-wrote, I guess from when I was a teenager all the way up to now.

And the one thing I could say, the unifying thing of my existence is that there's always been plenty of music. Very nice Feeling a great sadness today I don't wanna shush it or shoo it away It belongs to the whole world The boys and girls It ain't just mine Like joy and love It's always there I don't know how I tune in Or why that I care But I can't pretend It don't feel like the end And everything is fine I feel exiled from the divine Me and these sad friends of mine We're just waiting down here Drinking beer and losing time.

Well, I hear plenty of music.

I see superfluous beauty everywhere.

Why should I care?

What does it matter to me?

Yeah. Does it matter to me?

Yeah, yeah.

All right.

The myth of life is a song Yeah It ain't just you, that's a song Coming up, film critic Justin Chang reviews Mickey 17, the new film by Bong Joon-ho. This is Fresh Air.
In the futuristic action comedy Mickey 17, Robert Pattinson plays a space traveler who's repeatedly killed and resurrected for scientific research purposes as part of an expedition to a distant planet. It's the first movie from South Korean writer-director Bong Joon-ho after his Oscar-winning film Parasite.
Mickey 17 opens in theaters this week. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review.
There's long been a current of topical anger running through the work of the brilliant South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho. Parasite was a domestic thriller and an indictment of economic inequality.
The Host was a terrific monster movie with much to say about environmental decay and government inaction.

And then there are Bong's Hollywood movies, like Snowpiercer, which took on class rage and climate change, and Okja, which paints such a grim picture of industrialized meat production that reportedly many of its viewers went vegetarian. Now comes Bong's new movie, Mickey 17, an outlandish, otherworldly farce that also paints in broadly satirical strokes.
The movie, adapted from a novel by Edward Ashton, begins in the year 2054 on a faraway planet called Niflheim, where a human colony is being established. Robert Pattinson plays Mickey Barnes, a good-natured screw-up who's been hired as an expendable, a human guinea pig.
His job is to repeatedly die and live again, to ensure that Niflheim is safe for human habitation. And so he's exposed to radiation, viruses, and toxins, leading to painful and protracted deaths.
His body is dumped in the incinerator, and then, through the wonders of human printing technology, a whole new Mickey is regenerated and implanted with all his past memories. Live, die, repeat.
That's all Mickey knows anymore. Why would anyone sign up for such a grueling ordeal? It's complicated.
Let's just say that Mickey owes someone back on Earth a lot of money, and he decided it'd be best to flee the planet and die multiple reversible deaths, rather than a single permanent one. As the movie opens, 16 previous Mickeys have already bitten the dust.
And so it's Mickey 17 who introduces us to Niflheim, a planet covered by ice and snow. During a dangerous scouting mission, a colleague, Jennifer, is killed.
Mickey ironically survives. Later, back at their compound,

another colleague,

played by Ana Maria Bartolome,

asks Mickey a question he's been asked many times before.

What's it like?

Dying.

It's terrible.

Dying.

I hate it.

No matter how many times I go through it,

it's scary.

Still.

Always. Every time.

But you're here. And Jennifer isn't.
Out there. The entire universe.
She's nowhere. While you could see the premise as a metaphor for human cloning, Bong is less concerned with ethical implications than narrative possibilities.
He surrounds Mickey with supporting characters who underscore his weird existential loneliness. Stephen Hyun-Yun pops up as a backstabbing friend who treats Mickey like garbage.
Mickey does have a loving and supportive girlfriend, a very good Naomi Aki, who's happy to be with him, or any version of him. As we eventually learn, the Mickeys are not all strictly identical, and Pattinson has fun underscoring the differences.
While most of the Mickeys are lovable goofballs, at least one turns out to be dangerously unhinged. Pattinson has always been an adventurous actor, and this is one of his most inventive performances, marked by a Gumby-like physicality, a Steve Buscemi edge to his voice, and a deep core of melancholy.
The subtler depths of Pattinson's performance aren't always matched elsewhere in Mickey 17. Not that subtlety is really the goal here.
Bong is a giddy maximalist among genre filmmakers. He embraces high drama, low comedy, and sudden bursts of violence.
And he likes to juggle a lot of moving parts. His talents are formidable, but they aren't always well served by the shift to a big Hollywood canvas.
Like Snowpiercer and Okja before it, Mickey 17 can be a bustling, unwieldy contraption of a movie. It has not one, but two over-the-top villains, the tyrannical leader of the Niflheim colony, played by Mark Ruffalo, and his diabolical wife, played by Toni Collette.
They have fun leering and sneering up a storm, and Ruffalo's mannered vocal delivery makes it clear that he's lampooning a certain U.S. president.
Some of this satire does land, but it also wears awfully thin. Even so, Bong is one of the few filmmakers who can work at this scale, with elaborate production design and intricate visual effects, and still retain his artistic signature.
Some of the most memorable characters in Mickey 17 are the native inhabitants of Niflheim, which look like giant white roly-poly bugs with armadillo-like shells.

They're creepy at first glance, and it's no surprise that the human characters,

short-sighted colonizers that they are, are bent on wiping them out.

Leave it to Bong to flip the equation. He gives each of these slimy CGI critters a soul.
It's a rare action filmmaker who can make you say aww instead of yuck. Even amid multiple Mickeys, Bong's talent remains one of a kind.
Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed Bong Joon-ho's new movie, Mickey 17.
On Monday's show, Terry speaks with comic Bill Burr about his anger issues, which are hilarious on stage but not so much in real life, and how therapy, mushrooms, and becoming a father have helped. Terry says the interview was a wild ride and she really enjoyed it.
Burr has a new Hulu comedy special and is a star of the new Broadway revival of Glengarry Glen Ross. I hope you can join us.
Our senior producer today is Thea Chaloner. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.
This message comes from the John Dee and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, recognizing extraordinarily creative individuals with a track record of excellence.

More information on this year's MacArthur Fellows is at macfound.org.