Review: Hey Is Dee Dee Home? DVD

Hey Is Dee Dee Home is mandatory if you want to see Dee Dee Ramone talk about Johnny Thunders and his own tattoos for an hour. Released to cash in on the death by heroin overdose of Gummy The Stabbing Hobo the year before, it's an interview of Dee Dee by director Lech Kowalski for an unfinished Johnny Thunders documentary, whose other finished work is Story Of A Junkie. There's a theme with this guy.

The Dee Dee who sits for this might be the drug-free one he claims to be, but who knows. He's president of the good posture club for sure, and the way his body and face moves reminds me of Charles Nelson Reilly. Dee Dee was always fun to read, look at or listen to -- in a sadistic way since he was always only moments away from some kind of insanity. Better this than sticking a finger up GG Allin's fudge tube. Recounting a domestic dispute, his psychotic girlfriend Connie pulled a butcher knife from her purse and Dee Dee was lucky enough to bat it out of her hand with a broom handle. Then, as the maestro tells it, "I went to go cop. I thought I'd make her happy.. and I got stabbed that day. I came home all bloody. Then we made up." Then he gives the standard Dee Dee look of extreme innocence, a gentle soul stranded in a crazy world.

If I had a nickel for every time he uses the word "cop", as in buying drugs, I'd have maybe $1.25. Buying drugs seemed to be his full-time job. He tells how Thunders demanded he cop drugs to earn the right to hang out with such an important rock star. I don't know, Thunders looked like a small, strung-out ferret to me so I take Dee Dee's side. Dee Dee also wrote better songs, including "Chinese Rocks", which Thunders stole.

Dee Dee was clinically nuts and on a psych 101 level you can enjoy this as an exercise in mental pathology. Dee Dee the reluctant heroin addict. Dee Dee who can't be within a mile of H without falling off the wagon. Dee Dee the passive-aggressive knife nut. He never portrays himself as pro-active, it's always Dee Dee taking abuse until he can't take it no more. The "good person" Dee Dee whose revenge fantasies might shock even Jack The Ripper. Oh yeah, he talks about himself in the third person, as in saying the shirt he's wearing is "Very Dee Dee-ish".

Hey Is Dee Dee Home is a chore to get through even at an hour but it ages well in the mind. His two autobiographies are definitely worth reading.