LAST DAYS HERE chronicles the triumphs and downfalls of an underground icon who fi nds himself at the crossroads of life and death.
Bobby Liebling, front man of the hard rock band Pentagram, is more dead than alive when the camera picks him up in his parents’ basement. In the midst of the mess that he calls home, Liebling smokes his crack pipe and mumbles about the hard rock days of time past. At the end of the 1980s, things looked promising for Liebling and his band. But bad luck and trouble pursued them: record deals gone wrong, internal disagreements, and last but not least, Liebling’s tendency toward self-destruction.
Until Sean “Pellet” Pelletier, hard rock enthusiast and passionate record collector, buys a second-hand Pentagram record, experiences a sort of revelation, and makes it his personal mission to resurrect Bobby Liebling. He goes looking for his idol, becomes his friend, and does his utmost to get Liebling back onstage. By means of archive footage and interviews, this portrait reveals how tough it is for Liebling to defeat his demons.
At center stage are Pentagram’s diminished existence and Liebling’s destructive addition, but also the unbelievable devotion with which Pellet tries to pep him up. When asked about meeting Liebling, Pellet has this to say: “It’s like… being a devout Christian and walking down the street one day and bumping into Jesus and he knows your name, and shakes your hand and he asks you over for dinner and drinks.”
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Last Days Here – Published Reviews
Empire Magazine
A heavy metal ‘Grey Gardens.’ Hilarious and tragic
Steve Dollar, The Wall Street Journal
Ingenious and suspenseful…
to call this a mere music documentary is like saying Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ is a pretty tune.
Lauren Wissot, Filmmaker Magazine
Has more bizarre twists than any fiction
Boston Phoenix
An Unsettling, Compelling Look At An Aged Rocker’s Final Shot At Stardom
Christopher Bell, IndieWire
Unflinchingly honest, Don Argott and Demian Fenton’s (“The Art Of The Steal”) documentary explores the same has-been-but-almost-was hard rock/metal band topic that “Anvil! The Story Of Anvil” did, only this time it’s not comparable to a real-life “This Is Spinal Tap.” “Last Days Here” is a much darker look at an extremely gifted musician, a moribund dude given one last shot at redemption. These kind of stories are easy to come by in cinema (and even easier to get behind), but this one digs deeper than most, exposing an ugly reality — one so seemingly futile that even the smallest victories throughout feel genuine rather than the work of clever filmmakers exploiting their subject for audience affection.
Read the full review here
Tracking a Heavy-Metal Near-Casualty in Last Days Here
Melissa Anderson, The Village Voice
When we’re first introduced to emaciated, bug-eyed, trembling Bobby Liebling, the fiftyish frontman of the frequently dormant cult metal band Pentagram and the subject of this small-scale but weirdly engrossing documentary, he’s showing off his past stage outfits: perfectly preserved hip-huggers purchased in 1967, “paisley shit,” chiffon scarves. “I was saving them for when I got big. And that never happened, so I saved them forever,” the crack, heroin, and meth addict says in the subbasement of his parents’ Germantown, Maryland, home, where he has resided for decades. In the kitchen, Liebling’s chain-smoking mother seems inured to the fact that her son will become a rock-and-roll suicide. But he promises his chroniclers, Don Argott and Demian Fenton, that he will not die: “If you guys want me around, I’ll stick around.” read more
A Rock Life, After the Hammer Falls
Tom Roston, New York Times
”Last Days Here” is the latest in a string of rock documentaries that not only aim to lift audiences but also to revive the faded careers of their subjects… Despite the grim prospects for both the film and its subject, [the filmmakers] Mr. Fenton and Mr. Argott spent… four years driving from Philadelphia to Maryland, where Mr. Liebling still lived with his parents, documenting his struggle to get clean, his tumultuous relationships and his moribund career. “I was ready to die,” Mr. Liebling said in a telephone interview “So I didn’t give a damn about being filmed.” read more
