Rock 'n' roll religion

A documentary covering punk legend Arthur “Killer” Kane shows conversion of a different sort | Arsenio Orteza

While the culture shock caused by Bob Dylan's 1979 emergence as a born-again Christian could have been measured with a seismograph, few noticed the emergence of the former New York Doll Arthur "Killer" Kane as a Mormon 10 years later. Nevertheless, as Greg Whiteley's New York Doll reveals, the aftershocks of Kane's spiritual odyssey have only now begun to reverberate.

Shot and edited with artful concision and nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, the 80-minute film chronicles a year in the life of Arthur Kane who, as the bassist of the notoriously outrageous New York Dolls in the early '70s, played an important role in shaping punk and heavy metal—and who as a poverty-stricken alcoholic embittered by his band's failure to receive their financial or critical due leaped from a second-story window in 1989.