Darby Crash and The Germs are both high and low points in The Decline of Western Civilization Darby is the film's poster boy In 1981, the documentary by Penelope Spheeris called The Decline of Western Civilization made its debut on the big screen on July 1 in New York City. On this date, April 2 in 1902, the first structure in the United States to have been built specifically to be a movie theatre in its own building, from the ground up opened in Los Angeles, California. It was called the Electric Theatre. Thomas Lincoln Tally was its proprietor. In 2006, The New York Times wrote, in a piece reviewing a television documentary about the 10 events that changed history: ... a radical new venture devoted to movies and other high-tech devices of the era, like audio recordings. "Tally was the first person to offer a modern multimedia entertainment experience to the American public," says the film historian Marc Wanamaker. Before long, his successful movie palace produced im...