The garbled voices, the grand-mal-seizure camera work, the "art shot" of the flaccid French fry being dragged through the catsup at the all-night diner--Bruce McDonald knows the rock-documentary shtick like he knows Johnny's Rotten. "Hard Core Logo," his mockumentary about an '80s punk band that reunites for an anarchic, low-rent tour of Canada, is not just the best rock movie of the last several years, it creates/substantiates its own Descartian theory of cinematic existence: I pose, therefore I am.

McDonald, director of such rock 'n' roll-scented road movies as "Roadkill" and "Highway 61," is fluent with the conventional mechanics of nonfiction filmmaking, which gives "Hard Core Logo" its hilarious bite. But he also knows the up-yours attitude of punk, the nihilism-meets-genuine passion of rock-gone-by and the premeditated nature of anger as a career tool. His movie, as antic and propulsive as it can often be, is also a commentary on the artist as bore.

Reassembled by lead singer Joe Dick (Hugh Dillon) to do a benefit/anti-gun tour after the shooting of seminal punker Bucky Haight (Julian Richings), the Logos--Billy Tallent (Callum Keith Rennie), John Oxenberger (John Pyper-Ferguson) and Pipefitter (Bernie Coulson)--hit the revival road with the doomed optimism of "Spinal Tap" and with the undigested bile of the second Nixon administration.

Playing to small rooms and increasingly small audiences, they start out well and rapidly deteriorate, both musically and personally. Billy is biding his time before he gets the "big gig" with the headlining band Jenifur; Pipefitter might just as easily be robbing gas stations as playing drums; and bassist Oxenberger is a medicated schizophrenic who can't find his medication. Joe Dick, the baseball cap-wearing rock general with the Mohawk hair, throws around band and audience abuse.

McDonald plays it straight at first, with the backstage-style footage and gyrating concert scenes but the film becomes increasingly expressionistic and cinematic, perhaps in proportion to how increasingly unfilmable the band becomes. We get little bits of history--some distinctly disturbing--about the band's early history. You certainly know why they might hate one another; you sense why they might stay together. You don't know, necessarily, about the loss of brain cells.

In the film's most poignant segment, subtitled "Mary the Fan," an old camp follower-groupie (Megan Leitch) shows up with her visibly uncomfortable husband and small daughter and tries to revisit the past. After a rambling discussion about crimes of the past, Oxenberger asks, "What's your name?" Mary is as shattered as we are. Everyone in the film is convincing, sometimes moving and always funny--abetted, of course, by McDonald's construct, which is intentionally tongue-in-cheek and jaded and cognizant of the foibles of modern celebrity. Similarly, McDonald marries two sensibilities--utter cynicism and rock romance--with a resulting combo platter that's tartly delicious.

Hard Core Logo, 1998. R for strong language, substance abuse, some violence and sexuality. Released by Rolling Thunder Pictures and Cowboy Booking International. Director Bruce McDonald. Producers Christine Haebler, Brian Dennis. Screenplay by Noel S. Baker, based on the novel by Michael Turner. Cinematographer Danny Nowak. Editor Reginald Harkema. Original music producer Peter J. Moore. Production design David Willson. Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes. Bernie Coulson as Pipefitter. Hugh Dillon as Joe Dick. John Pyper-Ferguson as John Oxenberger. Callum Keith Rennie as Billy Tallent. Julian Richings as Bucky Haight.

Copyright 1998 Los Angeles Times