Cro-Mags’ Harley Flanagan Talks Wild Life in ‘Wired for Chaos’ Trailer

A new documentary is set to dig into one of the wildest life’s in punk rock history, that of Cro-Mags bassist and vocalist, Harley Flanagan. A new trailer for the upcoming film, Harley Flanagan: Wired for Chaos, is out now with the film slated to arrive in theaters June 20. 

The new trailer opens with a clip of Flanagan playing his bass while going for a run in the woods, saying, “I feel like I’ve been angry for almost 50 years. I’m only starting to now realize that this is not really who I am.” From there, the clip offers a condensed, but fascinating look at Flanagan’s singular, yet tumultuous life, with Flanagan himself saying, “I was wired for chaos before I knew anything.” 

The clip teases Flanagan’s surreal childhood, where he quickly emerged as a punk prodigy, who began drumming for the New York band the Stimulators when he was just 11. That thrust him into the thick of the downtown New York scene, but as Henry Rollins puts it in the trailer, within just a few years, Flanagan had probably “seen a whole lot of stuff that maybe someone of that age can do without.” 

Flanagan goes on to open up about the descent into violence that coincided with his continued rise in punk circles, especially with the formation of Cro-Mags. But all of that came to a head in 2012 when Flanagan was accused of stabbing two of his bandmates backstage at a show in New York City. While the charges against him were eventually dropped, the final part of the clip shows Flanagan trying to contend with his turbulent past and chart a more stable future. 

The Rex Miller-directed Wired for Chaos will feature interviews with Flea, Ice T, Michael Imperioli, Ian Mackaye, Keith Morris, Glenn Danzig, Matt Serra, Darryl Jennifer, Kate Schellenbach, Lucy Sante, Scott Ian, and the late Anthony Bourdain.