The persistently absorbing legend of Darby Crash, the late vocalist for the founding Los Angeles punk rock band the Germs, is finally making it to the silver screen -- with a little help from the group's ex-members.

"What We Do Is Secret," written and directed by Rodger Grossman, recently wrapped principal photography here. According to music supervisor Howard Paar of Emotomusic, Grossman was shopping the project as long as seven years ago; others, including director Allison Anders, had tried and failed to put a Crash feature together. Rhino Films finally took on the film; after a financing hiccup that shut down production, shooting recommenced this spring.

Crash, who killed himself at 22 with an intentional heroin overdose on Dec. 7, 1980, has long been an alluring subject for a picture. Born Jan Paul Beahm and schooled in a free-wheeling educational environment at University High in West Los Angeles, he rechristened himself Bobby Pyn and then Darby Crash and became one of the first local punk rockers.

The self-styled "chaotic master" left behind few recordings -- a few singles and EPs, the fierce 1979 Slash album "(G.I.)," and largely unused tracks for William Friedkin's 1980 thriller "Cruising." But his band's unpredictable, shambolic shows, its devoted, destructive group of followers (known as "Circle One") and his role as a progenitor of the Southern California hard-core punk scene is a legacy that has not lost its fascination.

"X notwithstanding, the Germs were the one band who felt like they meant it," Paar says. Back in the day, the music supervisor -- formerly a senior publicist at PolyGram and V2 Records -- was the operator of the Silver Lake ska-punk venue the O.N. Club; he saw several of the Germs' early gigs and knew Crash personally.

Paar was equipped to bring verisimilitude to the music. Some further accuracy was assured early in production, when Germs guitarist Pat Smear -- later a member of Nirvana and Foo Fighters -- came on board to work on the music. He ended up schooling the performers who would play his former band: Shane West (as Crash), Bijou Phillips (bassist Lorna Doom), Noah Segan (drummer Don Bolles) and his own alter ego, Rick Gonzalez.

"They rehearsed like a band would," Paar says. "Pat said, 'I can get them to play as well as we did when we were bad.' "

Smear was later joined on the set by Doom and Bolles. "The actors got to spend a lot of time with the people they were going to portray," Paar says. "When we did the prerecords, they were all there."

West -- who got special prosthetic dental work to approximate Crash's snaggle-toothed look -- even fronted the surviving members of the Germs at a Hollywood club gig early last year.

The film is using stand-ins for other bands of the era: The Bronx play hard-core heroes Black Flag, and Mae Shi fills in for electroshock punks the Screamers. Paar hopes to fill out the soundtrack with original masters by such O.G. punk acts as X, the Dils, the Bags and the Weirdos.

Rhino, which has not yet secured distribution for "What We Do Is Secret," plans to bring its saga of L.A. punkdom's most colorful train wreck to Sundance next year.