2763

Kinda hard to tell from the angle, but is that Christian Slater in Pump up the Volume?

2764

Tom, you’re absolutely right, you’re wrong. It isn’t About A Boy. Even though it is about a boy.

Yep, that’s Christian Slater spinning his records, which is legal, while delivering monologues about how unfair it is to be a teenager, which is legal, to an army of fans, which is legal, using shocking profanities and obscenities, which is probably a little naughty, via his pirate radio signal, which is illegal. And sometimes he takes that volume knob and pumps it. Therefore, it is Pump Up The Volume.

The 60:60

12.04.20 60 60
12.04.20 60 601186×640 125 KB

The PTA persistently demonstrates their commitment to be as uncool and as heinous as possible. Except for Christian Slater’s dad. He sometimes almost sounds like his heart is in the right place, even though he’s so square. Though it doesn’t help that he and his wife deliver dialogue to their son as if they are having two completely different conversations about how the son needs to make friends and better himself.

The 80:80

12.04.20 80 80
12.04.20 80 801149×643 152 KB

This isn’t Matthew Broderick playing Global Thermonuclear War, this is just some fun on the public airwaves. So the yellow FCC delivery vans are just there to hang out and monitor the situation at the high school. Everyone is casual about it – do you see the angle that girl in the blue and white stripes is cocking her head? You can’t do that unless you are extremely relaxed about an increased FCC presence at your school.

One last gasp of film in the reel, the 100:100

12.04.20 100 100
12.04.20 100 1001149×634 37.2 KB

This movie only made ten million 1990-bucks at the box office, which maybe explains why it is so hard to find on streaming services. Or maybe The Man doesn’t want movies about cocky loners banding together to be rude to authority figures out there.

You’re up, @MrTibbs! You can say whatever you want! You can build a hyperlocal audience of fans who hang on your every word. It’s like you are an influencer, a streamer, a blogger, a public access TV host, a zine publisher, a maniac on a soapbox in the middle of a park.

2765

Haha, awesome write-up, Djscman! I’ve loved pirate radio stories ever since my dad told me about the early days of the local scene in NZ. I saw this for the first (and most likely last) time on HBO like 20 years ago, so this pick makes me quite nostalgic. :)

Here’s the new 20:20

20

2766

Time for the forty!

40:40
4040

2767

Dolls?

2768

Something else.

2769

By the way, when I read just before going to bed that’s exactly how I do it, too…

2770

60:60
sixty

2771

The Amateurs?

2772

I can see how you could make that connection but this is something very different.

2773

While I remember little of this movie, I will never forget that Hubert H. Humphrey High School gets called Happy Harry Hardon.

That’s my story.

2774

Let’s step back and continue that scene.

2775

Yeah, when Christian Slater takes his nom de guerre as Happy Harry Hardon from HHHHS, it really underlines that his secret identity was bound to fail. A plot point is that a quasi-goth, quasi-Manic Pixie Dream Girl figures out who he is, but really he really gives clues away in every one of his on-air diatribes. His shortened nickname was Hardon Harry, but his enigma was not that hard at all. Of course, this was written before the WWW, when kids and police officers had to do research out of an encyclopedia.

2776

Gonna go with Arlington Road as a wild-ass guess that I know is wrong.

2777

It’s not Arlington Road, Nava. This frame should offer a better hint about the subject matter.

80:80
Eighty

2778

The amazingly below average Texasville.

2779

Yep, it’s Bogdanovich’s disappointing follow-up to The Last Picture Show. Even though it was in color, I was hopeful it might offer at least some of the melancholic atmosphere its predecessor had, especially since much of the cast returned. It’s mostly a bog-standard melodrama, where people are having numerous affairs and families are expectedly dysfunctional and eccentric. I sought out the Director’s Cut which unfortunately is exclusive to Laserdisc (I was kind and used frames from the standard DVD), but seems rather necessary as it adds around 30 minutes of character development back into the film. I can see why not major studio would touch this, even though it was produced during a time a lot of the New Hollywood fellas were returning to the works that made them icons in the first place.

There’s a few great moments, like when Cybill Shepherd’s first appearance when she swims over to Duane and asks him if he’s rich and I appreciate how the extra weight Bridges puts makes him look genuinely uncomfortable during his mid-life crisis, but overall most of the cast is squandered, especially Cloris Leachman. The big moments like when no one can find Sonny, who has returned to the dilapidated, old picture house don’t work.

It sounds like it was rather dysfunctional behind the scenes, too. Tim Bottoms hated his castmates and only agreed to do the film if Cine-Source would fund a making-of doco he would helm himself.

The main reason I sought this out is because I’m listening to the latest season of Karina Longworth’s podcast series You Must Remember This, exploring the life of Polly Platt who at one time was married to Bogdanovich, but more importantly was a crucial often under/uncredited collaborator of his most successful work (though Bogdanovich die-hards like Noah Baumbach, Wes Anderson, and Quentin Tarantino all single out his misbegotten They All Laughed as his best film). According to industry guys like Frank Marshall, she basically served as the producer on the first film though was only credited for production design. Either way, her absence (just like Ben Johnson, Ellen Burstyn and cinematographer Robert Surtees) in this forgettable sequel.

100:100
100
Annie Potts, one of the best parts of the sequel, being very tired of Duane’s BS.

120:120
120

2780

At least it has Karma Chameleon in it, so it can’t be all bad, right? ;)

2781

New frames in either a few minutes or a few hours.

2782

One of the big reasons Bogdanovich claimed the sequel bombed at the box office was because there was no VHS reissue of The Last Picture Show. Apparently after Columbia was bought out by the Coca Cola Company, they took offence to one of the songs on the original soundtrack mentioning Dr Pepper. Being that territorial seems rather far-fetched, haha.

Texasville’s soundtrack, on the other hand, is jam-packed with the biggest hits of 1984, including Dancing in the Dark and Material Girl!