Movie Crush Monday: Little C and Pump Up the Volume

Happy Monday readers,

As you might have noticed, last week CT won the Movie Crush game. I'm not bitter, I'm happy that CT  got to the Three Amigos before I did. I haven't spent most of the morning pouting about it.

So since I can't outdo Christy in terms of perfection, I want to talk about a very flawed movie that I still love. A movie that introduced me to a young Christian Slater.

Pump Up the Volume (1990)

This movie is the story of a kid who almost accidentally becomes an underground radio DJ and uses his anonymity to point out problems and hypocrisy in his high school and his town. The story is whatever, mostly it's used as a vehicle for the music and the message. The conflict between Mark Hunter (and his radio personality Hard Harry) and the school principle is window dressing. You could remove it and still have a really powerful film. The romance between Mark and Nora is also kind of a distraction from what I think this movie gets completely right. 

The movie talks openly and frankly about the pressures and struggles of teenage angst and depression. Harry gives some on-air rants about acceptance and conformity that 25 years after the fact are still perfectly true. You could change the underground radio station to a blog and rerelease this film without having to change that much from the script. Actually, please don't do that, because I frankly don't trust anyone to not screw up the music and throw in Carly Rae Jepsen in place of Leonard Cohen. The point is that the speeches Mark gives are distilled rebellion filtered through the teenage gaze. They're beautifully written and perfectly delivered. There's this energy to this movie that's almost a static noise, barely noticeable but it gives everything on top of it an immediacy and electricity.  

By far, the best character in this film is the soundtrack. And it does present like a fully formed character.  It moves the story along, it interacts with other characters. It features Sonic Youth and the Pixies and Bad Brains and Ice-T in this perfect storm of frustration and freedom. All the best parts of music in the late 80's are present and accounted for and fueling the buzzing engine of the movie. This is probably in my top five movie sound tracks of all time. Have I emphasized how much I like the music enough? I can go on, if you really want me to...

Happy Watching/Listening

Little C