Wow, it’s hard to believe that The Movie Advocate has been around for a year, but sure enough our first post went up back on January 3rd, 2010. It’s taken some time to work out the kinks – and there are plenty of kinks still to be worked out – but I’m pretty proud of what we’ve accomplished here. I feel pretty fortunate to have met the people I’ve met (both in person and through internet-only friendships) and to have had the opportunities I’ve had in the last year, and it only gets better from here. Very, very cool things are shakin’ behind the scenes at The Movie Advocate. Throughout January we’ll be trotting out some new columns and even introducing you to a new regular columnist. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Boy, if I could even tell you all my plans, your heads would be spinnin’!
So before we get rolling with all of that stuff, let’s let our hair down for a night, eh? I am ecstatic to announce that for our one-year anniversary, The Movie Advocate will be co-hosting the Friday, January 7th 35mm archival presentation of Repo Man at the Denver Film Center at 2510 E. Colfax. Festivities begin at 9pm with free pizza, cheap beer, and good conversation. The movie goes on at 10pm. And because I don’t get the opportunity to binge drink with my movie friends as often as I would like, we’re hosting an after party at Gabor’s (1223 E. 13th Ave.) until closing time! In honor of Repo Man, there will be drink specials on “Chevy” Malibu and Cokes and BEER.
Repo Man and I have a long history. Back in 1999 I was a pudgy 14 year old. Having grown up around all the same people, my reputation as a Star Wars nerd preceded me. It would take moving five states away my junior year of high school to lose that stigma. Entering high school, and entertaining the idea of going to film school for college without much of an idea of what that entailed or for that matter without a very wide scope of movie watching under my belt, I enlisted in my high school’s Film Club. Imagine the shock and surprise of this little Indiana Jones-worshiping dweeb walking in late to the club’s screening of Dead Alive, having my mind blown and reassembled one deadly lawnmower blade rotation at a time.
But the real shock to my system came when I plopped down in the back of that half-abandoned English classroom after school for a screening of some Emilio Estevez movie called Repo Man. This was my true introduction to the “cult movie,” that secret, fleeting world of maligned gems and absurd curiosities. Here was the jock from Breakfast Club leading a cast of misfits and sleezoids in a full out mutiny against everything I thought a movie was supposed to be. I simply had never seen anything like it.
I was in what you might call the pre-rebellious stage at that point in my life. I was in marching band. I didn’t really fight with my parents that much. I still went to church on occasion. Movies like Repo Man were a large part of showing me what was “out there,” the periphery of experience beyond the realm of the squares. Otto’s (Estevez) dissatisfaction with the closed-mindedness of even the most rebellious around him struck a chord with me, though I was still myself painfully smug. Otto has a tendency to disappear, to blend into his surroundings. He’s a unruly punk at first, but he adapts quickly enough to the life of the repo man. Watch how easily Otto switches sides in the search for the elusive Chevy Malibu and its deadly cargo. As quickly as Otto equalizes to his new social milieus, however, he is just as quickly disenfranchised. He has a knack for ferreting out other people’s bullshit. Otto has almost no personality to speak of, and his ability to over-empathize to the point that he takes on the personalities of those around him is his best and worst character trait. He’s a smart cookie, and his flexibility in his search for bigger kicks does him right in the end.
Of course, I barely recognized all that stuff when I was 14 years old. All I saw was the frosting on top, because hot damn, Repo Man has soooooo much frosting on top. Nuclear radiation, aliens, car chases, a great L.A. punk soundtrack, a blacksploitation heroine, Latin mobsters, government shadow organizations, time travel. The world Alex Cox created in Repo Man is inclusively absurd. Like Kiss Me Deadly before and The Big Lebowski after it, Repo Man showcases a grungy, seedy Los Angeles, a melting pot of disparate, utterly unique characters jammed together by strange coincidence. Alex Cox’s L.A. punks are a compelling mixture of lofty antisocial ideals and objective-crippling stupidity. A trio of punk criminal wannabes – Otto’s ex-crew – weaves in and out of the story, delivering some of the movies most spectacularly boneheaded lines. “Let’s go do some crimes!” As Otto mutates over the course of his hero’s journey, he keeps running into his old grocery store clerk pal, Kevin (Zander Schloss), who acts as a comic relief litmus test to measure how far Otto has come. Kevin’s adherence to “The Rules” gets him nowhere. Bud, Otto’s repo mentor, is the role of Harry Dean Stanton’s career. Either he is the greatest mega-actor in history, or else he really was high on crack cocaine.
That screening of Repo Man at my high school film club was like an invitation into some secret brotherhood of movie geek Freemasons. My obsession was born, and my life would never be the same. What I’ve learned in the years since, however, is that Repo Man is more than just the stuff of cult movie geek wet dreams. What makes Repo Man a great movie is that it has a gooey center of truth in the middle of it’s Twinkie of insanity. Otto’s countercultural coming of age captures the strains and disconnects experienced by anyone who strives for excellence but still wants to stick it to The Man.
-Ben