{"id":14728,"date":"2020-08-21T11:00:13","date_gmt":"2020-08-21T18:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=14728"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:18:48","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:18:48","slug":"pump-up-the-volume-at-30-a-middle-finger-to-americas-suburban-monotony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/pump-up-the-volume-at-30-a-middle-finger-to-americas-suburban-monotony\/","title":{"rendered":"Pump Up the Volume<\/i> at 30: A Middle Finger to America\u2019s Suburban Monotony"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Pump Up the Volume<\/em> never capitulates. In its opening scene, a law-breaking teenage radio DJ who goes by the moniker Hard Harry ( known for excessive masturbation during his illegal missives) wonders, \u201cYou ever get the feeling that everything in America is completely fucked up?\u201d The defiance of that rhetorical question imbues every moment of Allan Moyle\u2019s 1990 film, from Christian Slater\u2019s mutinous lead performance to a soundtrack stacked with the likes of Pixies, Bad Brains, Ice-T, and Concrete Blonde. Every one of Hard Harry\u2019s broadcasts is a smirking middle finger to everyone and everything. His parents and their generation, all sell-outs. The tidy organization of manufactured suburbs, copies of copies. The expected path of college-career-house-kids-work-die, unimaginable to fathom at 17 years old. The combination of relentlessness and restlessness that Harry pours out of his heart every night has the vulnerability of an open wound, and 30 years later, Pump Up the Volume<\/em> is still a fiery call to arms against a unique kind of American monotony. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every counterculture teen movie from the late 1980s to mid-1990s was laced with the sneering energy of Cary Elwes\u2019s Westley telling Robin Wright\u2019s Buttercup in 1987\u2019s The Princess Bride<\/em>, \u201cLife is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.\u201d The pirate had a point, and subsequent movies like Heathers<\/em>, Dead Poets Society<\/em>, Pump Up the Volume<\/em>, Empire Records<\/em> (which Moyle also directed), and Hackers<\/em> interrogated the blandness we were expected to accept as part of growing up. For a brief, glorious time, Christian Slater was that subgenre\u2019s crown prince. As the Jack Nicholson-mimicking, James Dean-referencing J.D. in Heathers<\/em>, Slater was a malevolent manifestation of adolescent id. As the shy, soft-spoken Mark Hunter by day and Leonard Cohen-blasting, truth-seeking DJ Hard Harry by night in Pump Up the Volume<\/em>, Slater had the range (and still considers it is his favorite role<\/a>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slater bounced between those two extremes in subsequent films\u2014in Tony Scott and Quentin Tarantino\u2019s cult hit True Romance<\/em>; alongside heavy hitters like Kevin Costner, Alan Rickman, and Morgan Freeman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves<\/em>; when stepping into River Phoenix\u2019s shoes in Interview with the Vampire<\/em>\u2014and decades later, went fully self-referential as the titular Mr. Robot<\/em>. So much of Slater\u2019s work alongside Rami Malek on Sam Esmail\u2019s show feels like a wink back at the bold characters played by his younger self, and the USA Network series introduced him to a new audience. It\u2019s a tragedy that most of them might never see Pump Up the Volume<\/em>, impossible to find on any streaming service (that deep soundtrack is now its curse) and out of print on DVD in the U.S. Hard Harry\u2019s criticisms, written then in the raunchy, disaffected voice of Generation X, seem as relevant now as they did then. Some things\u2014like the all-consuming feelings of loss and abandonment, and the desperate desire to claw out from under their weight\u2014transcend time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hard Harry\u2019s broadcasts (always at 10 p.m., but not always every night) capture the attention and imagination of the population of Hubert H. Humphrey High School, in a milquetoast suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. The teens call each other when his shows start, both delighted by and aghast at what they\u2019re hearing; they drive to the high school\u2019s football field, where the signal is the clearest, and cluster their cars together. With a mixture of titillating vulgarity (\u201cHard Harry\u201d is short for his full DJ name, \u201cHappy Harry Hard-On\u201d) and empathetic forlornness, Harry appeals to everyone: the punks, the jocks, the nerds, the preps. Some of his advice is juvenile (\u201cThis is Hard Harry, reminding you to eat your cereal with a fork and do your homework in the dark\u201d), but most of his admissions come from a place of deep lonesomeness\u2014of feeling unable to connect to the people around him, and wondering whether any of it matters anyway. He\u2019s open about being isolated in this town, irritated by his parents, and enraged by the possibility of having to contort himself into the societal mold laid out for him. He knows the words to Leonard Cohen\u2019s \u201cEverybody Knows\u201d by heart, and he sees in their finality a sort of freedom: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded<\/em>
<\/em>Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed<\/em>
<\/em>Everybody knows the war is over<\/em>
<\/em>Everybody knows the good guys lost<\/em>
<\/em>Everybody knows the fight was fixed<\/em>
<\/em>The poor stay poor, the rich get rich<\/em>
<\/em>That’s how it goes<\/em>
<\/em>Everybody knows<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ironically, of course, nobody actually knows who Hard Harry is, although he invites letters from listeners (sent to a P.O. box, to maintain the secrecy of his identity), reads them out loud, and calls the numbers included to chat. No one guesses that the man claiming to masturbate six times an hour while on the air is the same person as the conversation-averse Mark Hunter, senior at Humphrey High, who declines to discuss his essays in his writing class, walks always with his head down, and buries his nose into a book during lunch. A black market pops up at the school so that cassette tapes of Harry\u2019s broadcasts can change hands; when Mark hears them played in the quad, he slows down to listen, a grin threatening to stretch out across his face. But his shield against others is a protection of himself, too. What he\u2019s doing is breaking all kinds of FCC regulations, and as Mark\u2019s father is the new school commissioner for the state of Arizona, he can\u2019t risk getting caught. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When one of those nightly calls during Hard Harry\u2019s show ends in tragedy, though, two different factions spring into action to try and unmask him. Goth artist Nora (Samantha Mathis), who finds herself attracted to and enthralled by Hard Harry\u2019s no-bullshit attitude, begins to realize that Mark might not be who he seems. And while the two of them begin to fall for each other, Principal Loretta Creswood (Annie Ross) rallies teachers, the PTA, Mark\u2019s father, and the local media to try and find Hard Harry. Broadcast news reporters camp out at the school. Parents complain that their children are being corrupted. The teens\u2019 insistence that Hard Harry is voicing their own anxieties and fears\u2014that he makes them feel less alone\u2014are disregarded. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing to look forward to, and nothing to look up to,\u201d Hard Harry had said, and the witch hunt waged against him isn\u2019t exactly proving that wrong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pump Up the Volume<\/em> comes to life primarily through the verve and vitality of Moyle\u2019s script, which is punctuated throughout with analyses of the American mainstream that could be dismissed as naval-gazing if they didn\u2019t still feel accurate three decades later. The recurring condescension of older generations toward younger ones, with their predictable \u201cWhen I was your age\u201d diatribes. The superficiality of \u201cAmerican values\u201d programs, especially when pushed forward by social conservatives who care more for appearances than actualities. What Moyle\u2019s script underscores is how the adolescent desire for truth (\u201cAs long as it\u2019s real,\u201d is all Hard Harry asks of the letters sent to him) is an admirable undertaking, and a leap of courage. If honesty isn\u2019t bravery, what is? Living in a screwed-up place in a screwed-up time does not make you screwed up, Hard Harry vows, and you can see the DNA of that line in another film that insisted that our self-worth is tied to more than who our parents are, or what we do, or how much money we make. \u201cIt\u2019s not your fault,\u201d Robin Williams\u2019s Sean Maguire says in Good Will Hunting<\/em>, and both he and Hard Harry were right. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Equally important is the film\u2019s soundtrack, which pulls from the snarling, unsettling sounds of the early \u201890s: the hardcore scene pioneered by Bad Brains and Henry Rollins; the experimental noise rock of Pixies and Sonic Youth; the in-your-face braggadocio of Ice-T and the Beastie Boys. Songs like \u201cKick Out the Jams,\u201d \u201cWave of Mutilation,\u201d and \u201cScenario\u201d form Harry\u2019s own mixtape, the intimate contents of which he shares with his listeners, and by extension, us. Sexual desire, explicit and unfiltered, or beautiful melancholy, or a desire to disappear. It all comes out in those song choices, and some of the film\u2019s most winning moments capture Slater dancing around his character\u2019s basement recording studio to those tracks, charmingly slipping into some of the corniest white-guy dance moves you\u2019ve ever seen.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The power of Slater\u2019s performance, and how he balances the dueling demands of Hard Harry\u2019s brusqueness and Mark\u2019s woundedness, comes from those very contrasts: how persuasive he is when proclaiming that he knows everything versus how relatable he is when admitting he not might know anything. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing to do anymore. Everything decent\u2019s been done,\u201d he announces on the first night captured in the film; on its last, he declares instead, \u201cIt\u2019s our life! Take charge of it!\u201d Choose your own path, demand your rights, blow up your Yale pennant and your pearls and make your own way. That core message put Pump Up the Volume<\/em> alongside the likes of Dead Poets Society<\/em> and Hackers<\/em> in its urging for individual action, and in imagining something more fulfilling than suburban sameness. \u201cCarpe diem.\u201d \u201cHack the planet.\u201d \u201cTalk hard.\u201d That upending of the status quo, championed so fulfillingly and authentically in Pump Up the Volume<\/em>, feels as necessary now as it did back then. \"\"\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pump Up the Volume never capitulates. In its opening scene, a law-breaking teenage radio DJ who goes by the moniker […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":582,"featured_media":14732,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1399],"tags":[1429,1422,162],"class_list":["post-14728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-looking-back","tag-happy-birthday","tag-looking-back","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/582"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22746,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14728\/revisions\/22746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}