putting the word CULT back into the word CULTURE

                             

                   

      

25 years ago, a little independent film emerged from the City of Quartz – a film that would become a cult legend in its own time; much like The Big Lebowski – which also takes place in Los Angeles – would also become a cult legend, years later as the new millennium began in 2001. Before we look at the two films themselves, let’s look at Los Angeles in 1984 for what it stood for in terms of CINEMA – and to prelude understanding why these two films have become interwoven into the lives of so many people. 

 

It’s 1984. LA is the capitol city of the film industry.  Whatever happens in regards to American cinema happens first in LA. With the digital revolution over a decade away and even video tapes (remember Betamax?) and cable TV (remember the Z channel or ON Subscription TV) still in their infancy, cinema in 1984 was still a limited feast; in that, if you wanted to see a movie, you had to go to a movie theatre. That was your only option, unless you owned a projector and movie reels. Videos and video players existed, but they weren’t standard household items just yet. Only the very rich and knowledgeable of the latest technology owned them. “Straight to video” movies were a very recent thing outside the porn industry, and thousands of people didn’t own their own production companies like now. The result was a relatively limited number of new films being released each month – relative to NOW, that is. As a result, theatres tended to show movies for a much longer duration and there wasn’t that huge a choice as to what to see.  That would change virtually overnight.

 

Being from LA, I had the opportunity to witness this change first hand. As a youth going with my older brother to see Star Wars or The Spy Who Loved Me (years after) many times over a year long period where they showed continuously for months at one theater, only to reappear at another theater for what seemed like forever; to the creation of multiplexes where a list of different current films would show, concurrently on different screens, many getting replaced weekly. It all happened overnight – one morning we all woke up with VCRs and Blockbuster stores were everywhere. And everybody had 24 hour cable with HBO.  It’s hard to remember a time before infomercials and infotainment. Televangelists were some of the first pioneers of the early 1980s to use cable TV for financial gain: PTL, Tammy Faye and Jim Baker, et al.

 

The first MULTIPLEX – a new word coined in the early 80’s to denote what had previously never existed – in the LA area was located in the then newly created Beverly Center which opened for business not long before 1984. The Beverly Center is located on that monstrous strip of real estate between 3rd St. and Beverly Blvd. (which run parallel east-west), and between La Cienega Blvd. and San Vicente Blvd. (which run parallel north-south) in West Hollywood, near an area, known to older residents, as the Miracle Mile district. All 4 of those streets were/are still fairly busy thoroughfares so this rectangular block of land was/is quite huge. And there it is – right smack in the middle of a lot of traffic. Furthermore, over the last 25 years, the Beverly Center has grown substantially, as has everything else around it. Commercial development never stops in West Los Angeles. The Beverly Center has always had nearly 5 floors of above ground parking. And sometimes it’s hard to find a space.

 

Most people don’t remember what was there on that plot of land before it became the Beverly Center. I remember, because I grew up near there and had spent several birthdays there as a youth. It was two entertainment venues side by side, sharing the same space harmoniously. One side– a sprawling amusement park (large, but nowhere near the size of Disneyland) called Kiddie Land; next to it was a small equestrian village called Pony Land, where adults and kids could rent horses or ponies and ride around a track. Some horses were fast, some were slow.  Some were led around the track by a cowboy (for the kiddies). You got to choose your horse. I liked Pony Land. Kiddie Land had awesome rides like a big rollercoaster and a haunted house and it was quite fun, if you were 9, and that’s how old I was when I spent my last birthday there. A few years later they tore down two side by side landmarks of my childhood. It was my own personal 9-11. After the demolition, nothing remained but an empty lot for a short time that seemed like forever in the mind of a child. Then, construction of this new entertainment venue began, which took a long time, and coincided with my puberty. As childish concerns faded from my life, so did my memories of Kiddie Land and Pony Land. And everybody else’s as well. By the time the Beverly Center finally opened, I was finally able to get an erection.

 

And to this day, I’ve never heard or seen referenced or mentioned anywhere: Kiddie Land or Pony Land. As if they never existed. As if my childhood never existed, or never ended. I still remember the sign on the large wooden fence behind which the new shopping center was erected: COMING SOON! THE BEVERLY CENTER! No pun intended.

 

Anticipation and hype took the city by storm. The high octane pomp welcoming and fanfare that this new mall received, bequeathed by the citizens of West Los Angeles rivaled what you would think the 2nd coming might be like. People were so ‘into’ the Beverly Center when it first opened. The nearest real shopping malls up until that time were located in the San Fernando Valley and nobody from LA ever went to the valley, even if it was only a short drive, less than 10 miles over the hill. It’s like, oh my god, let’s go to the mall. I’m so sure. I didn’t enter the Beverly Center for over a year on principle. I remember mentally boycotting it as a pre-teen adolescent.

 

I also remember that scene from the Indy film Suburbia, another movie set in LA, where the punk rockers steal that roll up lawn and then break into the mall with it after closing time and laid it out in front of the electronics store and sat on the grass while they watched TV through the large storefront window. It’s a beautiful scene in an otherwise schlockish movie. Punk rock squatter, alive and well in Los Angeles, if only on celluloid.

 

Cut back to 1984, as if we ever left – my older brother by 16 months worked part time as an usher at the Beverly Center’s ‘Cineplex’, as it is/was called. Cineplex – a new concept in 1984; now a common expression like ‘multiplex,’ or ‘home entertainment center.’

 

I remember going to see a movie there for the first time, the original Terminator there at the Cineplex, stoned off my ass with Julie Peck in 1984, and thinking how small the screen was. The theatre was very cramped with walls too near, not enough people, and the screen was tiny. It wasn’t a movie theatre. It was a screening room. I was accustomed to seeing films at the Chinese Theater, or the Cinerama Dome, or the Pan Pacific, with screens that stretched farther than your eyes could reach, that made each feature film larger than life. And here I am watching Arnold S. tear the hell out of LA looking for Sarah Conner and it was as if I were watching it on a large screen TV! It was a little disappointing. Still, that was a bitchin’ movie in 1984. Even now. It’s my favorite of the Terminator series because Arnold’s the villain.

 

The Beverly Center – because it showed so many different films at once, many of them independent; and since it was located in the heart of West Hollywood; and since many people on LA’s Westside work for ‘the industry’ – became a showcase for independent films; and many industry people began frequenting the Beverly Center to watch independent films while sipping gourmet coffee, which the Cineplex served. For this reason, many young aspiring actors would get jobs at the Cineplex to hopefully get ‘noticed’ by someone in the biz. My older brother was tall and fit and handsome, with thick hair and occasionally he would get casually ‘hit on’ by industry people, that is, somebody who worked in any of the many aspects of film making, under the guise of a promising career. I’m sure when my brother realized that many of the ushers and concession stand clerks and ticket takers that he worked with were aspiring actors and actresses and models hoping to get noticed, he was just as surprised as I was to hear that.  I was really surprised the first time I’d heard that. I had no idea. My brother’s friend Steve told me and I was like “Really? No way!” I’m sure someone had to tell my brother too; that he didn’t just figure it out on his own. And when my brother did hear about that entertainment biz ‘perk’ for the first time – probably from his friend Steve, who also worked at the Cineplex – he probably reacted with surprise and said, “Really? No way!” My brother and I were smart, got good grades in high school, but we were slackers and underachievers and didn’t possess any future aspiration whatsoever in 1984.

 

 

Anywho, I’d visit my brother at work on weekends in 1984, usually at the time he got off work, with friends and girlfriends and we’d all go out afterward. I basically picked him up from work cuz we basically shared a car. I was 16 years old and just got my license. At those times waiting for him to get off work, standing in front of the Cineplex, up on the 8th floor of the Beverly Center which was then no more than the theater and a small food court: there was Früzen Glaje Ice Cream parlor where my brother’s girlfriend worked, and Mrs. Fields Cookies where my girlfriend worked. On the big neon Cineplex marquee I’d see these titles of these movies that I’d never see but whose names remained lodged in my head, like they were somehow more TELLING of REALITY than Hollywood’s latest. I would watch some of them years later on video or DVD or late night on cable by chance, or on a computer, and I would remember some of their names: Stranger than Paradise, Spetters, Repo Man. These days, there are so many more opportunities to watch movies than there were 25 years ago. 

 

Repo Man. It was there at Berkeley in college 2 years later in 1986 that I would learn just how deep Repo Man jargon and culture had dug itself into the collective psyche of young people. ‘Put it on a plate son, you’ll enjoy it more.’ (Otto’s standing in the kitchen, eating out of can labeled FOOD) ‘Are you using a scrambler?’ ‘I can’t hear you.  I’m using a scrambler.’ ‘We’re sending bibles to El Salvador!’ (said while holding in a hit of grass)  ‘Shut up, Rent-a-cop!’ It was 1986 and David Letterman was harassing his guests nightly with witty sass and uncomfortable questions on Late Night and the generation that would later be termed, Generation X, was laughing hysterically in college or otherwise finally on their own, or living at home brooding in their parents’ basement or attic or garage.  The US was funding death squads in Central America and few people in America knew, or cared. Most didn’t really let it affect their lives. Except members of SAICA.  Who’s SAICA? Exactly! Reagan and Thatcher personified what everybody should have been angry at, but most people weren’t angry at all. Most people were happy just to have shopping malls. You couldn’t see all the new homeless people from the inside of an indoor air conditioned shopping mall. You couldn’t ride a rollercoaster or ride a pony in West LA anymore, but you could shop like it was no one’s business and watch Indy flicks and drink gourmet coffee in little rooms on small screens – not very cinematic. And all the while, marijuana crops were being burned in Northern California and longtime growers and small possessors were being incarcerated while cocaine was dropping in price like an old computer. 1984 - 1986. Cheap smoke-able cocaine for the first time hit the streets, first in the ghettos, then all over. Street corners in LA where medium grade Mexican weed had always been safely available became crack corners, where only crack could be procured and the scourged walked the earth in circles. Wealth quickly becoming concentrated into fewer and fewer hands and Ronnie and Maggie were quickly becoming two of the most popular leaders the Western world had ever seen, largely because of corporate controlled media on the newly available cable television, but mostly from apathy on the part of their critics. No movie captured the misplaced absurd stylish nihilistic angst of gen x’ers more than Repo Man. It’s no wonder why so many people starting hanging those pine air fresheners shaped liked trees from their rear view mirrors. ‘Find one in every car. You’ll see…’ And why so many of us remembered so many lines from the movie. They had about as much meaning as anything you heard in real life, and just as much relevance. I mean – just as little reverence.

 

Things had changed a lot in 2 short years. 1986. My first roommate in college had a VCR and we’d rent movies. He also had a computer. It was a 386 with no hard drive, just a 5¼ inch floppy disc drive, and on a 5¼ inch floppy disc was the ‘dos’ program so the computer would run; and there was an archaic WP program and we could save writing on the floppy. I spent hundreds of hours in my free time over that semester writing maybe a hundred pages of fiction, mostly short stories, only to have it become ‘lost’ on a ‘corrupt’ floppy. My roommate and I had a big fight at the start of our second semester together, after which we were never friends again. It was entirely my fault – the end result was the floppy, my writing, was unreadable. So much for all that time. 6 years later, in order to graduate, I wrote a senior thesis. First, I wrote it long hand in a notebook.  Then I typed it on a typewriter. Then I edited it, and totally revised it analog style, and then only after I’d reorganized the lot and made it read-worthy did I retype it once again on that same heavy electronic typewriter.  It was close to 50 pages each time. And like…20 years later…if I’m with a group of people and I say something like:

 

‘I can get you a toe. I can get you a toe before 3 o’clock. With nail polish.’


Somebody in that room is going to turn around and say, ‘You’re killing your father, Larry.’ Or something equally as non-sequeterish (sic), something that only makes sense to someone who recognizes the cult reference.

 

‘I believe Asian-American is the preferred nomenclature.’

 

The Big Lebowski is by far the most quoted movie of the last 10 years and there are hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people all over this world (mostly in America and Canada) that would never shy away from an opportunity to pay homage to the dude and Walter. Film books and awards elude certain movies that are re-watched continually because the authors and judges just don’t get it. They are not part of the culture – that is, people who have re-watched a single movie enough times to recognize key dialog and love it when they have the chance to recite lines aloud to others who know the line verbatim and its direct source, and can appreciate the shared joy of a cultural connection. Much like Muslims do with the Koran or Christians with the Bible or Chinese with the Little Red Book.

 

Certain movies are considered cult movies, and some movies ARE cult movies. Heavy Metal, The Song Remains the Same, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and The Wall WERE cult favorites of the past, but they owed their popularity largely to large screen cinema and frequent midnight showings for people high on drugs with a group of friends, or just in the mood to party with a crowd after midnight in a safe venue that allowed booze and other party-ables (if you could sneak them in – it was easier back then to do that). 

 

On the small screen, the past popularity of these films can not endure. People may own these movies on VHS or DVD but they will not get the kind of repeated viewings that a copy of Lebowski or Repo Man will get. There is just something about the lackadaisical dude; the crazy, potentially dangerous, but well intentioned Walter; the innocent, simple victim Donny; and ‘a case of mistaken identity’ that takes us from one Lebowski’s world to another; from the simple life of a youthful middle aged herb smoking hippy, into the helter-skelter world of a wealthy, physically challenged ‘overachiever’ with a ‘kidnapped’ trophy wife, a group of nihilists, a pornographer named Jackie Treehorn, the Malibu PD, a stolen Chevy (‘We got ‘em working in shifts!’), and an old Sioux City Sarsaparilla sipping cowboy narrator with a big white moustache and a pleasant voice – there is just something that never gets tired. Plus, we have the dude quoting George Bush Sr. from news footage of the original Gulf War that we see on a TV set that plays in the background of Ralph’s Market during the first scene of the movie, to keep us, from the beginning of the movie, locked in a time capsule of 1991. ‘This aggression…it will not stand.’ Then the dude writes a check for 67 cents after first opening the ‘Half and Half’ carton to smell if it’s not sour. Watching The Big Lewbowski is like visiting an old friend and hearing what he has to say again. Oh, he’s just repeating what he always says, but you love him just the same. He’s family. It’s the things he says. The things they say. ‘The bums lost! Condolences!’ I’d venture to say that somewhere in the world right now, somebody is watching The Big Lebowski. And probably on a computer!

 

25 years ago, before computers were a household item, there was Repo Man, where our hero was an unemployed slacker named Otto, whose ID says he’s 21, but who is really 18 and who gets a job at the Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation, repossessing cars from deadbeats who don’t pay their bills; where everybody is trying to track down a 1964 Chevy Malibu with a 20,000 dollar finder’s fee paid by Double X Finance, and with 4 dead aliens in the trunk; and a lobotomized physicist, wearing sunglasses with one eye missing, at the wheel. ‘Looks like sausage.’ ‘It isn’t sausage, Otto, that’s a picture of 4 dead aliens!’ Otto laughs. ‘Laugh away, fuckface! That picture’s going to be on the cover of every major newspaper in two days time!’ Everybody wants that car. Everybody, that is, the 4 other Helping Hand repo men aptly named Bud, Oly, Miller, and Lite; Marlene, the hot Helping Hand receptionist who changes sides to work with rival repo men known as the Rodriguez brothers, or ‘God damned dipshit Rodriguez gypsy dildo punks!’ as Bud refers to them. ‘Hermanos Rodriguez don’t approve of drugs,’ Lagarto Rodriguez says to his hermano, Napoleon, as they smoke joints with Marlene who is dressed covert like a Black Panther. She responds to Lagarto, “I don’t either, but today’s my birthday.’ They all smoke their own joints, even Marlene using a flashy roach clip. There’s a secret outfit, a UFO watch group called United Fruitcake Outlet, where Layla, Otto’s love interest works, also looking for the car. And there is another agency pursuing the car, whose agents are all tall, blonde white men – hombres secretos – who all wear dark suits, sunglasses, and who shout ‘Not in my face!’ when fighting. Their leader is an older humorless woman with a metal hand – ‘It happens sometimes. People just explode. Natural causes.’ 

 

There’s the Reverend Larry, who hosts a TV telethon and promises, with your donation, to wipe out ‘…the twin evils of godless communism abroad and liberal humanism at home.’ He’s looking for the car, too.

 

There’s the book DioretixThe Science of Matter over Mind. ‘You read that book I gave you? You better read it, and quick. That book’ll change your life. I found it in a Maserati in Beverly Hills. Know what I mean?’

 

And of course, like the ransom money seeking nihilists in The Big Lebowski that provide abstract relief with their faux German-ness and funky minimalist clothes, ‘We’re gonna come back and cut off your Johnson!’ Repo Man gives us a madcap trio of punk rockers on a never ending crime spree – the dopey leather clad, mohawked Archie: ‘Dukie wookie hurt his wittle hand’ ‘Fuck you, Archie! Just for that, yer not in the gang anymore!’ Duke is the group’s leader with the shaved head, who just got out of the slammer (juvenile detention), and his girl Debbie with the British accent, whom Duke stole away from Otto at a punk rock party at the beginning of the movie, completes the trio.  ‘Come on Duke, let’s go do those crimes!’ She says after Archie gets vaporized opening the truck of the Chevy, leaving only a pair of smoking black army boots. ‘Yeah, let’s go get sushi and not pay.’

 

And to top it off, there’s a kick ass soundtrack featuring Iggy Pop, Black Flag, Fear, Circle Jerks, East LA’s own – The Plugz, and Suicidal Tendencies. “All I wanted was a Pepsi. I’m not crazy. Institution! Yer that one that’s crazy. Institution! Yer driving me crazy. Institution! It doesn’t matter. I’ll probably get hit by a car anyway.”

 

Where did punk rock originate? I’ve had this conversation many times with many educated people. I’ve heard opinions like – It started in 1969 with Iggy and the Stooges. It started in the late 70’s in NYC with the Ramones and other CBGB punk bands. It started in London with The Sex Pistols.

 

My answer to all these so called brainiacs is this: no one band or one city created punk rock. Punk rock is more than just a style of music.  It’s a lifestyle.  As Cheech says to Chong in Up in Smoke before the battle of the bands, “Relax. It’s punk rock. You don’t have to be a musician. You just have to be a punk.” And that about sums it up – punk rock is a way of life. “It’s a way of looking at that wave and saying, ‘Hey bud, let’s party!’” Wrong movie.

 

Punk is a mode of expression like a language or culture, in the same way Ebonics is a language and culture. Ebonics is NOT a REGIONALISM. A regionalism is just that – something that originates in one region. Ebonics did not appear in one place and spread. It evolved independently in many urban centers around America simultaneously. You can take an inner city youth from LA, NY, Philadelphia, and Atlanta and put them all in a room and they can all understand each other, even if a white suburban American can’t. That’s beyond regional. That’s culture. There are rules. There is a structure.

 

‘This isn’t Nam. There are rules.’

 

Same goes with punk rock. Every urban area in America felt it at more or less the same time – and those who responded to its calling found others who shared similar life views and they started a new lifestyle dressing similarly and squatting in the same abandoned building or garage and expressing their angst using instruments many could hardly play at all. Not all punk rockers were musicians. Some were just punks living the life, doing other stuff. And it didn’t matter from where in the world you were from. If you were a punk rocker, it was pretty obvious, and you were accepted. Even some of the musicians weren’t really musicians. They were just punks with enough attitude and expressive ability to be entertaining. The 80’s were a very conservative time, with mainstream men all wearing short hair and preppy clothes; and Wall Street and brand names going hand in hand with every commodity; and draconian drug laws replacing the long hair, free love, wide collar and lapels, lax attitude about drugs of the 70’s. Skeeball and Slip ‘n’ Slide had been replaced by Pong and Space Invaders. Punk rock, like every social movement was a reaction. Like every product in Repo Man having a plain wrap label.

 

The music reflected that reaction. Some people adopted the culture long before the 80’s began because they could see where the world was headed back in 70’s. In life, things don’t just happen without reason. Everything is a progression. 

 

In LA, the punk rock movement thrived on the East side long before people on the West side even took notice – ‘Beverly Hills, Century City, don’t you know yer so damned pretty.’ Downtown, East LA and the industrial ‘warehouse district’ that lies between the two, the area the paved LA river runs through– that was where punk rock was spawned in LA – the Troy Café, Al’s Bar – before it became fashionable, and that is exactly the place where the movie Repo Man takes place.

 

Alex Cox, director of Sid and Nancy, wrote and directed Repo Man and it is an incredible piece of film that only its fans recognize as genius. I just re-watched it and I could watch it again and still laugh. I just might. 

 

Not many movies withstand the test of time. Those that do can be called ‘art,’ or just good movies. Emilio Estevez recently wrote and directed and played a small role in a movie called Robert about the ‘other’ Kennedy assassination and I found it to be a wonderful film on many levels, with a superb ensemble cast and script. I saw it on an airplane. Since I don’t live in America, I don’t know what the reaction to the film was, nor if it won any awards, but that definitely was an award winning piece of work. Still, for me, Emilio’s ‘Gilligan,’ that is, the role that he will always be remembered as, is Otto Maddox.   

 

“Otto? Auto Parts?”

 

Otto was every teenager, coming of age, becoming an adult, dissatisfied with everything and everyone, having no clue as to what to do with his life and living every moment damned proud of it and regretting nothing. ‘The dude’ was that same person 15 – 20 years in the future finding peace and serenity in marijuana, drinking Caucasians and league bowling with his knuckleheaded friends.

 

The scene where Estevez, I mean Otto, is driving around with Bud, played by Harry Dean Stanton, and Bud is showing Otto the ropes always makes me laugh, no matter how many times I see it. The entire scene takes place in Bud’s old Impala. Bud is driving and Otto is riding shotgun. The same music plays in the background, but day becomes night becomes day again. Bud honks and yells at a driver, ‘Come on, dickhead!” Then he talks seriously to Otto. It’s night again.

 

--It helps if you dress like a detective too. Detectives dress kind of square. People think,   

   ‘This guy’s a cop.’ They’re gonna think yer packin’ something. They don’t fuck with

    you so much.

-- Are you?

-- Am I what?

-- Packing something.

-- Only an asshole gets killed for a car. The guys that make it are the guys that get in

    their cars anytime. Get in at 3 am, get up at 4. That’s why there ain’t a repo man I

    know that don’t take speed.

-- Speed, huh?

 

Cut to them parked and snorting painful lines of crank. Bud starts yapping about the Repo code and then turns his attention to people across the street.

 

-- Hey look, look at that. Look at those assholes over there. Ordinary fucking people, I  

    hate ‘em.

-- Me too.

-- What do you know? See…an ordinary person spends his life avoiding tense  

situations. Repo man spends his life getting into tense situations. (Looks out window) Assholes! (Looks at Otto) Let’s get a drink.

 

-- Have a nice day…night…day. Night, day, it doesn’t mean shit.

 

Repo Man is the quintessential punk rock movie.  It’s like the movie Suburbia, only good. Repo Man combines an engaging story, quality acting with memorable and likeable characters, and themes that really question our connection with eternity in a materialistic age. At the very least, it pokes fun at all that most people hold sacred. The film is so densely packed with dramatic and iconic stimuli, a multimedia mosaic of background noise and subliminal shading all intentionally and tastefully positioned along the journey. Like GB senior’s cameo in The Big Lebowski’s background TV footage, TV backgrounds in Repo Man, other than the Reverend Larry’s Telethon, show news footage of war torn Central America. One would need at least 5 to 10 viewings to notice all the nuances – a lot like a Simpson’s episode. Like the The Big Lebowski, Repo Man is probably the most spiritually invigorating film ever made – for atheists who wish for something to believe in.  

 

In the end, there’s only one thing left to be said. “Shut the fuck up, Donny!”

Or maybe the cowboy narrator has a better closing, “Do you have to curse so much?”

 

Bravo

Kashmir, August 2009