Ryan McNeil
If you’re new to this series of posts on The Matinee, you might not know that it’s centered around films from the 80’s and 90’s that I believe stand the test of time. So far, I have cast the spotlight on pop culture staples that – to me – offered more than just fun nostalgia. So far, the films I have chosen are films that I genuinely believed would hold up to a first time viewing, dated details and all.
By that measure, I never would have pointed a first-timer at Allan Moyle’s 1990 film PUMP UP THE VOLUME, as much as I call myself a fan.
But something funny happened along the way. Over at Row Three, the film came up during Cinecast #323. On that episode, podcaster extraordinaire Jim Laczkowski discussed it as a film he’d recently watched, and he mused at how much it made him think about what it says about podcasting and how well the film has held up. As hosts Kurt and Andrew agreed with all of Jim’s points, I started thinking that it was time for me to revisit the film…and a few minutes of podcasting later, Kurt pretty much assigned me to do it.
My only criteria? I wanted to discuss it with a fellow podcaster – which should be obvious considering the subject matter.
Enter Andrew Robinson…
Ryan McNeil: I feel like this one is the least well-known of all the movies I’ve chosen so far. Had you even heard of it before?
Andrew Robinson: I hadn’t. Only from your tweet (that I had seen since I was at my computer at the time) is why this week I got to see this piece of weirdly great 90s cinema.
RM: So that might have actually worked in my favour, right? Unlike some of the other films in this series, there really weren’t preconceptions attached. Or were there?
AR: I looked up the trailer on YouTube, and kind of did what I do with all movies today: That being figuring out what to expect from the film.
“High school 90s film with Christian Slater about troubled teen who feels a need to over share on the free band on the radio waves”. I kind of summed it up and I was mostly right in the end. Is it a sense of weirdly typical 90s films why I like it? The kind of film that while I was a child I would probably see when I flick on my TV at home? I dunno.
RM: I’m already sensing that you dug it. What did you like about it?
AR: This is the kind of movie that if I were being rational I couldn’t argue it for being anything particularly remarkable (especially amongst my podcasting cohorts) but it does something that I tend to laud about in movies. That being that it doesn’t try to over complicate it’s own issues in such a way that for the casual they aren’t bombarded and for the active viewers they have something more the chew on when actually spending their few moments between showings of the amazing 90s Christian Slater marathon they might be putting on for themselves.
RM: Considering how publicly we all live (“I’m tweeting about my sandwich!”), does it seem all that plausible anymore that someone could do something so covertly?
AR: “Covertly”? You did it for a few years before outing yourself. I don’t know how open you were about it in the real world but doing things such as asking me to refer to you as “The Mad Hatter” when you first guested on my podcast and being angered at my saying of your real name in a subsequent episode begs whether you would feel it’s possible to do this kind of thing covertly?
RM: Got a thing against nicknames?
AR: The question I always ask is why bother be covert? I understand if you’re doing it for the sake of character, like say a Film Crit Hulk or even Sam Strange (both columnists at Badass Digest), so as to give your audience a different viewing glass with which to consume your content, and that’s what’s happening here. Slater is playing the role of Hard Harry as a conduit to a character to allow him to express himself. Do you feel he would’ve been that entrancing on the airwaves if he had been given authority by his parents and had no worries of his thoughts threatening their careers and went on without a voice modulator and didn’t call himself Hard Harry? When you listen to talk radio even today there are those call in guests who are paid comedians or friends playing characters for the sake of entertainment and to make a point.
Now if you’re asking whether someone today can be this effective that’s a different story. Because this movie can essentially be called the 90s teen version of NETWORK with Hard Harry playing the role of Howard Beale telling all of the adolescents to jump on their cars and be mad, which they do. Are people this susceptible now? Reminds me of a conversation Marc Maron had on his podcast (WTF) this past year where with Phil Hendrie (episode 393 of his show if you want to hear it) where they discussed the morals of believing in how susceptible your audience is and how much power you have over them. Do you pound them with the truth and only the truth because the first time you hit them with satire you’re afraid it’ll be lost and they’ll take it as reality? Isn’t that what people do today with reality television?
I’m running around a mad mad idea but basically what I’m saying is that you have to start what you’re doing with you’re own intentions and do it for the audience you hope is listening. The one that’ll get you’re making fun and know that the moon landing was real (or was it…) and such.
RM: You ask a valid question in terms of being covert. My favorite answer to the point of concealing one’s identity comes from author John Irving, who wrote “That a person is using a pseudonym isn’t the mystery; the mystery is why the person is using a pseudonym”.
Harry was obviously using one to avoid prosecution since what he was doing was illegal. But let’s say for a moment it wasn’t…let’s say that he was able to say what he said on his school’s radio station, or that he lived in a time when podcasting was a reality. Think he would have turned on his mic and said “Hi, I’m Mark”?
Why be covert? Because sometimes – as in VOLUME – being covert gives you an extra shot of courage. It allows you the buffer to say something you might not step up to a mic in front of a group of people and say as yourself. It allows a certain deniability – a separation that one may want…or even need.
In the case of Mark, I don’t think he would have gone without the pseudonym or the voice disguiser even of he got his parents’ blessing. It seemed as though he didn’t feel like he fit in, or that he couldn’t be himself. He was an 80’s teenager listening to Leonard Cohen and reading Lenny Bruce. So while might not have stood up on stage and said “so be it”, he had no problem doing it with the thin veil of protection the alias provided.
To your second point, I think people might be MORE susceptible now just because there are more avenues to reach them and more information to be consumed. It’s not just that news is made public anymore – every piece of information can be spread to a massive audience thanks to avenues like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. As to whether you pound them with truth, I can’t say. My mission is just to keep people talking.
AR: I liked how it played with the idea of a man taking control from the controllers. In a world where people believe their given the rights to so much media that they aren’t there was a time where that distinction was easily understood and much more difficult to walk past. Today I have friends who believe it’s their right that when they buy a DVD that they also own the digital format of that film as opposed to buying the rights to view that film via DVD. Who’s to say that they can’t rip it and use it in a little video montage they want to upload on YouTube. The powers of control have become more and more faceless and here it’s about having a faceless rebel against the big power of control, the school, parents, FCC and such. I like that in a film and while they wrap it up in a rebellious punk rock sort of film that I dig I’m willing to go to bat for this one for a while.
RM: I actually like that it doesn’t overcomplicate things: one disenfranchised teenager trying to buck the system is a story we’ve been told a few times over, right? So while in some ways this film seems dated (such as its reliance on a medium that doesn’t really exist anymore), it also allows it to transcend.
I like the idea of taking control from the controllers too, but I’m beginning to believe that the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. While the fight over what license comes with buying a piece of media, you also have to admit that we’ve reached a stage not only where a generation has believed that media is a commodity (music is there for the pirating, movies are there for the copying)…but also that they can publish whatever thought that pops into their head without consequence.
Why do you think your co-horts – or even your listeners – might not dig it as much as you did?
AR: I think maybe I’m speaking more of my co-hosts who I feel are less likely to try and admit anything particularly more than a cheesy Slater 90s film and not want to discuss it further. But I’ll stop putting words in their mouths there.
RM: Good call. So while Harry stands for something that’s still tangible, do you think he’d be down with what we’ve done with responsibility he entrusted?
AR: Well when you talk about responsibility for our words that still exists. There is a sense of disbelief more and more nowadays with social media that people don’t take things seriously but there have been a slew of sexual harassment and borderline disturbing the peace cases from social media actions people have taken over the past couple of years. In media, and film especially, we see this over exhuberance about people’s right to express themselves and even less discussion of the responsibility that comes with that right. Just because the world isn’t allowed to censor you explicitly doesn’t mean you have the right to be verbally aggressive to the random person on the street or even on social media.
This is a case of understanding the laws that surround that freedom of publication and speech that people are afforded and where restrictions remain even today. There is power in these rights and abuse that comes with that power if used poorly. We can only hope that people learn these limits through their lives before it becomes just a barrage of nonsense; or are we saying it’s already at that point?
RM: There’s still a responsibility where the law is concerned, but not in the mindset of the generation that uses it. I’d wager that if you ask ten students what libel is, nine out of ten of them couldn’t tell you. So it’s still there, and still enforced, but it’s not respected (just the same way piracy isn’t respected).
AR: The generation’s respect of the law or social standards that is an ever occurring thing. We see it in music, film, and just their general need to get into trouble and that’s part of being a child just like the part of correcting, or better yet guiding, that behaviour is the part of the parents and other adults who be gone through that process already. So its easy for us to claim its youthful rebelliousness that makes them not care about the medium or its usages for their own sake or right to speech, but that’s not excuse enough because there’s another side to that moment that matters just as much.
RM: Was there anything you didn’t like about the movie?
AR: I can’t really point to anything specific. Not because there aren’t flaws I mean I could talk about how the romance towards the end seems forced to a certain degree or even me finding some of the teens so laughable watching a group of suburban white teenagers crowded around a radio listening to the latest rap tunes, but these are quibbles that would only reduce this movie to nitpicking uselessness. What I have to say is that what this movie was looking to accomplish it did and it did it well. So much so that those things which I would’ve pointed to and been annoyed at in a lesser movie becomes window dressing that I’m almost happy to see is there.
RM: Talk with me about podcasting for a moment. Mark turns on his microphone to express himself. I get the feeling that he wasn’t hearing what he wanted to hear on a radio so he decided to do it himself. Was there any of that for you as a podcaster?
What prompted you to turn on your mic – and have you ever given any thought to the side of your personality you embody on-air?
AR: Hard Harry taking it to the waves could be something as simple as he wanted to talk to a world that that’s wasn’t necessarily talking back. This could be in the weird introverted teenage mode that we can assume where if he just said hello they’d say hi back and he’d be OK. But I feel its more therapy than anything else. Its said that in most cases of analysis or therapeutic discussions it’s not necessarily the other person listening but the act of saying these things that help the most.
As it relates to me I had just gotten swept up in the world of podcasting and wanted to do it with my friends who I found more to talk about with film than anyone else. One day we’ll realize it was all a mistake and the mics will turn off but until that day we’ll keep talking and having fun.
RM: But Hard Harry is a totally different side of Mark than the side he lets most people see. You don’t think that when you’re on-air that you’re a slightly different version of yourself?
AR: I don’t honestly believe so. Other than helping be a host sometimes and pushing things forward I don’t quite think I’m different. What do you think? Do you feel a difference in podcast Andrew vs. Regular Andrew?
RM: I listened to a lecture by a podcaster this past winter where he talked about “authenticity in its various forms”. He said (rightfully if you ask me) that we are different people in different situations. Slightly different, mind you, but different nonetheless. We act one way at work, a slightly different way around our family, and another slightly different way around our friends.
So using your show as an example, I can hear a slight difference in your personality and character between TUMP and Movies You Love. The difference is that you’re speaking with two people you know in and out versus speaking with people you only know at a distance (if at all). It’s not like you’re putting on an act or anything – “G-Man” isn’t your own personal Harry Hard-on – but a slightly different side of you comes through.
Guess you’ve never thought of it that way?
AR: Well I agree in the varying versions of one self based on setting. I’m different at home as at work or elsewhere. I know I am different between the two podcasts mainly because they accomplish two very different goals. TUMP is me wanting to just hang out and have fun with my friends and let it be what it is, Movies You Love is a very purposeful attempt at a much more ‘informed’ and introspective look at cinema and how it affects us all and that asks for a completely different tone.
I do have that half step hesitation on certain podcasts where I am talking to people from a distance and not that chummy with them already. They’re even varying levels of it. I can point to certain episodes where there are points where I let things slide that if it were Damion and Douglas on the line it would’ve gone oh so differently.
RM: Likewise have you ever thought of (like Mark) the people you’ve connected with that you wouldn’t have if not for turning on your mic?
AR: I do agree that I wouldn’t have connected with so many if not for the beginning of the blog and podcasts. But it still relies on connections of connections and how they end up falling at the end of the day. There are some guests and blogging compatriots who I honestly am not sure I’d want to break the twitter wall with and others who I’m happy to send a message to come on over and hang with the guys and see how much shit we can get in. In that way it’s very much like real life. People used to have to have these real world barriers deciding what level of access you gave them, there’s the courteous civil version which you should give everyone since you’re a human being and there’s the true you that a very few would be privy to. Twitter just makes it seem different because people believe they’re playing themselves. Or as you put it, a variation of themselves, whether it be braver or more coy I don’t know.
RM: So like my friend Patrick said, it’s almost as if PUMP UP THE VOLUME predicted podcasting and connecting with people we wouldn’t have otherwise connected with. So in the end, what would you score this film on a scale of 1 to 10?
AR: I’d give it a solid 7.5
Note: That same Tweet that got Andrew’s attention, also caught the attention of Nik, Mette, and Sophia from the Across the Universe Podcast. Keep an eye out for a future episode where the ladies will be discussing PUMP UP THE VOLUME. I’d wager they’ll have much to say and a different perspective than Andrew and myself.