Detroit rock city

“Shit or get off the pot, rock star. Do you wanna dance or do you wanna see KISS on the album covers for the rest of your life?”

detroit07.jpgFew films capture the spirit of a decade gone by as fully and completely as “Detroit Rock City.” Even fewer do so while creating characters as memorable or rendering teenage friendships with as much heart and authenticity. And none pull it off with a better soundtrack.

Adam Rifkin’s cult film from 1999 draws obvious comparisons with Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused” (itself a triumph of beautifully conveyed time and place), and those comparisons are valid. But the latter is more gentle, less raucous, and, quite frankly, less ambitious. “Detroit Rock City” goes for broke in its portrayal of adolescents in a time of hyper-kinetic sexual, chemical and territorial exploration and its most laudable feat is making all of it extremely funny.

Set in Cleveland, Ohio in 1978, the film tells the story of four high school friends desperately trying to see KISS, their favorite band, in concert in Detroit. Bruised and beaten by several years of thwarted attempts at concert attendance, Hawk, Lex, Trip, and Jam (some of the best wannabe rock n’ roll nicknames of all time, by the way) divide their time between smoking pot, disparaging disco, and thrashing out KISS covers with their 4-piece garage band, “Mystery.”

I mentioned the film’s humor, and so much of it is grounded in the nuances of conversation, the familiarity of friendship, and acute observations about the awkwardness of being a 15-year-old male in a social environment that it rings true every step of the way. Take, for instance, the way Lex (Giuseppe Andrews) mercilessly mocks Hawk (Edward Furlong) for his stage fright or the way all four of them gang up on Christine (Natasha Lyonne), the hitchhiking Stella, about her affection for The Village People, followed by, of course, her stunning retaliation: “Why don’t you bend over? You’re looking right at it.” It’s a remark that does, in fact, “[fall] about thirty yards away from making any sense at all.” And that right there is a great example of a refreshing, perfectly written little moment from an extremely perceptive screenwriter (Carl V. Dupre) and it’s a most apt example of why the film works.

detroit-rock-city-05.jpgSome of ”Detroit Rock City” definitely goes over the top. There’s no way three kids could obliterate a girls’ bathroom and evade the same security guard twice in one day without facing some serious repercussions. But that kind of deduction is almost purely an afterthought. In the moment, it’s difficult to project your own pragmatism onto the situations they’re getting into because the characters are so funny and engaging.

The first time we see Mystery, they’re covering KISS’ “Rock and Roll All Nite” in Lex’s basement and treating it like it were a stadium occupied by thousands of screaming fans poised to disrobe. The best part about it is that their performance is undeniably shabby. Sloppy, slightly off key, but enormously humanizing and realistic.

Teenage bands in movies sound polished and professional far too often. I spent a large part of my high school career in garages and basements either playing with or listening to my friends’ bands, and anyone with similar experiences can tell you that most of them sound more like Mystery than they do the bands they’re emulating. It’s an important detail and it’s easy to overlook, but it’s crucial to the movie’s success.

drcpicii.jpgIt’s an axiomatic notion that the journey is more satisfying than the destination, and I absolutely love the way this movie subverts that thinking and focuses not primarily on their road trip to Detroit (which, to be fair, is a fantastic segment of the film), but what happens after they get there. It’s kind of like “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” in that sense (yes, I just compared this movie to John Huston’s sprawling masterpiece; come back next week when I’ll be discussing “American Pie[’s]” thematic similarities to “Casablanca”): the best part is what happens after they find the gold, so to speak. That scene in the elevator when Hawk pounces on Trip (James DeBello) after finding out that he actually lost them the tickets kills me to this day.

Now, setting all of that aside, perhaps the best part of the film is that its characters actually, well, grow. Each of them has an individually-specific arc and they play out convincingly in spite of what could arguably be categorized as plot contrivances. The most notable of which is obviously Jam (Sam Huntington), who, after having “lost his virginity in a confessional booth,” dresses down his fundamentalist, PTA-nightmare of a mother in front of a crowd of equally misinformed shrews. It’s hugely satisfying and actually pretty poignant. It’s preceded by his and the rest of the group’s excursions involving crime and chance encounters with the opposite sex that lead to some form of self-discovery, none of which comes across as phony. In Jam’s case, he runs into his classmate, Beth (Melanie Lynskey), with whom he relinquishes his aforementioned virginity in the aforementioned location and opens the floodgates of regret. Following that sequence, Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” is played as he bids her farewell and it couldn’t be more achingly appropriate.

And that brings us to the sonic coup that is the film’s most indisputable achievement. The soundtrack is a terrific agglomeration of late 60s/early-mid-70s hits and KISS classics; some of the ones that feature prominently in my mind are “Shout It Out Loud,” “Jailbreak,” “Iron Man,” “Godzilla,” and, my personal favorite, Cheap Trick’s “Surrender.” The scene in which they arrive in Detroit with that song blaring is one of my favorite musical moments in any film. The visuals paired with the spirit of the song create this kind of collaborative expression of the joy felt during one’s first parentally-independent-big-city-venture that is hard to put into words. Throw the fact that it’s also their first time seeing their favorite band in there and you have what is, honestly, a beautiful cinematic moment.

detroit_rock_city_ver1.jpgThe terrific cast is basically a collection of “Where are they, now?[s]” and that’s pretty depressing. Furlong, Andrews, and DeBello are all wonderful in their respective roles, and Huntingon – whose only noteworthy credit prior to the film was the ghastly “Jungle 2 Jungle” and whose most noteworthy since has been Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns” – is so earnest as the “wussy sensitive guy” that when he tells Beth he’s been in love with her since the moment they first saw one another, we believe him. And that’s special. Also, it needs to be stated that in a pre-“McLovin” world, Hawk’s fake ID is unquestionably one of the funniest ever put on film.

What else can really be said that’s not belaboring the point? This movie means a great deal to me and has ever since I saw it for the first time when I was a kid. Knowing that it’s achieved a kind of cult status is comforting, but it deserved more. It deserved a huge box office run and resulting fruitful careers for its cast and crew. It deserved to be seen and discussed and rightfully designated as one of the best teen comedies of all time. Still does. The term “gem” is thrown around way too often in the realm of cinema, but if there were ever a film deserving of that characterization, it would be this one.

So, in closing, I’ll leave you with this; any movie that has a priest in the middle of a shroom-induced psychological and ecclesiastical meltdown utter the following line deserves your attention as well as admiration:

“I’ve been telling that sermon for years and it’s the first time I ever realized that it’s the work of some comedy mastermind; the Prodigal Son is a barrel of fucking monkeys.”

This entry was posted on February 9, 2010 at 4:53 pm and is filed under US News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.