Gabba Gabba Hey!

From the time when I was a young lad who would still collect autographs at conventions like the Chiller Theatre and Fangoria Weekend of Horrors. Ms. Soles was very friendly from what I recall, this is going back 15 + years ago, and she added the great inscription without my prompting:

The pic comes from Danny Peary's Cult Movies. Autograph was obtained at the Chiller Theatre Expo in beautiful Secaucus, NJ.

I never was a big fan of the film Rock n' Roll High School even though I love the Ramones and P.J. Soles, particularly as Riff Randell.

Does anyone else immediately think of the Ramones when they hear the name of that Nickelodeon show Yo Gabba Gabba! ?

"We heard you were horny."

What a thrill it was to see Jonathan Kaplan's Over the Edge in a theater packed with enthusiastic fans and a number of key cast and crew members. By my recollection, Matt Dillon's classic retort to Harry Northup's Sgt. Doberman, quoted in this post's title, got the biggest laugh from the audience. Shown as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center's "Film Comment Selects" series, the screening was co-presented by Vice Magazine, prompted by this great retrospective article last year and featured a nice-looking 35mm print, an after-party with a dj who spun period-appropriate tunes (think lots of prime Cheap Trick), and, most importantly, a lengthy q & a with stars Michael Kramer, Pamela Ludwig, Tom Fergus, Julia Pomeroy, and Harry Northup, producer George Litto, writers Tim Hunter and Charlie Haas, and talent scout Jane Bernstein (she discovered Matt Dillon skipping class at his Westchester, NY middle school). To think I almost missed this screening...working with Vice on another project, I stumbled across the event listing on their website and quickly learned that it was sold out. I immediately called in favors with my contacts at FSLC and Vice, and the latter came through with a complimentary ticket. Phew!

Most refreshingly, the audience was primarily made up of passionate fans in their 30s who had discovered the film in the 1980s when it was part of HBO's regular rotation. I thought I might be the only person with the sublime Warner Bros. Records soundtrack LP and the super-rare novelization written by Haas and Hunter and published by Grove Press, but after the screening I saw both items being thrust in the faces of cast and filmmakers to be signed. I screened a 16mm print for an appreciative audience in college, but it was so long ago that I'd forgotten the finer details of the audience's response. So, it was great chuckling at parts of this film that I've seen countless times before, but precious few within the company of a large audience of fellow fans.

Anyway, I recall seeing parts of it on HBO back in the '80s, but it was a few years later that I truly became a member of the Over the Edge cult, after reading Danny Peary's entry in Cult Movies 3. Oddly, none of my local video stores carried the film, but it was readily available from Warner Home Video as a sell-through VHS. So I excitedly bought a copy at the local Suncoast and proceeded to indoctrinate my brother and just about all my friends into said cult. I was, and remain, struck by how natural all the kids seemed and the filmmaker's documentary-like approach to the film's design, locations, and photography. Even though my adolescence was occurring under much more mundane circumstances than those of the film, and about 10 years later, I felt a strong connection to the plight of the kids of New Granada and was desperate to learn more about what became of the young cast--only a couple, Matt Dillon and Vincent Spano, went on to prolonged careers in the industry. In this pre-Internet age, it was next to impossible to connect with fellow fans and share information. Needless to say, this screening, happening nearly 20 years after my love affair with the film began, was something of a holy grail moment for me.

Vice had someone recording the event, but I haven't seen it show up on their website yet, so I figured I'd share some of the highlights of the post-film conversation before the details become fuzzy...

* Producer George Litto was like a proud grandfather as he beamed and regaled the crowd with stories about how he financed the film and later fought with studio executives about its marketing and (lack of) distribution. He couldn't seem to figure out how to use the microphone, repeatedly waving it in his hand, far away from his mouth. At one point a younger woman, his daughter I assume, jumped on stage and held the microphone for him, saying, "I love you, but you don't know how to hold a microphone!" Litto rejected the notion that Rebel Without a Cause played a strong role in the conception of Over the Edge, an assertion that surprised me and that contradicts the story, relayed by Peary, about how Kaplan pitched the film to Orion as Rebel Without a Cause 1978. The best nugget from Litto was a story about the French distributor who told Litto he wanted to re-release the film in France, where it had previously failed commercially, under a new title that he was sure would mean good business. The new title was Hooligans and Litto laughed as he recounted how the film once again failed to turn a profit even with the can't-miss title. Litto and his entourage exited the event as I was. As I held the door for the producer, I resisted the temptation to blubber something about he was responsible for not 1, but 2 of my favorite films, Over the Edge and Blow Out.

* Michael Kramer, now a psychiatrist, came across as a genuinely down-to-earth, gracious fellow. I was very happy to hear him praise composer Sol Kaplan (father of director Jonathan) and his extremely moving, mournful original score. Kramer talked about how horrifying it was to see his awkward teenage self projected on a huge screen with a packed audience. I'm not an actor, but I could empathize with his discomfort. That said, Kramer relayed that it was extremely moving for him because upon seeing his 15 year-old self on-screen for the first time in years, he could now see the resemblance between his younger self and his own son.

* Pamela Ludwig, now known by her married name Dreyfuss, brought along her young son and her daughter and read an e-mail message of appreciation from director Kaplan, who could not attend the screening. She began by singling out Kramer's performance for praise, which I thought was especially classy.

* Harry Northup, as renowned for his poetry as for his performances in films by Kaplan, Martin Scorsese, and Jonathan Demme, was deeply moved by the show of affection for Over the Edge and his wonderful work in it. He shared a great story about riding on a bus with cast and crew to location one day. Pamela Ludwig, about 20 years his junior, took off her headphones and put them on Northup so he could hear the great new song she was listening to, Cheap Trick's "Surrender." Northup proceeded to sing the now-familiar chorus of the song, so effectively used in the film. Apparently, it was Ludwig who brought a lot of the soundtrack music to the attention of the filmmakers (Years later, in much the same way, Molly Ringwald would introduce her director John Hughes to the New Wave and synthpop music she was listening to). Northup also mentioned how powerful he thought the ending of the film was, with its use of "Ooh Child" as the Rec Center explodes and the camera closes in on Carl's (Kramer) tormented face.

* Tom Fergus, who's performance as the stoner Claude impresses me more and more, is now an attorney in New York. He explained that he was at a complete loss as to how to explain his role to his 6 and half year-old daughter. This drew a lot of laughter and he then shared that he had just had another child only a couple weeks before.

* Co-writer Charlie Haas debunked the oft-repeated account that he had written the newspaper story "Mousepacks," which detailed the true case in Foster City, California that inspired the film. He read the article and shared it with Tim Hunter, but he did not, in fact, write it.

* Hunter and Litto continued the debate that also cropped up on the DVD commentary about "Ooh Child" versus The Who's "Baba O'Riley" over the end credits. Apparently, director Kaplan and the writers really wanted the Who tune to play over the end credits, but Litto prevailed over them to use "Ooh Child" for cost reasons and because the tone of the song was less incendiary than "Baba O'Riley" with its "teenage wasteland" refrain.

* Matt Dillon could not attend because he was in London, but Litto read an e-mail that the actor had sent to be read in his absence, wherein he expressed his great appreciation for the opportunity to act in Over the Edge. Vincent Spano was not in attendance, either, and there was no explanation given for his absence.

Matt hanging with Jonathan Kaplan and co-star Tom Fergus at the December 1981 screening of Over the Edge at Joe Papp's Public Theater. Photos come from the Life Archives:

After the screening I visited Bruce Hershenson's great eMoviePoster.com site and found a gorgeous German Over the Edge poster, which I bid on and, I'm happy to say, I won:

Over a decade or so, I built up a decent sized collection of movie tie-in novels, which were unfortunately heavily damaged in a flood in my apartment several years ago. Over the Edge was one of the very few books I salvaged, but as you can see from the scans, it sadly did not completely escape damage:

But I Might Die Tonight

My good friend Brian (aka bigbobfreelander) was able to interview Cult Movies and Guide for the Film Fanatic author Danny Peary last week for an upcoming magazine piece. Since Peary is a personal hero for both of us, and we are all UW-Madison alums, it was quite a thrill when Brian sent me an MP3 of the freshly recorded interview. Peary hasn't published a film-related book in nearly 20 years. Instead, he's focused on his other passion--baseball (which, as it happens, is my 2nd love after cinema). Tim McCarver's never been a favorite of mine, but he rises several notches in my personal rankings for having Peary as the writer of his nationally syndicated show.

I won't reveal too much before Brian's interview is published, but one of the most illuminating moments came when Peary discussed the way some of his pieces, particularly from the Cult Movies books, have followed him all these years later. Take Jerzy Skolimowksi's Deep End, for instance, a film I first learned of when I read its entry in the inaugural Cult Movies volume. The film has never been available on home video in the U.S. and tv screenings are rare. I finally saw it for the first time about a month ago when Brian sent me a bootleg. It turns out that quite a few other people were introduced to Deep End by Peary's article as well. When TCM aired the movie for the first time ever a couple weeks ago, Peary's e-mailbox and Facebook account were filled with messages from readers excited about the TCM broadcast of the film and crediting him with alerting them to the film.

The good news about Deep End doesn't end there. While TCM's print was very ragged, Bavaria, has restored the film and it will be coming to DVD from a variety of labels, including BFI and, hopefully, Criterion. In addition, Paramount, acting on the demand of several repertory programmers, struck a new print of the film in 2008, which is still making the rounds. Bavaria promises extra, previously unseen vault materials--I hope this means the alternate ending mentioned in a 1992 Scarlet Street interview with star John Moulder-Brown. I can't wait to see Skolimowski and d.p Charly Steinberger's vivid use of colors, particularly red, in HD (unless that new 35 print shows up in my neighborhood first).

Skolimowski's tale of a young bathhouse worker (Moulder-Brown) in London who becomes obsessed with his slightly older, beautiful colleague (Jane Asher) lived up to the expectations I had built up over the years, based on reviews like Peary's and how much I enjoyed the other Skolimowski films I had seen (The Shout, Moonlighting). This one begins as a coming-of-age story, but it becomes a lot more disturbing as it goes along and ultimately resists many of the conventions of the genre.

It goes without saying that Cat Stevens' "But I Might Die Tonight," used as Deep End's theme, will stay lodged in your head for days afterward in the same way that the Cat Stevens soundtrack from another famous 1971 Paramount film does and, if you're at all like me (read: possessing a weakness for stylish beauties, particularly French or British, of the mid-late '60s), you will have Jane Asher on the brain while you hum that tune.

And, just for the record, in my scorebook, Deep End continues the winning streak of films utilizing the music of Can or members of Can. Can keyboardist Irmin Schmidt contributed one of my favorite electronic scores to one of my favorite New German Cinema films, Knife in the Head. Can, inexplicably credited as "The Can" in Deep End's credits (similar to Goblin's "The Goblins" credit in Dawn of the Dead), contributes the spacey, guitar-dominated 14+ minute "Mother Sky" to one of the film's most memorable sequences.

You can hear the film version of "But I Might Die Tonight," outside of the film, here. One fan's valuable Film Fanatic resource is here.

Diane Dors, in a state we probably did not need to see her in, contributes one of the funniest and most cringe-inducing scenes of the film.