BOOGIE BOY (1997) Shave it off, Mark, shave it ALL off! I have to admit, it was with some trepidation that I approached the prospect of viewing and reviewing Craig Hamann's film. Praise for it around here has been, from what I've seen, universal. But then, Craig's probably the only guy here who everybody likes and gets along with, all the time. Would even the biggest, most gaping assholes have the heart to state publicly that his movie blows? I don't know. But seeing it for myself, my concerns were put to rest, though I suppose the same question has to linger in the minds of those who haven't seen it yet, because I'm not gonna be that first guy to bash the shit out of it; I liked this movie. Hated the title, but the movie itself is a winner. I still haven't seen this around at any video store around here, so Craig was kind enough to send me a copy. Attached was a note apologizing for there being some trailers before the film. There weren't some trailers, there were ten. Ten! Ten trailers! And most of these movies look terrible! (said note was written on a page from a Demons 2 notepad - maybe a poke at my expressed, vehement dislike of this admittedly popular film?) Mark Dacascos, with short hair, stars as Jesse, also known as "Lucky Boy". I get the impression that when you ask this guy how his day was, he never says "fine". He either has days where he gets to jump on stage and join in with a much-admired band, and hot chicks are washing his motorcycle for free...or days where he's having to kill, avoid being killed, and re-consider major relationships in his life. For Lucky Boy, it's life itself that's manic-depressive, not him. He's been out of prison for a few months, is itchin' to start drumming again with something other than pens, and has decided to move to the coast to be with his "friend" and former cellmate Larry (Jaimz Woolvett). As soon as he arrives in town, he's beset by sin merchants of all stripes, but the film establishes early on that he's staying clean. Larry (who, unlike Jesse, has no apparent aspirations for leaving a life of drugs and crime behind) picks him up on a motorcycle he bought just for him, and they go to Larry's nasty apartment, where everybody seems angry at everybody else all the time, except for a friendly, up-and-coming scream queen played by Traci Lords. One night at the bar, while Jesse is watching a band he obviously has no small admiration for (look at that man groove!), their drugged-out drummer drums himself into an exhausted collapse, Dying Fetus-style. Good thing he wasn't playing anything really demanding. Just as I was thinking "Joan Jett should say 'Is there a drummer in the house?'", Joan Jett (oh yeah, Joan Jett sings in this band) says exactly that. Priceless. It's Lucky Boy's lucky day. During his (shirtless!) performance, all of his friends actually get up and leave to try a new drug - are these great friends or what? (and somewhere in here, Lucky Boy became Road Dog, but I don't know how that happened) But it gets him a more long-term gig with the band (in Detroit), his first apparent job prospect since getting out of the clink. (this ultimately means he has to ride three thousand miles in two days. He's not going to be drumming very well when he gets there.) Good news for him, but his friend has plans of his own; somebody out there is willing to pay big bucks for that new drug of his (actually, he says it's an old drug that nobody's done since the 60's, but you know what they say, everything old is new again). He knows Lucky Boy - uh, Road Dog - wants to keep his nose clean, but for one big score, his presence (Road Dog has never lost a fight) would be greatly appreciated. Needless to say, everything goes disastrously wrong. Eager to extract himself, and his friend, from the drug- and crime-addled squalor of their present circumstances, Jesse drags his soon-to-be-going-through-withdrawal friend onto his bike and proceeds to head on up to Detroit. The trip soon finds them taking some shelter at a long-closed motel owned by a free-spirited fellow (Frederic Forrest), who has the meanest thumbs in the world (see him open those beer bottles!) and a hottie wife (Emily Lloyd) who doesn't seem that bright. One of these two is crazy, and the other's just eccentric. Anyway, there's more to the plot than that, but this is not a conventionally plotted movie; it's not complicated, but it never seems to head in the more obvious directions other films might go in, which is why it took me so damn long to describe the story. I didn't even mention "Freddy and Jason", one of whom is played by Ben Browder, who looks like Andrew Dice Clay with George Clooney's hair. The crooked path the plot takes is one of this movie's treasures; you think for a while that it's about a trip from L.A. to Detroit, but it's not. Or about a former junkie trying to stay clean while failing to obey rule #2 of beating drug addiction (rule #1 is, don't do drugs. Rule #2: don't hang out with people who do!). And, yeah, for a while, you might be led to think this is a gay-themed romance, but it's not. It's mostly about a personal journey in which Jesse discovers the possibilities and limitations of what are often too easily called friendships. Perhaps living under the same charm that some say haunts Bruce Willis (shorter hair - better movie), Dacascos puts in a pretty good performance, infusing his character with a sort of quiet nobility earned through the kind of wisdom one can only get by choosing to abandon a bad path in life, though it's not without its missteps. Like the scene where he's groovin' to the bar band, getting into it maybe a little too much. Okay, he was getting into it WAY too much. Especially for a guy who's supposedly drug-free. But then, I'm one to talk; you should've seen me at the Nevermore show a couple of weeks ago; my head damn near fell off the next day. Woolvett is excellent as the crashing-and-burning, desperate addict who's finding life crumbling in on him from several directions. Forrest in particular stands out as Edsel, the free spirit who reminds you with almost every line, of how sad, curmudgeonly, and cynical you must be if for even a moment you wondered if he shouldn't just grow up. Of the rest, while Browder and James Lew as Freddy and Jason make a good couple of badguys, it seems like the smaller a role is, the less fundamentally interesting it gets, at least compared to the leads. While Joan Jett's singer-turned-actress turn is no worse than most of those available out there, I found her scenes to be the stiffest and most awkward - I can buy the street-tough punk-rock thing from Dacascos, but, ironically, I had a harder time buying it from the very person who actually make a living from it, or something resembling it. (last I checked, she owned her own label that was doing fairly well) Maybe it would've helped if I liked punk rock more than I do. As is suggested by the tagline on back of the box, the big themes here are friendship and loyalty, and the point at which both can turn to shit and fail. Most obviously, the failure would be Larry's, but there are others here, too - by the end of the movie it's made clear that Jesse would've made a better gesture of loyalty and friendship toward Larry by telling him to take a hike, and not coming along on the drug deal. (the box also states that it's "From the Academy-Award-winning writer of Pulp Fiction", which, while not untrue, is quite misleading to the unwary on two levels - they're not talking about Quentin Tarantino, and at least for this movie, they're not talking about writing. Roger Avary served as an executive producer.) I don't really know how Jesse's nickname got morphed into the title, which I didn't like before seeing the film and like even less now. It contains two words I just don't ever want to see in a title...though "boy" can be gotten away with if the movie's actually about a little boy. This isn't. When the worst thing about a movie is its title, then it's nice to know that it's all uphill after you get past the opening credits, but I shudder to think of the potentially curious who might have been scared off, having the same problems with the title as I did. The homoerotic overtones in the relationship between Jesse and Larry are most evident early on - whatever their relationship was when they were in prison together, it now faces the test of what form it might take now that they're not actually confined to a cell together. At first it seems pretty much a gimme that this is a gay relationship (there's a level of physical tenderness between the two that no two straight guys I know would be comfortable with), but that seems less clear as the film goes on, until ultimately, you might forget it was even a question unless you're taking notes. I considered asking Craig what his intentions about this were, but after some thought, I concluded that when it comes to possibly gay themes in movies which aren't expressly, explicitly gay-themed, I generally like to keep ambiguity ambiguous. It's like Deckard being a replicant - goddammit, I didn't want to hear Ridley Scott flatly answer that one! Despite the shafting given the film and its makers by the producers (the useable budget turned out to be a little over a third of what was originally agreed upon) and an ill-timed week-destroying windstorm, Boogie Boy never looks cheap or rushed. On the contrary, it has great atmosphere throughout (and no, not that it's so-low-budget-it-feels-like-a-documentary kind of atmosphere), which is a little surprising for a movie which isn't really a suspense flick, and it has a fast pace, considering that isn't really an action flick, despite what the box cover suggests. It might not be an action movie, but the climax is a knockout; no big explosions or anything, just a room with six people in it and it makes for one bitchin' scene. (fight choreography is by James Lew, the previously mentioned villain "Jason") Contains the most disgusting bathroom scene you can manage without actually showing anything, and two songs on the soundtrack co-written by Harry Cody, a name I vaguely recall from my guitar-hero-worshipping days - Shotgun Messiah? Warrior Soul? Dammit, I can't remember. He played on a couple tracks on a Stu Hamm album. (I had bass-hero-worshipping days too, but they didn't last as long, and they ultimately turned into some kind of bass-hero resentment...nothing annoys me more than an overplaying bassist. I'm talking about you, Randy Coven! You're fucking up that Ark album!) Eyes sharper than mine can spot Linnea Quigley as another girl in one of Lords' godawful-looking movies. I only read about that later. Hey, don't let that title scare you off. There are no little boys here, and the boogie-ing is confined to one scene, and chances are, you've been guilty of worse. I hope you have better luck finding this movie in the video stores than I had. BACK TO THE B's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE