pump up the volume [1990]

a friend told me this movie is available on the HBO app.  with a very enthusiastic recommendation.  i've seen this flick on its first run in 1990 with an old girlfriend.  i remember the long-gone theater, a second run house called The Birdcage where admission was about a buck & a quarter.  & my memory is not so far fucked that i do remember most parts of the film.  

but i'd forgotten how thrilling this pic is.  the movie is directed by allan moyle & stars christain slater as a shy teen who is the new kid at his AZ high school.  feeling alienated & finding hypocrisy & corruption in all facets of our civilization slater creates the persona of Hard Harry Hard-On, a deviant with his own pirate radio station.  harry broadcasts every night at 10.  his taste in music is killer.  his speeches revivifying.

soon harry's a hit with all the rest of the kids at his school.  they record his broadcasts & trade the tapes.  no one knows his identity but one smart cookie, nora, played by the exquisite samantha mathis, puts the clues together & finds our shy hero.  soon the school authorities are searching for harry, the FCC & police are gunning for him, & the rest of the social deviants, meaning all the kids at his school are speaking up for themselves & giving the middle finger to authority.

this is a Gen X movie as identified by the societal malaise expressed by harry.  but hold on.  harry's speeches are culled from the poem 'Of' by the poet michael lally.  harry might feel that our social structures are worn out, his motto that is soon spray painted on his high school walls is So Be It.  but his speech on air creates meaning & connection to his listeners.  for the other piece of graffito is Talk Hard.  with poetry.  & honesty.

director moyle achieved a youth film that speaks to everyone who is young or was once young.  to use a poetics term moyle made a high energy construct that bounces in all directions but consistently leads to uplift & an example that our tools of communication, whether it be digital platforms or something considered a little old-fashioned like pirate radio, are also tools of goodness & kindness.  harry hard-on may sound like a sex crazed deviant but really he is a young person figuring out how to be a good human being as he takes us along & helps us figure it out too.