Pump Up the Volume (1990)

Interesting to watch this movie 24 years after it was released. It really 'spoke' to me when I was a teenager. What I found interesting watching it as an adult was how much I agreed with Mark (Christian Slater) about how strange it is to live in Arizona. He keeps telling his parents: 'People are weird here, I can't talk to anyone, they don't understand me.' I'm sure it was only a way to make him seem at odds with his classmates. But so peculiar that I feel the same way as an adult living in Arizona and coming from the mid-west. People in Arizona are strange, and very different...definitely not easy to get along with. Nobody gets me here...this was an unexpected feeling as I watched this again and was able to connect to the main character on a different level than as a teenager.

This movie, directed Alan Moyle, who would later go on to direct Empire Records, deals with the lives of teenagers in a small American Country Town. This movie grasps the pointlessness and meaninglessness of their lives at the turn of the 90's. It is not that they have no direction, but rather they are seeking an identity that is not forced upon them by their parents.I guess the main theme of this movie is the nature of one's identity, and the reality of freedom of speech. Both of these come together to help us understand the struggle that teenagers face today. Happy Harry Hardon, through a pirate radio station, is the voice of the teenagers in this town, and has enlightened them and given them a direction to go. Through his radio station, he simply speaks his mind and tries to relate to all in this town, whether they be a jock or a nerd. It is not the typical struggle between the teenagers here, but rather a united front as they struggle against their parent's rule.What we see here are not people who want to be fiercely independent but rather they want a voice. In years past, there was no such thing as a teenager. You were a child and then you were an adult, and the time in life between 12 and 18 was a time when you became an adult. Now, with the marketing ploy invented in the fifties, we have a group of people who feel grown up yet treated like children. They have their own problems, not just fitting in with each other, but fitting into a society that treats them like children, while they believe that they are no longer are children.The life of a teenager was not always as bad as it is these days. This movie does address the idea of youth suicide where one character kills himself simply because he has been isolated. Harry feels responsible because he was the last person to talk to him, and this was the beginning of what can be seen as his epiphany. The entire movie is him not only coming to terms with who he is, but more so what he has become. He is torn between closing down his pirate radio station and getting out while he still can, or continuing and leading the teenagers of the town in a united front against the oppression that the community puts on them.At one stage he attacks guidance councillors, and in fact is constantly slagging guidance councillors. Now, I actually agree with him to a point because I remember my guidance councillor from my school, and it was simply somebody who seemed to force people to do things that she wanted us to do. The thing that he is attacking here is the adults' habit of mapping out their children's lives. This is more so the case with the councillors because they will pick a job for the students and then force them to do it. In some cases, at that age, we really do not know what we want to do. We are being bombarded by images everywhere, being told what to think and do and not being allowed to think or act for ourselves. They claim that it is for our own protection because we don't understand, but sometimes it is good for people to grow through having their fingers burnt.I think this movie is important as it not only tries to open our eyes to the state that teenagers, and youths, are in, but also it tries to tell us that we have things to say, and as human beings, we have a right to have a voice. That is the essence of the end of the movie. The state is trying to shut out our voice, but we want to continue to speak because we have issues that we want to discuss. It is not that Harry was shut down at the end, but rather because before he was taken away, his message went out to all of the youth in America, and as he was taken away, he was taken as a martyr whose message touched the hearts and minds of all the youth around the nation who went off and followed him. It is not that we find out what happened to him, but rather than in the end the message got out. He went down a martyr, but martyrs live on and leave a legacy behind them.

Some "kids" my age were defined by certain movies, namely John Hughes classics, though you probably can't get a lot of guys to admit that. The sadly underperforming Pump Up the Volume was mine.It was back in 1989 when I started taking movies more seriously, seeing them more and noticing that they'll eventually consume me. A year later, I saw my first Christian Slater movie (though, almost immediately following, I watched – and not for him – Young Guns II) as well as a "star" I would fall in love with for thereafter: Samantha Mathis, coincidentally, her first movie.I remember loving the movie, the idea, the setting – finally a teen movie that was set in my current location, Arizona, the mood, the dialogue, the music and definitely the message. What also impressed me was the nonchalant take they had on homosexuality and how the main hero, Hard Harry (Slater) was so accepting of it. (Side Note: I hadn't come out yet by this point, but this certainly helped verses all the negativity surrounding the "gay lifestyle" I heard around me.)And as independent as this was, it was certainly far before it's time. Christian Slater really plays Mark, but, in what also appealed to me, by night his "Clark Kent" image of Mark was transformed into the "Superman" Hard Harry on a radio program on an unused frequency. What he was doing would be considered a podcast nowadays, only he went the long, and probably only, way around it.Literally, he didn't think anyone was listening. So this lonely kid, Mark, who was moved by his parents to a small Arizona town, babbles on the air about how bad the high school he was attending as well as the small town. Although, it sounds like he's complaining, he's actually hitting on some direct topics the parents and school board are either ignoring or were ignorant of.Well, the kids are listening, one by one, growing by the night. Namely, Nora (Mathis), the obvious "Lois Lane" of the trio of characters (if you count Clark and Supe as two), who's trying to find the identity of the voice she hears and absolutely agrees with. Oh, and is it obvious she's also in love with Hard Harry?A tragedy, one you might not expect with the direction the movie was headed, occurs and now Hard Harry's a target for parents, police, the FCC and of course the school board for what he's saying might actually be true.They all want him shut down. Naturally, all the kids want him to continue – he's their voice, each and every one of them. Only, Clark, er, Mark's conflicted and the much more shy version of Hard Harry. Leave it to Lois, er, Nora, to save the day once again by giving the real hero a backbone.I rated this with the highest rating I give: 10/10 stars. I do this for nostalgia purposes, obviously, but re-watching this movie now, after not seeing it for probably 15+ years, it really holds up today. Sure, the one message (revealed in the end) of why the school board is wronging the students is somewhat weak, the dozens of others thoroughly outweigh that revolution. Also, as mentioned, I did love (literally, I fell hard for) Mathis; she did a fantastic first job and bold – see: well, her. Further, Slater equally did a excellent job. And the soundtrack remains as one of my all time favorites. I have probably listened to Everybody Knows by Concrete Blonde 660 times since this came out.This was the un-Hollywood independent film I will cherish for all time. It wasn't splashy, it was intentionally small, it was tight and it was right. All that I wrote above about my first impressions back in 1990 hold up and I stand by them. Watch this movie and know what it was TRULY like being a teen in the early nineties.

I like the movie, "Pump Up the Volume", it's a good movie in the decade right now in 2011, this is my favorite film still, Christian Slater's brilliant performance in this 1990 comedy/drama, Slater played as Mark Hunter, a shy high school student who's a independent and quiet young student, but at night he became pirate radio VJ, Hard Harry, and Hard Harry had a voice sound like Jack Nicholson, Samantha Mathis in her film debut as Nora, Nora is sweet, but she is wild, the soundtrack in the movie is great, I like the songs in the film including Leonard Cohen's Everybody Knows, Ice-T, Beastie Boys, and Was Not Was' Dad, I'm in Jail, and the songs also was featured in the soundtrack album also including artists like Soundgraden, Liquid Jesus, Sonic Youth, Above The Law, Peter Murphy, and more, Plot is great, I like this movie a lot.