When they haven’t been running “Flops!”-related programming, Trio has been showing the obscure teen exploitation movie Over The Edge on occasion. Known these days as Matt Dillon’s first movie and Kurt Cobain’s favorite movie, Over The Edge is the only movie I can think of that documented suburban teenaged angst and nihilism. Teen culture from 1977 to 1980 has always been divided up among punks and unhip valley kids but little about the then-new suburban areas that catered to upwardly mobile parents who sweated over property values. Of course, growing up in Orange County in the 1970s means that I’m the target audience for the movie, and while I didn’t feel the need to get stoned, smash cars, and listen to Cheap Trick there were plenty of kids I knew in junior high who could have easily been part of it. I had no idea that the movie was based on actual events that happened in Foster City, California in the mid-70s.
Apparently a DVD will finally be released later in 2004. There’s the obligatory fan web site with a “then and now” photo tour of New Granada (actually Aurora and Greely, Colorado) and a recent interview with director Jonathan Kaplan.
One thing I always wondered about was the television station that apparently played nothing but computer generated patterns on the screen. Apparently, some cable companies would have a channel that was nothing but a music track and an early audio visualizer supplying the video. Atari had a device called Atari Video Music that generated video pretty much identical to what’s in the movie.
Video synthesizers are themselves an oddball piece of early tech that bears further investigation. AudioVisualizers.com has a run down of the models.
Somewhere I’ve read that the desolate suburban landscape in question here–places like Baldwin Park, Covina, Chino, Ontario, La Verne, or Lancaster/Palmdale/Victimville–are “the slums of the 21st century.” Undoubtedly. Breeding grounds they are for anomie, for two main reasons: First, as the film’s description alludes to, these places provide youth with little to do that is constructive or stimulating. In the inner city of yore, at least there was some genuine feeling and community, some real life, mixing with people on a daily basis. And on the farm, there are endless chores to complete, brooks to swim and fish in, etc., pastoral America. But in the blighted burbs, there’s little to do except get into unproductive trouble, e.g., drugs, drag racing, etc. The second reason is simpler: these suburbs are so GODDAM UGLY that it must be depressing and have a negative effect on the psyche.