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June 19, 2000
Just saw the movie "Groove" (2000)
and I gotta say I think it was a
mixed bag.
It trys hard to be PLURically
correct, but basically it acts
like an ad for drugs: you got a
lot of folks on screen here who Note: If you're going to play
seem like mediocre soap opera someone on MDMA or LSD, try
actors who are pretending to be not to act like someone on
ravers, acting "high". heroin or alcohol.
They do make it a point to
distinguish between good (I tend to think the real distinction is
drugs and bad drugs, between not-as-bad-as-they-say-but-still-bad
drugs and seriously bad drugs).
(And some people
complain about it's DRUGS
"anti-drug" subtext...
heh.)
There is some good stuff, though:
I actually thought the budding
romance between the party girl
from New York (Leyla) and the
technical writer from East
Lansing kind of worked.
You could argue that this is a
drug romance that's going to
evaporate when the drugs wear
off, but I liked the idea that
they both have something to
learn from each other... she
needs some of his dicipline,
and he needs to hang a little
looser.
The were some attempts at showing a
"dark side" that weren't too bad.
Like, the slimey massage dude, who
later plays head games with a guy
by making out with him while he's
under the influence. And there's the
chronic abuser in the basement that
they have to watch all the time to
make sure he won't die on them.
They neglected to put a lot of
emphasis on what I would call the
*real* dark side of raves, which
would be the casual self-centered
stupidity of at least two thirds A friend of mine once
of the partiers: organized a break-in rave
a some random warehouse.
After the rave, they show one He decided it to shut it
or two little pieces of trash down himself because the
left on the floor. They did people were just too
*not* show the organizers spend un-cool -- they were
an hour picking up trash, and opening boxes, messing
that's what you'd have to do to with the stuff stashed in
get it into that condition, after the warehouse...
a bunch of ravers have left behind
their mountains of refuse. Borrowing a space without
shitting in it is totally
They didn't seem to have any beyond them.
problem with people hanging
out outside yakking with
each other... (this
attracts police instantly:
the *one* cop they had to
con is grossly improbable in
SF -- try imagining a riot
squad materializing before
the first record spins.)
They didn't seem to have *parking*
problems... ravers are nearly all
car people, and if you have a rave
with 500 people, you can count on
having 400 cars parked out front.
This, more than anything else
is what makes it impossible to do
a discrete, illegal rave.
Other complaints:
Two violations of the "rules" of raving:
people popping drugs at the rave
people selling drugs in the alley outside
Both of these are things that
endanger the event... The
word I get is that you should
buy elsewhere, and take
whatever you're going to take
before you get there.
They give you the impression that
every single person in the place is on I mentioned this to someone
drugs. When I was going to these who had seen the script (he
things, I would guess that it was more actually did a small cameo)
like 30% of the people were doing drugs and he pointed out that Leyla
(certainly I wasn't, certainly I knew isn't supposed to be on drugs.
other people who weren't, and I could
tell that a lot of the people I didn't It's true we don't
know were very paranoid about getting see her taking any.
dosed unintentionally... ).
I just thought she was
VISION an experienced partier
who just doesn't show it
when she's high.
Which illustrates the problem
that it's really hard to
estimate the percentage of
folks on drugs, because
Still another despite the various cinematic
complaint: a rave cliches, it isn't usually that
for $2? A promoter easy to tell if someone is on (You can
that's not making psychedlics just by looking at look at
any money at it? A them. iris size,
lot of ravers but it's
complain if you It could be that this not so
charge *less* than percentage has gone up a lot obvious
$20... a high since the mid-90s. One of the in a dark
ticket price keeps reasons I got tired of raves room.)
things nice and is that it seemed like they
upper-middle class. were getting more drug
It screens out the obsessed.
"bad element".
I blame the media:
alarmist stories
about people doing
drugs have a way
of creating the
problem they're
warning about.
Department of missed tricks: They do
this Star-is-Born thing: the young
DJ from Fresno gets to play a slot
in prime time. They do a big build
up on the tension of the moment.
The camera is trying to get inside
his point of view, showing his
insecurity about trying to get that
first record to work. The
soundtrack, however, is completely
*outside* of his point of view.
That was the moment when we
should've heard the world through
his headphones, as he tried to get
the clashing beats to mesh together,
and get the timing right to bring up
his track...
Oh, and by the way:
Gay couples as comic figures is a
cliche which is rapidly growing old.
And the only other "gay" figure is
the evil, bisexual, predatory fellow
who interferes with the course of
true love.
Let us think about this for 2
seconds... and then wonder why
people making movies have trouble
thinking clearly for this long.
I guess they were figuring
that the "gay couple"
played for laughs were
supposed to be positive,
sympathetic characters,
to balance out the predator.
And it is true that
they've got a happy
ending, dancing together
by the ocean cliffs at
dawn...
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