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June 19, 2000
Just saw the movie "Groove", 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 drugs and bad drugs,
(I tend to think the real
distinction is between
not-as-bad-as-they-say-but-still-bad
drugs and seriously bad drugs). DRUGS
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 they 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 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 of (A friend of mine tried to
the partiers: organize a break-in once a
some random warehouse. He
After the rave, they show one decided it to shut it down
or two little pieces of trash himself because the people
left on the floor. They did were just too un-cool --
*not* show the organizers spend they were opening boxes,
an hour picking up trash, and messing with the stuff
thats what you'd have to do to stashed in the warehouse.)
get it into that condition, after
a bunch of ravers have left behind
their mountains of refuse.
They didn't seem to have any
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
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
that's not making psychedlics just by looking at
any money at it? A them.
lot of ravers
complain if you It could be that this
charge *less* than percentage has gone up a lot
$20... a high since the mid-90s. One of the
ticket price keeps reasons I got tired of raves
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, 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...
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