c.h.u.d.

A modern remake of "Rebel Without a Cause," "Pups" strengths lie in its demonstration that adults -do- care, but if the kids try to believe in them (too much?), like all of real life, they have the potential to fail us.

Stevie's magnificent use of modern resources--the Internet, guns, girlfriend, too much t.v.--has resulted in the twisted plot of his robbing a bank "to get on t.v. and be famous." Enter the F.B.I. and Burt Reynolds, Kurt Loder and MTV, undercover agents trying to infiltrate the bank (complex), and accusations against parents of incest for full dramatic effect. The kids know what they're doing. Or do they?

The crevasse between adults and youths today seem almost insurmountable--teen cynicism, failed role-models, absent parents, multimedia distractions as substitute for personal interaction--all contribute to the problems, but when the pot boils over, what's left is a frightful situation, like a kid with a gun and no faith or vision of a future beyond right now.

"Pups," sadly, will never be shown in a P.C. overridden world like this because it takes on, directly, the possibility of teen violence. It was scheduled for release, but as the date approached, the Columbine event occurred in Colorado, and the distributors dropped it. Buy it for yourself, watch it with your kids, trust them to interpret the message and the differences between t.v. and real life, and learn to love Stevie for all his faults and mistakes.

After seeing this film at the SF Independent Film Festival, I couldn't wait to hear about how to get a copy. Jim McKay gave a talk (Q&A) about the film afterward which presented his ironic situation: how to get distribution for a film which portrays minorities (women, non-whites) working on resolving controversial issues (teen pregnancy, teen motherhood, racial identity, single-mother households), and how to write a faithful script on all of these topics being a mid-thirties white male. The multi-racial, multi-gendered audience of mostly-adults raved about the film's fantastic storyline, detailed characters, and fantastic portrayal of "real teen life." Most of the teens, however, had left the building--leading me to think this is a film best seen by adults with kids, as a starting point for discussion rather than, as many adults there felt, "a film teens should see because it's about them." Hence, distribution questions--how do we get our hands on it? The Internet (retail) would be a great path--this is a film that will be buried, like "Pups" or other radical modern teen films--and McKay seemed responsive. As for his credits as a writer/director, McKay was _extremeley_ sensitive and detailed in his work--allying himself to the Crown Heights neighborhood in which the film is set, working with actors to portray characters in their own vision of what they think should be--with the results being disarmingly realistic.

I'd highly recommend this for noir fans--a great twist on the genre, with its additions of time-travel and backwards-to-forwards plotline and lesbianism. The first scene, naturally, makes you say, "How'd that happen?" and the rest of the story is how you saw what you saw in the first minute. Shows "12 Monkeys" what it could have been if it had had any guts at all.