Suburbia

I love this movie even more now then I did back then. I think this should be a mandatory watch before your first purchase at Hot Topic. This movie gives me an odd sense of comfort when I watch it…something I can't find anymore. I wasn't a "TR Kid" (figuratively speaking), but I knew them all, I hung out at the "TR House"…you were always welcome there. They were my friends, my family, they were as accepting of you as you of them…someone always had your back…another thing you can't find anymore.

But enough reminiscing. I recommend this movie to anyone who was in the scene back then…but you guys have seen it. I also recommend this movie to all the new school kids who think they get it. Punk isn't what you wear, punk is who you are.

"Suburbia" is the definitive punxploitation film of the 80's, one of Hollywood's few explorations of that counter-culture. Director Spheeris, who also did "Dudes" and "Decline of Western Civilization" before going mainstream, knows enough to make a perfectly romantic (if not realistic) version of punks and skins living in the 80's: complete with shows (on a rickety sound stage, but there's a better circle pit than you're likely to find today), fights with rednecks, squatting, and dealing with a decade where every jock didn't have an eyebrow ring and green hair. You know what? Chickenbutt.

I love this film. What can I say? Yes, the acting is bad, but this would be because for the most part, these kids are actual street kids and not "actors". So, get past the low budget and the bad acting for a second and look at the story. Kids (punks) who live in an abandoned house and are rejected by society. How much more realistic can you get? This movie is a cult classic, and for those into punk, a must-see! Why? Because it has performances by D.I., The Vandals and others. Also, you can catch Flea in what's probably his first film, credited as something like Mike B. The Flea. Check it out!!

This is not a documentary, although much of it is allegedly based on fact. What "Suburbia" does, and does well, is capture a moment in LA/OC punk. If you were there, you recognize almost every character in the film, and you probably recognize a lot of the "actors." It's a grab bag of punk "types": the skinhead, the conehead, the goth, the mohawk, etc. etc. But if you were an LA suburban punk, you knew someone just like all of them. If you're of a certain age, of a certain time, of a certain place, it's a touchstone. You know exactly what it was like. Even the rednecks have their place, when the plants were closing, when and middle-class life starting fading away. The story is not great, the acting is not great, but the moment is captured, and if you were there, it takes you right back: when moshing was called slamming, and tattoos were done with a straightpin by hand, not next door to the Starbucks. If you weren't, you get a pretty good idea about what is was like to be a punk when you couldn't buy it at the mall, when it might actually get you beaten up by jocks, when a nosering might get you fired from the record store. Punk was, for a time, actually dangerous. And that made it great.

While arguably not Spheeris' best work, it was her first, and in my opinion, most ambitious. The film was shot on a threadbare budget with non-professional actors, with most of the action taking place in an abandoned tract house in a suburb slated for demolition (the area is now a highway). The punk rockers are outcasts from society who attempt for form a "family" of their own, that they call "The Rejected" (The irony of it all, outcasts being anti-social together). The film bogs down at times, and often relies on reversed clichés, but was a very good effort for a documentary film-maker who was making her first dramatic feature (Some of the themes of being an outsider were used, with greater success, in Spheeris' feature DUDES). Yes, it could be called "punxploitation", but I was one of those scruffy kids with a ragged haircut and ripped jeans when this film was released, and I identified with it. (Not to be confused with Richard Linklater's "subUrbia").