SLC Punk

08.15.10

SLC Punk

(1998)

Starring: Matthew Lillard, Michael Goorjian, Annabeth Gish

Stevo: Wait, time out. I just wanted to ask real quick, if I can. You believe in rebellion, freedom and love, right?

Mom: Absolutely, yes.

Dad: Rebellion, freedom, love.

Stevo: You two are divorced. So love failed. Two: Mom, your a New Ager, clinging to every scrap of Eastern religion that may justify why the above said love failed. Three: Dad, you're a slick, corporate, preppy-ass lawyer. I don't really have to say anything else about you do I dad? Four: You move from New York City, the Mecca and hub of the cultural world to Utah! Nowhere! To change nothing! More to perpetuate this cycle of greed, fascism and triviality. Your movement of the people, by and for the people got you... nothing! You just hide behind some lost sense of drugs, sex and rock and roll. Ooooh, Kumbaya! I am the future! I am the future of this great nation which you, father, so arrogantly saved this world for. Look, I have my own agenda. Harvard, out. University of Utah, in. I'm gonna get a 4.0 in damage. I love you guys! Don't get me wrong, it's all about this. But for the first time in my life, I'm 18 and I can say "FUUUUUCK YOU!"

Dad: Steven, I didn't sell out son. I bought in. Keep that in mind. That kid's gonna make a hell of a lawyer, huh?

Mom: Yeah, he takes after his father. He's a son of a bitch.

Dad: Well fuck you dear

S.L.C. punk is the story of two punk kids, played by Lillard and Goorjian, who live in the worst city in America to be a punk, Salt Lake City, Utah in the 1980's. Stevo, played by Lillard, is a die-hard punk who rules the scene and just wants anarchy to ensue and to live a lifestyle that he believes redeems himself from the scummy world he looks in on. Bob, played by Goorjian, is a punk that doesn't do drugs, but he heavily drinks in order to escape the terrible family life he left to live with Stevo. This film documents the day in the life of a punk in S.L.C.: getting in fights, going to parties, going to shows, doing hardcore drugs, but most of all promoting anarchy. The movie takes a seriously unexpected turn at the end, and reality bites hard for all involved. But, SLC punk is a fantastic movie, one i'll watch again and again. A cult classic i'm sad i hadn't watched till just recently.

"I rest my case on this: In a country of lost souls rebellion comes hard. But in a religiously oppressive city, where half it's population isn't even of that religion, it comes like fire" - Stevo

Sleepers

08.12.10

Sleepers

(1996 )

Starring: Robert DeNiro, Brad Pitt, Kevin Bacon, Billy Crudup, Minnie Driver

"This is a true story about friendship that runs deeper than blood. This is my story and that of the only three friends in my life that truely mattered. Two of them were killers who never made it past the age of 30. The other's a non-practicing attorney living with the pain of his past - too afraid to let it go, never confronting its horror. I'm the only one who can speak for them, and the children we were." - Lorenzo {opening lines}

Sleepers is a tragic tale of four best friends who grew up in Hell's Kitchen that fall prey to a boyhood mistake that changes the course of the rest of their lives. This sad narrative chronicles how a similar traumatic life experience can lead men in many different directions. We see the paths that each of the four boys takes, and the men it leaves them 13 years after the fact. Painful at times to watch, the true story {under discrimination as to whether the story based on the book by Lorenzo Carcaterra is actually fact or fiction} of boys in a crooked juvenile detention facility in the early 1960's is beautifully executed. All of the characters in this film are played by talented actors and actresses that portray a very realistic take on the script. Robert DeNiro as the father-figure priest is beyond brilliant. Young Brad Pitt and Billy Crudup make an impressionable debut in this often overlooked title. Also, no one can play a creepier and more revolting prison guard than Kevin Bacon. Bacon's role in this film forever changed my opinion of him as an actor. Overall, Sleepers is a movie that i highly recommend and subsequently own. Not made up of easily digestible subject matter, but something worth mulling over and chewing on, a thought provoking piece that will be in my collection for years to come.

Lorenzo: Mike, are you sure you wanna go this way? I mean we buried this a long time ago.

Michael: You still sleep with the light on