The RepoMan soundtrack versus the Singles soundtrack

Which is more important?
Which represented its scene/cultural movement better?
Which has the better songs?

***Last of all, pick one song from each that you don't thing belongs on the soundtrack.

Singles is a very strange movie. Much stranger than Repo Man. Cameron Crowe is some kind of Martian. If you watch it you wouldn't think those are humans on the screen. They act like Martians wearing human skin. The soundtrack feels very much like that alien hospitality suite at the end of 2001. Some freakish alien influence assembled it out of scraps of human memory.
Repo Man soundtrack feels very human, like it was made by human beings.

repo man soundtrack, over this soundtrack AND EVERY OTHER SOUNDTRACK AND MOVIE IN EXISTENCE. EVER.

Yeah, but Bridget Fonda is pretty hot.

she is, it's true.

was she in singles? she was hott in jackie brown, iirc.

I can't see how there can be any contest between Repo Man and Singles - Repo Man by a page full of ">"s

Singles is otherworldly, agreed. I haven't thought about it until now. The movie was obviously made before grunge exploded, so I guess I'd credit Crowe for tapping into the zeitgeist...but with a romantic comedy that plays like a parody of what made Say Anything and Fast Times at Ridgemont High so terrific.

Not too sure about the Zeitgeist thing with Singles. Mudhoney had released four albums before Singles came out. Soundgarden had released three. Both had made a big grungy splash with their debuts (where I was in the UK anyway) so the whole thing was a bit old by this point.

I think I read somewhere that Crowe paid 500 dollars to cut some of eddie vedder's hair and use it to make a wig for matt dillon.

brrr...! sounds like some pod-people tactics right there.

Which is more important? - Repo Man, because it has that one good Circle Jerks song on it.
Which represented its scene/cultural movement better? - I wanna say who cares, but I could give this one to Singles, since the film actually seemed to care about representing something like that, whereas Repo Man just kinda did. Y'know, like none of the characters in Repo Man were actually in bands or anything, they just lived in the fucked up world that the music represented. So, um, my answer is Repo Man.
Which has the better songs? - I don't even know what's on the Singles soundtrack, but I remember it being mostly the grunge stuff I wasn't interested in. Meanwhile, the Plugz.

***Last of all, pick one song from each that you don't thing belongs on the soundtrack. - Iggy Pop's title track is def. the odd duck on Repo Man.

I'd go for Repo Man because it is consistently perfect all the way through, as opposed to Singles which is mindblowingly awesome but marred by two extremely out-of-place Paul Westerburg songs.

I agree about the Westerburg songs sounding out of place on that soundtrack. I guess a case could be made for the Hendrix song on there, it was an old song, but Hendrix was from Seattle originally. I dont know if his influence was any greater than Sabbaths or Zeppelins. In fact there is Zeppelin tune on the soundtrack as well--covered by Heart (also from Seattle). But why is the Smashing Pumpkins song on there? They werent from Seattle and I dont know if they were all that associated with Grunge.

On the Repoman soundtrack I always thought the Juicy Bananas song was totally out of place. "Bad Man" I think it was called. I also thought the remake of "Pablo Picasso" was a bit weird. And I know everyone foams at the mouth over this soundtrack, but to me it seemed like it came out quite a bit after hardcore had lost having any relevence. I mean th movie was produced by one of the Monkees--and true, it seems like every hardcore band to play "Steppin Stone" live during that time, but I still associate the entire production to playing ball with the corporate masters that hardcore was SUPPOSED to be so opposed to. I mean, Emilio Estivez? WTF?

I think Repoman might have had a bit more credibility if Brandon Cruz played the lead role.

I guess a case could be made for the Hendrix song on there, it was an old song, but Hendrix was from Seattle originally. I dont know if his influence was any greater than Sabbaths or Zeppelins.

Hendrix was a big influence on Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins. I think it all ties together rather neatly.

but I still associate the entire production to playing ball with the corporate masters that hardcore was SUPPOSED to be so opposed to.

Huh? Repo Man wasn't about hardcore, it was an amazing campy B-movie updated for the 80s with a hardcore soundtrack

But what did those hardcore bands from the soundtrack hope to gain from being on the soundtrack? Did they hope to get a wider, more mainstream audiance? Did they sell out to Hollywood just for the money? Playing ball with Hollywood types doesnt really fit in very well with the hardcore ethic now, does it?

From what I understand Repo Man was a ramshackle project that Hollywood wanted very little to do with, and only very recently turned a profit.

uh, i was under the impression that the hardcore bands from the soundtrack hung out socially with Alex Cox and some of the other people involved in the project, and it was more like, "Hey, do you want to do something for this movie?"

I think Repoman might have had a bit more credibility if...

crazy talk of highest order

Where did you get the impression that hardcore bands hung out with ALex COx prior to him hiring them for this soundtrack? He is not from the hardcore LA culture, he was a 30 year old dude from England when the movie came out.

From the little research I've done I've read that he had a million dollar budget from Universal Pictures to make this movie. And one of the Monkees was onboard with the project as well. If that doesnt reek of Corporate Hollywood, then what does?

from alex cox's website:

...I ran into two old chums from UCLA - Jonathan Wacks and Peter McCarthy. They had been in the Production programme; Jon had directed a documentary, Pete a drama. Now they had a company, and even more impressive, an office in Venice, California, where they were making commercials ("Gene Kelly assures the public the MGM Grand is safe again!") and public service announcements. I suggested to them that they should also be feature film producers, and hire me as a director. They agreed to consider this, but instructed me to come up with a script.

The first one I wrote for them was called THE HOT CLUB (a comedy about nuclear blast veterans and nerve gas thieves set in the early years of the 21st century). They budgeted and Marie Canton (also ex-UCLA) budgeted it; it turned out to be rather expensive. So I went off and wrote another screenplay instead: REPO MAN. This was based on my own personal Los Angeles horrors and the tutelage of Mark Lewis, a Los Angeles car repossessor and my neighbour in Venice, CA.. When the screenplay was published, Dick Rude and I interviewed Mark for the introduction: his take on the repo trade and the movie can be found at pscweb.com/repo/whatever.

To make the package more interesting to investors, I drew four pages of a comic book based on the script and we included them with the screenplay. I had planned at one stage to do an entire comic book, but it is too much work: a page a day at the very most, and hard on the eyes. Michael Nesmith, the former Monkee, saw the script/comic package, became interested, and took it to Bob Rehme at Universal.

REPO MAN was made as a "negative pickup" by Universal at the time when Bob Rehme was head of the studio. At the time, the big deal over there was STREETS OF FIRE, and nobody really noticed our film at all. Which was lucky for us, since Bob Rehme had "green-lighted" a film which was quite unusual by studio standards. Unfortunately, just before we were completely done, Rehme was ousted from his post, and a new boss came in. It is, we quickly discovered, the primary task of a new boss to make an old boss look bad, and so as much of Rehme's product as possible was quickly junked. That which was already made, or almost complete - REPO MAN and RUMBLEFISH, for instance - was swiftly consigned to the Chute of No Return.

We took out an ad in Variety, reprinting a good review we got there (we also got a very bad one - in the weekly edition - but we didn't reprint that) as a challenge to Universal to get the picture out into the theatres.

The studio's response was to lean on the head of public relations at Pan American World AIrlines, Dick Barkle, to condemn the film. Mr Barkle declared himself shocked by REPO MAN, adding, "I hope they don't show this film in Russia." It is the world of DILBERT there.

The theatrical life of the film was prolonged by Kelly Neal at Universal, who went out of his way to support both REPO MAN and RUMBLEFISH. And the record was a major element in promoting the film; it was popular with the punk rock community and that got the word around. And rightly so. I was an enthusiast, and the film has a major punk influence - in addition to the protagonists Otto, Duke, Debbi, Archie and Kevin, there's a tailor-made hardcore score by Los Plugz, Circle Jerks, Fear, Suicidal Tendencies, Black Flag, and Juicy Bananas, and a title song by Iggy Pop, who suffers under the sobriquet of The Godfather of Punk.

lol @ Streets of Fire being a big deal.

also, Mike Nesmith is a super genius and the Monkees were always "more hardcore" than the Beatles by any measure and I don't know why I care to rekindle arguments I gave up in tenth grade.

Cox's account doesnt really sound that different than thousands of other accounts of young film makers trying to break into the business. It might have been ballsy to put an ad in a indusry rag challenging your funders, but subversive??? I don't think so. I think the film's cult status rides on the coat tails of the soundtrack. Not that different from Singles in that the soundtrack gives it a certain credibility that it otherwise wouldnt deserve.

Srsly?

I think the film's cult status rides on the coat tails of the soundtrack.

BULLSHIT

http://skateandannoy.com/aa-sna-uploads/2007/11/vice-versa.jpg
more like it

BS, no offense. singles isn't at all subversive. repo man would be with or without the music. its portrait of la as a wasteland inhabited by criminals, rogues, and the poor is subversive on its own. society seems to have failed, leaving behind a junkyard in which zombies fight over scraps. the government seems completely unconcerned with the fate of the citizenry, but behaves with tyrannical, even murderous impunity in pursuing its agenda. and then there's the implied connections between the government, the media and religious faith. kinda hard to miss the fact that the supermarket is fully stocked with generic goods, or that otto's parents basically subsist on dog food. i mean, repo man's even subversive about punk's supposed subversiveness.

Cox's account doesnt really sound that different than thousands of other accounts of young film makers trying to break into the business.

― Lady, Tuesday, June 22, 2010 2:50 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

I think more people can quote from the Repo Man dialogue than the songs.
I can't think of a single quote from Singles -- just a picture of Matt Dillon headbanging at his car while Chris Cornell watches, and Tad screaming into a phone.

let's go get sushi and not pay

the only thing I can quote from singles are the lyrics to spoonman

and I'm not even positive if it was the mid 90s movie w/ spoonman in it

wikipedia: "Nevertheless, Singles has been credited with inspiring a wave of films marketed towards a Generation X audience, spawning numerous imitators (most notably Reality Bites and Threesome)."

I think the real question is Eric Stoltz vs Steve Zahn

Also from wikipedia: Interestingly, Warner Bros. Television tried immediately to turn Singles into a television series. When Crowe balked at the notion, the company proceeded with the idea, engaged a new writing and directing team, changing elements and the name to Friends,[4] which ran successfully on NBC from 1994-2004.[5]

you're just a white suburban punk like me

The more you drive, the less you think.

ordinary fucking people ... hate 'em

Found my epitaph^^^^

put it on a plate, dear, you'll enjoy it more!

lol @ Streets of Fire being a big deal.

Yeah, but that soundtrack has "I Can Dream About You," which >>> anything on the Repo Man soundtrack.

true!

balls

no

HOMBRE SECRETO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H7KcasScIU

i was killing people when you were still swimming around your old man's balls

There's fuckin' room to move as a fry cook. I could be manager in two years. King. God.

(great line. little known fact: later used by spongebob squarepants. it's true)

HOMBRE SECRETO

― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 9:08 PM (Yesterday)

Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year.

Managing a pop group ain't no job for a man

It happens sometimes. People just explode. Natural causes.

"i hope they don't show this film in russia" or whatever - what does that mean? is there a particular pro-commie bent to the movie? i noticed upthread that someone called Cox a marxist. Explain?

> "i hope they don't show this film in russia"

It paints a picture would jibe with Pravda's list of the USAs shortcomings.

Repo Man would be the best movie about punk rock, even if it didn't have any songs in it.

Do you think they give a shit about their bills in Russia?

They don't have bills in Russia. It's all free.

repo man, like a lot of cox's films, could fairly be described as hostile to capitalism. he's concerned with the ways in which wealth corrupts and the fundamental powerlessness of working class lives. and he's very critical of america, both as an entity and as an ideal. you maybe get the apex of this in walker, which pretty much killed his career. from an a semi-recent a.v. club interview:

"I think it conveys a lot of the feelings at the time, about the enthusiasm surrounding the Sandinista movement. Because Walker was only really made to support the Sandinistas. To support the Nicaraguan revolution."

cox often criticizes corporate power and even capitalism in interviews, but on the other hand is clearly very wary of state power. he doesn't currently seem to espouse any doctrinaire solution to the world's problems, so it's probably unfair to simply call him a "marxist". but i think you can see a clear thread of "hard left" idealism in much of his work and political thinking.

"i hope they don't show this film in russia" or whatever - what does that mean? is there a particular pro-commie bent to the movie? i noticed upthread that someone called Cox a marxist. Explain?

Ha, if you're young enough to ask this question, where did you hear the word "commie"? The short answer is that in the Cold War '80s, "Go back to Russia" or similar taunts was a very common dismissal of anything radical, and that remark had zero to do with the actual content or intent of the film.

Walker is terrible, but if killing your career means you get to make a dozen more movies, somebody kill my career. 1991's Highway Patrolman was very good.

I'm 31! And apparently, from contenderizer's post, there was something to the communism thing.

Not that it matters, but Alex Cox is on the record over the years as being an anarchist, part of a long tradition of left skepticism of both capitalism and communism. For all we know, that PR exec didn't even see the film.

In the '80s, around much of the world, "communist" was anyone you wanted to kill--human rights workers, labor organizers, priests, etc. The only actual Communists I ever met on the left were an elderly vet of the Lincoln Brigade and a young female union organizer for the African National Congress.

Did you want to kill them?

My memories of the stigmatisation of perceived communism in the 1980's are pretty much in line with Pete S.

Also, I agree that "Highway Patrolman" was very good.

Singles for me, if only 'cause it was my first exposure to Paul Westerberg as a teenager, which got me into the Replacements, and back catalogue-y stuff in general. Also, "Dyslexic Heart" is cheesy but one of my sentimental favourite tunes.

"Highway Patrolman" is prob AC's best film

x-post to Dan: I wanted to date the latter.

I dunno - Straight to Hell had its charms - the Weiner Beaner Haven song gets stuck in my head at inappropriate times - though I haven't actually seen Highway Patrolman

Suppose you're thinking about a plate of shrimp...

Straight to Hell was great as a coming-attractions preview and soundtrack, I'll give it that.

If Cox was so anti-capitalism, then why did he go to universal for a million dollars? That seems to be the definition of a hypacrit...

is trolling more effective when using correct spelling or infused with typos?

correct spelling.

Even by mid-80s standards, one million dollars is not a lot of money to make a motion picture--why am I even

Oh so if you are an anti-capitalist it's okay to compromise your principles depending on the dollar amount??? I guess I just don't understand this antarchy stuff!

Ant Archy?
http://bluenred.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/first_drawing_of_archy.gif

Who gives a damn if an anarchist anti-capitalist compromises his principals? He made a funny 80s movie! Damn!

principles, obvs

aw, i was gonna make a joke about Emilio Estevez looking hot in his underwear

Go ahead, sarahel.

He was too you boys. I had a friend installed two-way mirrors in his pad in Brentwood, and he come to the door in a dress.

Which is more important? - Repo Man, because it has that one good Circle Jerks song on it.

A+++

In the '80s, around much of the world, "communist" was anyone you wanted to kill--human rights workers, labor organizers, priests, etc.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1XVUdraxgKc/Ru_LAq546SI/AAAAAAAAAQs/KHsbdgVeNI8/s320/boz186qr%5B1%5D.jpg

There's nothing hypocritical about being skeptical of capitalism and going to work in the morning.

Matos pointed me to Cox's book X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker, which doesn't disappoint. Tom Cruise might have got the "Feelin' 7-Up, I'm feelin' 7-Up" role if Harry Dean Stanton hadn't been upset with him after a "run-in over the affections of an actress."

Cox argues that the fact it was greenlighted at all was pretty random. Apparently Ken Kragen, the Kenny Rogers manager who went on to work with Lionel Ritchie and secure the talent for "We Are the World," was meeting with the movie's would-be producer Michael Nesmith (the Monkee from the Cox passage upthread) at Morton's in Hollywood:

Rehme and other studio execs were there -- dressed, Nesmith recalls, in cowboy-cut leisure suits. Kragen was angling to manage Nesmith, and pumping him for information, so Nez told him about Repo Man, which Universal had just rejected. As Bob Rehme passed their table, Kragen beckoned him over. 'Bob,' he insisted, 'Michael's Repo Man is a great script! We should make that picture!'

Kragen hadn't read the script. Nor, clearly, had Rehme. But Rehme wanted to be thick with Kragen, and so he smiled, and said, 'Well, I think we're going to.' And the next day, Thom Mount called Nez and said that Universal wanted to make the film.

Is Repo Man's existence really due to the arbitrary intervention of a dubious country-and-western manager in a bar? I believe so.

apparently Highway Patrolman is now being released on DVD for the first time.

who was "Lady" and why was she banned?

read the admin log, Whiney!