With a Hall Pass in Hand: American Teen

American Teen was immediately criticized as it began generating attention at Sundance in 2008. The original promotional material featured the five teenagers at the heart of Nanette Burstein’s documentary in poses and costume nearly identical to those in the Breakfast Club. The previews even pre-defined their roles: The Geek, The Princess, The Jock, The Hearthrob and The Rebel, arousing suspicions that this reduced these people’s stories to palatable, packaged frames, symbolic of a disingenuous adult view of teenage life.

Generally, film-goers tend to hold documentarians to a level of scrutiny that assumes them to be objective observers of their subject. This is not a pure documentary in that sense, and in fact it might be better described as a pop documentary. The filmmaker’s placement does shape environment, and in all stages of production, there are deliberate choices of what to focus on. And for Burstein, it is the concept of the modern American teenager.

Early on, there were criticisms about lacking authenticity in a different regard. Namely, the noticeable lack of variety in the town’s residents, making a film who’s sociological importance could only be generalized to middle-class white American suburbia. In American Teen, there is only one non-white high school school student featured. And every other seemingly “taboo” subject from homosexuality to promiscuous sex to divorce is muted. The sprinkling of teenage drama in the briskly edited montage that made up the trailers suggested a “documentary” that sanitized taboo realities, only to fill the gap with sexier sensationalism.

These are valid critiques of flaws that are present, but not to any degree that should make the film dismissive in what it shows. Overall, American Teen, released to DVD in December 2008, provides genuine insight as it highlights five students in their senior year of high school in the small, Midwestern suburb of Warsaw, Indiana.

Among them is Colin, “The Jock,” a varsity basketball player who, amidst a slumping season for the team, is desperate for an athletic scholarship to pay for college. His father, a former Warsaw basketball player that now seems to make an unusual living performing as an Elvis impersonator at parties in chain hotels, makes it clear to his son that, while they live “comfortably,” they can’t afford to pay for his college tuition. He unilaterally decides for his son an alternative option of military enlistment.

Meghan is “The Princess,” one of the least likable among the five teens. It’s not because she is one of the popular kids steeped in privilege (she drives a Mercedes), but because she had a reputation for her merciless vengeance against anyone who dared to steal her thunder, prompting certainty that she was in for quite the rude awakening when life continuing in those high school walls suddenly became irrelevant to those that left. However, the origins of her bitchy behavior may not be surprising, especially giving the cold relationship with her father. Engaged in the ritual obsession of college admissions like Colin, she fear being ostracized by her family if she weren’t able to make Notre Dame, where her father and siblings attended.

Jake is “The Geek.” He has a mouth full of wire, a face full of acne, and is woefully awkward. Inspired by the idealized world of video games, he constantly imagines an opportunity to reinvent himself and, throughout most of the film, strives to find a girl that can make him happy. We don’t really know much about him outside of this. He is by far the most self-conscious of the five kids, and high school for him seems like a quiet nightmare that can be traced back to being a small kid frequently ridiculed in middle school for his size. (In appearances and interviews to follow the film’s release, it’s surprising to see what a handsome transformation he’s undergone – though he is still admittedly awkward (as he says in the afterword).

But it is Hannah, the outgoing “Rebel” who is desperate to escape the confines of her sleepy hometown where she lives with her grandmother and is occasionally visited by her father.These are the kind of kids who flee to cities they deem cultural Meccas. Hoping to go to film school and work in the industry thereafter, she applies to school in San Francisco, much to the chagrin of her parents, who think her too young and impressionable to make that kind of leap in independence so far from home. While attractive Mitch Reinholt was featured most prominently in a lot of the promotional materials after Sundance, Hannah actually turned out to be the most interesting, if not the most entertaining, as she exudes a hook of personality and emotion that we don’t see in the other characters to a similar extent. The outcome of her tale is perhaps the most alluring.

Mitch, “The Hearthrob” ironically isn’t in the film that much until the second half, probably having been necessary to be the fifth that would complete the group replica of their Breakfast Club counterparts, which becomes pretty obvious when, other than being linked to Colin as a basketball teammate and romantically linked to Hannah, there is little we ever learn about Mitch.

Ignore the fact that, if you’re of that age, that what you’re about to watch is a film about teenagers and remember that you too were one once. Given the extreme homogeneity of modern America, the experiences these teenagers share for that year during their lives, that critical rites of passage as they prepare to leave institutional comforts for either more institutional comfort, or something else entirely, is universal to most other American suburbs, and for the last couple of decades. Dealing with relationships, authority, idealism, escapism, popularity and so forth certainly isn’t anything new.

Moreover, these five kids may assume themselves to be alone in their struggles, but if The Breakfast Club (a title which will undoubtedly always be invoked in comparison) has taught us anything, it is that this is simply not so. In particular, the most apparent common underpinning is an extreme self-consciousness. That personal worth must always be demonstrated, and that ultimate value must always be defended.Jake was the obvious example. But Mitch was another, his relationship with Hannah, who belonged to a different social faction, almost perfectly mirrored Andy and Blaine’s relationship in Pretty in Pink. Meghan’s severe attitude was traced to her need for control, her determination to uphold a carefully guarded front. Hannah was aware of her peers’ self-consciousness and professed to avoid it. And even Colin, in the attempt to become the rising basketball star, feared the possibility of failure.

The teenager is quite an interesting specimen, and American Teen dissects some of the contextual underpinnings that makes adolescence so frustrating. Adolescence is a crossroads; that transitional point between childhood (protection) and adulthood (awareness) and high school is like an incubator. Aside from its roles as an educational institution, it was designed with no rubric regarding the customs and rituals that developed within its walls. But that’s what it has become (with these things very much commercially-driven), a somewhat independent environment where social and personal and political forces really develop and play out, and often times in competition of how others rationalize and synthesize those things.

As Hannah correctly observes, “We’ve spent four years here. It’s all we know.” Maybe it’s a kind of reality on a practice-level. With a couple hundred people or so.

Titty Power: Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains

“We need to make being poor cool again.” - John Waters, This Filthy World (2006)

The 1980s was really the last decade of true grime cinema. Its resulting Bohemia, that unusual and corrupted regarded with ambivalence, sadly disappeared in the national tide of gentrification, reluctantly or not, and in the film world, dilapidated city life was traded for Rob Reiner-esque Americana. The vanguard of modern filmmaking was eventually traded for censor-safe subjects, refining even the most revolting if it was to reach any kind of audience. Film-making, and it’s sister world of contemporary art, really stopped being daring.

In 1981, director Lou Adler’s and writer Nancy Dowd’s über-obscure punk rock epic, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains was already probably considered passé when it was released in late 1982 (Dowd’s pseudonymous writing credit, Rob Morton, symbolized her displeasure with the final product). Although it came about at the same time as the similarly grimy, low-budget punk-themed movies, Smithereens and Times Square, post-punk and New Wave had already started taking over as the next musical epoch. The chord combinations of punk too few, the angst too redundant, and the drugs too plentiful. Shot over a two year period, it was released to near-obscurity, even with its ties to well-known music icons and convenient timing (Mtv was born), and it only made the transition to DVD last month. But, the movie wasn’t really all that original: the triumphant marriage of music and youth rebellion. Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains is much more significant as an understanding of just how far from drawing lines in the sand film-making has become. While it never arrived in time to be part of the closing curtain on first-wave punk, it could be for the last vestiges of grime cinema.

Diane Lane was just 15 when she starred as Corrine Burns, the typically baffling, teenage “misfit” orphan turned equally baffling superstar heroine in Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. The film opens with a reporter interviewing the distant teenager as a follow-up to her minor stardom when she was seen on the news being fired at the fast food place where they were doing a story. Shocked by her indifference more than her having to absorb continuous disappointment, the reporter finishes the interview with that typical rhetorical question so replete with disgust and demand: “What are you going to do with your life?!” (Cue the Kelly “Shoes” video!)

Corrine envisions future celebrity and her novice, three-piece all-girl punk band, The Stains (which features a mere 13-year old Laura Dern as “Peg”), are their only ticket out of dingy, hopeless Dodge. “Were there even girl bands before this movie?” Diane Lane asks on the DVD commentary (the Lane-Dern commentary is a great additional feature), frequently citing this movie as the inspiration for a lot of bands’ sound and image. It sounds like an excessively self-congratulatory claim, but it’s especially possible that The White Stripes drew on this movie for plenty of their retro red-and-white imagery. But to answer Diane’s question… yes, there were the Runaways, the girls who didn’t give a damn about their bad reputations. However, the angst-ridden girl bands never really came about in full effect until much later, and most notably with the Riot Grrrl period in the 90s.

Corrine’s escape is not without cynicism, hardened further by the two bands they tour with. Tubes lead singer Fee Way Bill and guitarist Vince Welnick played The Metal Corpses, an aged duo of extremely self-indulgent 70s rockers who desperately ignore their obsolescence. The others are a British punk band called The Looters, which featured Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones and ex-Clash guitarist Paul Simonon while the lead, Billy, was played by Ray Winstone who most recently played Frank Costello’s henchman, Mr. French, in The Departed. They all compete with one another in their bid to be famous and even the most well-meaning can be corrupted; the gatekeepers of fame all have their price.

But the Stains, as young girls never taken seriously to begin with, use outrageousness and rejection and altruism to their advantage, and like the characters in Time Square and The Legend of Billie Jean, they eventually become the headlining success. Not surprisingly, their fan base are screaming crowds of equally alienated teenage girls, something that might be called neo-feminism, had the loyalists who adopted the band’s look (they call it “Going Skunk”) and slogans and lyrics not been shallow followers. The enlightenment to eventually break their bond is just a simple, obvious warning from Billy (The Stain’s big hit single, “The Professionals” (actually a Sex Pistols song, was stolen from him). The spectacle had gotten too far out of hand.

Diane Lane, on the DVD commentary, suggests that this is a film in dire need of a remake. The dirty word that it might be (that dreaded “R” word!), that grimy Bohemia, the drastic differences in the music industry then and now, and the silliness of a youth rebellion epic would probably lost in translation to modern film. Although, sadly, there are few films anymore that really depict the relationship between music and youth, especially teenagers. The closest it has really come lately, at least in more popular film, is where this has been done to supplement the narrative (Empire Records, Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist), or even through the popularity of soundtrack (Juno).

“You can’t make a movie like this anymore,” Laura Dern accurately replies. It featured plenty that would set off conservative censors today: the fighting was authentic because stunt people weren’t hired, the kids were shown to be chain smokers, and even at 15, Diane Lane was filmed partially nude for a brief shower romance with Billy. Grime cinema was low-budget, daring was the default because on the one hand, controversy drew the cult appeal (look at John Water’s catalog of films), and on the other, because there wasn’t much money and expertise to making these films (see Susan Seidleman’s acclaimed debut feature film, Smithereens). The era of grime cinema produced a lot of shitty films (although so did those outside of that context), but it also produced a lot of cult films of note. Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains probably isn’t likely to generate a sudden rise in noteriety, even with the careers that Diane Lane and Laura Dern have both established for themselves, but it is at least a glimpse into where the limitations of the medium used to be (music, too).

There was a recent, related comment on imposed limits in a second season episode of 30 Rock in which Liz Lemon’s (Tina Fey) idol, an old writer for Laugh-In (Carrie Fisher), is brought on as a guest writer for The Girlie Show. Her skit proposals for off-colored satire are nixed by Lemon, acting as the proxy of what the corporate-owned, advertiser-weary networks would allow. “Oh hell, we’d do something like that on the Mandrell Sisters!” the guest writer protests. In the end, the skit they decide to feature instead revolves around jokes about dog penises. American films today are too clean and even those considered the new avant garde within the last decade alone have more often been visually daring rather than topically so.

Failing to Merge: Less Than Zero

Though an author, Bret East Ellis is the predecessor to the likes of contemporary dramatic filmmakers like Larry Clark and Gus Van Sant, those who have brought to the screen a startling (and at least in Van Sant’s case, very stereotypical and monolithic) view of extreme teen apathy. Ellis’ 1985 novel, which captures the mood of the decade, Less Than Zero centers on vaguely connected, college-age friends and trust-fund babies in Los Angeles. Their world lacks any real human emotion, any real human connection to one another, whether friends or family. Their concerns and legacies trivial, a fantastic reality of youth corrupted by uber-urban materialism. This, the 1980s. 

College freshman Clay returns to Los Angeles from New Hampshire on Christmas break and the novel is told from his point of view, but its stream-of-consciousness descriptions of mundane events feel more like a diary of dull consistency. The routine of parties, drugs, and gossip. But the theme, the significance of this particular book become clear about half way through; just before the point where the reader might be ready to give up on the really unglamorous life of people who believe themselves to be truly glamorous. And it is Clay who is acutely aware of this, his insulation in the East Coast life has made the West Coast one alien, though from the flashback passages, it already had been before he left for college. The book’s commentators appropriately draw comparisons to Salinger, saying that Clay is the modern Holden Caulfield. By the end of the film, there are no redeemable characters, no one worth Clay trying to save.

Somehow, by the hand of screenwriter Harley Peyton and director Marek Kanievska, these crucial social criticisms of the self-centered 1980s (or just privelege in general) mutated into a 1987 anti-drug movie starring Andrew McCarthy, Jami Gertz, Robert Downey, Jr. and James Spader, among others. Clearly, the casting of some of the loosely connected “Brat Pack”–which should have included Jami Gertz and James Spader (who was much older than the others) among its named ranks–it is a star vehicle, and the intentions of which seem to transcend the material from which it is adapted.

McCarthy, as Clay, is summoned by former girlfriend, Blair, returns home for Christmas with the plea that he help save their friend, Julian (Downey, Jr.), burned by lofty ambition and suffering the peak of a cocaine addiction. While just as conceited and oblivious as the rest of the people Clay encounters in the novel, here, Blair invokes a kind of sympathy. She is Jami Gertz afterall and this is a Hollywood production, so there isn’t much to expect to be unresolved, and particularly, in any morally ambiguous conclusion (though interestingly, this is what happens in 2002’s Better Luck Tomorrow, which somewhat takes on the same subject of young privelege, but as Asian youth). The movie tries to impose on the characters an understanding of the rights and wrongs in which they exist, but what made the book so shocking was that its characters–at least outside of its nearly non-chalant observer, Clay–never seemed to possess any awareness of these things. There was never an alternative to force any of them to consider it, as there was in the movie. McCarthy’s version of Clay as the impatient hero, or Gertz, or even Julian’s parents who had nearly given up on their son but in the end, urge for their son’s reform in order to finally reunite. Never did such compassion exist in the book, and by the end, it’s relieving when Clay abandons the world he had only left for a short while, but even when he was there, felt so alien.

As an anti-drug movie, Less Than Zero (the film version) faces competition by two films that better approached the coke-addiction 1980s: Bright Lights, Big City (also a wonderful novel by Jay McInerny) and the 1988 Michael Keaton and Morgan Freeman drama, Clean & Sober. Given this, it is no surprise that Ellis would comment that there was no connection between the film and the book, despite the loose connection of character names and situations. He never goes as far as Paddy Chayefsky did to disavow himself of the film as was done with the early 1980s adaptation of Chayefksy’s novel, Altered States. Rather, Ellis was kinder with his reaction: “Due to all the liberties taken, Ellis refused to see the movie. In a recent interview with Amazon.com, Ellis stated that he has warmed up to the movie, and appreciates it visually as a snapshot of a particular time. Ellis claimed that there was no connection between the book and the movie, except for the title and the names of the characters” (from the Wiki article).

Ellis, in January 2008, suggested penning a sequel to Less Than Zero, to be titled Imperial Bedrooms, named for an Elvis Costello album. The movie is, as obvious from the post above, worth skipping. Pick up the novel instead for a quick read, but lasting effect.