Video Killed the Radio Star

Talk Radio

Pump Up the Volume

Hello and thank you for tuning in, dear reader, on what is my least favorite holiday of the year besides July 4th. Things have been hectic in the most boring ways possible lately, so Thanksgiving really snuck up on me this time around. I would typically just default to some Keanu Klassics for Keanusgiving, but I’m not feeling so warm and cozy this year, and I wanted to watch some films that felt appropriately cynical for the times in which we are living. I’m still tired from my birthday and Halloween and I’ve got to save some sentimental energy for Christmas and Hanukkah. There is some cozy nostalgia to be had, though, because this week I wanted to explore an art form that is over 100 years old, a medium of entertainment and education and intrigue that no longer exists in its original format but still influences us to this day: the radio. There is still a debate over who exactly invented the use of radio waves for public entertainment and informational purposes, but some of the very first public broadcasts came from The Hague in 1919, from opera houses in Argentina in 1920, and eventually this practice found its way to Detroit, New York, and the rest of the world. Radio was a multi-purpose tool for communication, instruction, and influence—transmitting information as innocuous as the weather and stories as controversial as Orson Welles’ 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast. Before video killed the radio star, this is how humanity received the majority of their news, pop culture, and opinions on just about anything. And even when television boomed and shook up the entire entertainment industry, the radio was still a reliable place for personalities and trusted voices to inform and profess and remain in the minds of any listener. There’s just a charm to the bygone era of faceless but not expressionless talk radio, that might seem extra charming to this individual, who got to just barely experience this phenomenon on the tail end of when it was still deemed useful and valuable. I learned about Michael Jackson’s death while listening to the radio with my mom, I blasted KGSR and Radio Disney as my dad drove me to school, and back when my Hello Kitty radio & boom box still worked, I would luxuriate in any sounds its feeble antenna could pick up and pretend I was Hedy Lamarr. We tend to romanticize the things we no longer have access to, and I know that radio does still technically exist, but I struggle to romanticize the shows left like the Breakfast Club and whatever KissFM is peddling now. I don’t miss the Rush Limbaughs (rest in piss) and Alex Jones of the world, and I know that intellectuals like Terry Gross and Ira Glass still keep their lights on, but what about Casey Kasem? What about Abbott and Costello and Dr. Ruth and even Howard Stern? Again, I know he’s still technically doing the same job he always did, but the way we consume this audio art form couldn’t be further from what it used to be. Just as there is genuine magic found in watching movies together, there was something special about the act of thousands of people, respectively and collectively gathering to hear the same broadcast, where the message couldn’t be spoiled via thumbnail or audio transcription. The radio used to have real power and influence in our culture, and I just can’t say that podcasts have that same je ne sais quoi. Both of tonight’s films are centered upon this once-essential media, specifically the ways in which talk radio impacted communities both local and large. While there have been countless iterations of talk radio shows, tonight’s films happen to both revolve around miserable men with edgelord tendencies, which I didn’t plan for, nor could I have predicted that both films star Ellen Greene (aka Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors!) Let’s begin with a film that I watched solely because it stars my favorite old guy crush, Eric Bogosian, who also wrote this film—Oliver Stone’s 1988 Talk Radio. The fact that I was willing to explore another Oliver Stone film should prove my dedication to film education and my adoration for my favorite old guy crush, because I am not a fan of this man’s movies or his politics. Stone claims to be left-wing, but everything he’s ever made and every conspiracy theory that he partakes in proves that insanity is a bipartisan stance. Were this film written by Oliver Stone, I wouldn’t even bother, but after learning that Eric Bogosian wrote it, my curiosity was piqued. Talk Radio began as a play, which Eric Bogosian wrote and performed for 210 performances before becoming a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the late 80s. Stone was such a fan of this play that he approached Bogosian to adapt it into a film, which added another layer of confrontation to this already confrontational piece of art. Talk Radio imagines Eric Bogosian as fictional long-time Dallas radio host Barry Champlain, a bitter and brutal voice who is happy to spar with any caller who dares to challenge him. This character is based on real-life radio host Alan Berg, who once said, “Talk radio is like Russian Roulette. When you press that button, you don't know what will happen”, and this film spent almost two hours proving this to be true. The film begins with Barry rattling off some of the most horrific news of the day, summarizing it all with the fact that tv-watching is up and sex-having is down, while crime and drugs and apathy continue to rule the culture. As Barry says, “No one’s talking to each other anymore, talk radio is the last neighborhood in town” and if only he could see how much truer that is today. Barry does seem more liberal than his often-conservative country-folk callers, but he also seems to believe in nothing beyond being a hater, really. And as we soon learn, he’s not just harsh to his listeners, he’s also pretty rude to his staff, his boss (Alec Baldwin), and his ex-wife (Ellen Greene.) His boss is ready for Barry to go national, and transmit this beloved and biting radio show to more people than ever, but Barry is hesitant, out of fear that he’d have to censor or contain his words in any way. On top of this bubbling drama, Barry takes threatening call after threatening call, some more severe than others, reveling in each hateful interaction as he no-doubt racks up more and more listeners in the process. Barry is Jewish, and this often comes up in his conversations with more bigoted people, one of whom claims to have mailed him a bomb, when in reality it’s just a dead rat and a confederate flag in a shoebox. This is just one instance of the danger and depravity Barry endures, but he also invites it in with some pleasure, knowing he is mostly untouchable. Even when he is introduced at the start of an SMU basketball game, and he’s met with more boos than cheers, Barry seems to take it all in stride. The majority of this film takes place in one night during one broadcast, when Barry is bombarded with an especially heinous crop of callous callers, who seem to get off on the fact that their own vitriol gets some airtime alongside Barry’s misanthropic musings. The suits who run the station seem to sweat a little more than Barry, even when this hostile host finds himself in more immediate danger. It was utterly fascinating to watch this story unfold, to hear the Holocaust deniers and angry racists and disoriented drug addicts of the late 80s speak their mind. It was a loud and clear reminder of how violent ideas and misinformation can so easily be spread, even as this chatty and catty host shuts them down. It was also quite disappointing to experience, to take note of how little progress we’ve made in silencing these hateful opinions, and in fact have only invented more ways for this vituperation to be disseminated. Watching Talk Radio in this current era of outrage culture and constant-poking of the proverbial bear, it all felt very prophetic. In typical Oliver Stone fashion, the protagonist of this film is far from a good guy, and it’s hard to tell which way the sentiments of this film lean, politically and socially. On the one hand, Barry is consistently educating bigots on how incorrect and awful they are, but on the other hand, he’s also consistently patronizing the hicks and hillbillies, even the ones who listen to him out of admiration and respect. As you can imagine, this film doesn’t exactly end happily, and there isn’t a lot of optimism to be found. Eventually, it’s as if Barry’s entire show implodes, when he shows a moment of genuine candor, and monologues about how hypocritical he and everyone else is, saying, “Everything’s screwed up and you like it that way don’t you? You are mesmerized by your own fear, you revel in floods and car accidents and unstoppable diseases, and I’m here to lead you through the flames with your own humiliation and shame. I’m your favorite boogeyman you can’t live without.” I could quote so much from this that sounds like it was written today, but it still wouldn’t do this bitter film any justice, and it certainly wouldn’t do the gorgeous radio-ready voice of Eric Bogosian any justice. His piercing green eyes outshined his otherwise-approachable good looks, and it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing this role. Eric Bogosian is currently starring as the fictional journalist Daniel Malloy in the AMC television show Interview with the Vampire, which is where my obsession with Mr. Bogosian began. He’s the cunty journalist I’ve always longed to be, and he breathes new life into this role—which was previously played by the leading man of tonight’s next film, Christian Slater. This film is Allan Moyle’s classic 1990 coming-of-age radio drama, Pump Up the Volume. Quite similarly to Talk Radio, this film opens with a pessimistic monologue from a radio host who rambles about how fucked up America is, how polluted the environment and the government is, and how pointless it all feels growing up in this chaos—a truly timeless sentiment. This is the Gen X flavor of cynicism, one that abhors the suburbs and the disgusting consumerism and yet has no choice but to roll their eyes through it. This radio host goes by the pseudonym of Hard Harry or Harry Hard-on: a horned up, fed up, intentionally-crass voice broadcasting on his own clandestine pirate radio station, which all of the local teens of this nothing-town in Arizona enjoy without knowing who or where this guy is. We observe several different factions of teenagers listening to this station: groups of friends in cars, girls huddled together in their bedrooms, and some listening all alone, hoping their parents remain blissfully unaware of what they’re tuned into. We hear a good amount of Harry’s opinions about this messed up world during this hopeless decade, we see his intricate set up of wires and records and cigarette butts, we even see his pet lizard before his true identity is revealed to be Mark Hunter (Slater)—just another teenager stuck in suburban hell and suffocated by the pressures of his high-performing high school. During the school day, Mark is quiet and reserved and eats his lunch alone, but when the moon rises and he turns his short radio on, he’s the boldest, brazen-ist, most beloved blue radio host in town—delivering each perverted thought and angsty sentiment with the conviction of a kid with a healthy social life. He’s super deep and edgy, so he plays Leonard Cohen just as often as he blasts the Beastie Boys, and when he’s not pretending to jack off for his devoted listeners, he’s actually speaking on legitimate issues that the adults assume teens don’t care about. Sometimes his broadcasts last five minutes, sometimes five hours, but when Hard Harry turns back into meek Mark Hunter, his parents are completely unaware of how he’s using the short radio they gifted him. Pump Up the Volume is actually far more political and incendiary than I’d expected, and it shows the power and influence of this art form even more effectively than Talk Radio did. This film shows us the perspectives of several teens who listen to this show—from the grimy punks who love the dirty humor, to the yuppie preppies who delight in their small moments of rebellion, to an infatuated girl named Nora who is on a mission to figure out who’s behind this controversial show. Things reach a boiling point when Hard Harry’s show reaches such popularity that multiple students in this community begin calling out the authority figures who run their school—authority figures like their principal, who’s been casually expelling troubled students to maintain the school’s pristine SAT-score record. Apart from Ellen Greene, who plays Mark’s sweet English teacher (of course), it seems the entire staff of this prestigious high school is crooked—something I recognize from my time as a stressed-out kid at my own high-performing high school. As tensions rise and The Man continues its reign of terror on this once-sleepy suburb, Mark struggles to keep his alter ego hidden, and his influential voice protected. Pump Up the Volume was surprisingly way cooler, and way less corny than I’d anticipated. Watching it made me wish my yuppie high school class had had balls this big, to fight for our right to party, but in this fictional fantasy of juvenile delinquency and asshole authoritarians, it was so satisfying to watch unfold. The soundtrack is appropriately full of rage, featuring hits from The Descendants, Primal Scream, The Pixies, Soundgarden, Henry Rollins, and Ice-T. Christian Slater is the king of disillusioned teen dramas, and his anxious personas seem perfectly-developed to this anxious persona. Apparently the director originally wanted John Cusack to play the lead role, and was looking for someone who could play an amalgam of Holden Caulfield and Lenny Bruce, someone who could be “ineffably sweet and at the same time demonic”, and I think Christian Slater embodied this perfectly. It is objectively ridiculous to this critic with eyes that this young man would ever be an unattractive loser, even in this fake reality, no amount of ugly clothes or basic glasses could make him any less of a stud in his Heathers-era beauty. Apart from this, I was impressed with Pump Up the Volume, and how it was able to use its cast of troubled youth to send a salient and powerful message. The kids may not be alright but they are pretty woke, and for that, I am grateful. Both of tonight’s films were kinda bleak but I’m still thankful on this chilly Thanksgiving. Thankful for you, dear reader, thankful for good movies, and thankful for cool-ass-sexy-ass old dudes like Eric Bogosian. You may not be hearing my voice right now, but I’m still wishing you the warmest, happiest Thanksgiving possible in these perilous days. Gobble gobble, goodnight, and good luck 🦃