"You can't blow up a high school to disco music." - Allan Arkush, director of "Rock 'n' Roll High School"

"Does your mother know you're a Ramone?" - Mary Woronov as Principal Togar in "Rock 'n' Roll High School (to The Ramones)

"Nicky Marotta says, 'If they treat you like garbage, put on a garbage bag. If they treat you like a bandit, black out your eyes.'" - Tim Curry as DJ Johnny LaGuardia in "Time Square"

I was never really a punk; I was a new waver. The hard edged, hate everything ethos of the punks appealed to me somewhat, but my musical sensibilities, weaned on 70's pop and a bit of disco, found new wave much more musically accessible. Where punk dwelled in the gutter, attempting to bring everything down to it's anti-everything, anarchist, chaotic level, new wave postured intellect and superiority. While Johnny Rotten said "fuck you" and meant that he hated you, David Byrne said "fuck you" and meant that he was better than you. Clever, intelligent, witty, sexually ambiguous, and posed, the new wave ideal was much more my cup of tea.

25 years later, punk and new wave seem lost in the barrage of MTV's hip-hop, Budweiser sponsored alt_rock bands that have no understanding of my generation, and ethic posturing that again says, "fuck you." Unfortunately, alt_rock, a corporate sell out, has nothing but itself to rebel against.

Regardless, the point is this: The music of your youth will always be the music that stays with you. Perhaps I've grown to include my love of 70's pop and disco in my lifestyle now. I've accented my musical tastes with a knowledge of jazz and new age, and opened my mind to many more forms of musical expression. Occasionally hip-hop, alt_rock and trance music will catch my fancy, but the music from 1976-1984 will always be my favorite. Punk, which once seemed so dangerous, now seems like the fun of casual abandon. Knowing now that the power the punks wielded really changed nothing, I simply see the punk ethos as a failed cultural revolution, like hippies or beatniks. Bands like the Pistols, the Cramps and the Dead Boys are just fun. Like all good rock and roll, they allow you to free yourself from the tether of human existence and exalt pure abandon. New wave, meanwhile, continues to prove to be the most intelligent, witty and insightful music ever produced. Bands like Talking Heads, Devo, Blondie, The Fabulous Poodles and countless others will always remain an integral part of my personality.

Recently, when Joey Ramone passed away, I began to feel my own mortality. For me, it was much like Elvis passing must have been for my mother. To know someone so young and so important had passed was perplexing. He was only a tad bit older than me. And, more importantly, like the best of punk and new wave artists, The Ramones had achieved a level of fame that still kept them in the obscura of cult bands. They still felt like they belong to those of us who were in the know; the elitist part of new wave has always been one of it's most appealing facets for me. Again, it makes one feel superior, more intelligent, more clever.

I watched two films recently from these formative years of punk and new wave, that had to do with the Ramones. "Rock 'n' Roll High School" was a Roger Corman film featuring the Ramones. "Times Square" came from Robert Stigwood, who made the Beegees famous, and was supposed to do for new wave what "Saturday Night Fever" did for disco. Both of these films are failures, of course, because those in control of them really had no inkling as to what the subject matter was about. "Rock 'n' Roll High School" holds up better because the Ramones are part of the story and make several appearances in the film. "Times Square," an angst ridden mess that will always have a place in my heart, is an abject failure, as it was on release, because it has no idea what it is trying to say. ("Times Square," by the way, has a scene that uses the Ramones' "I Want to be Sedated" quite effectively).

The Ramones film captures the abandon of punk. It's all rebellion for rebellion's sake and mocks authority. Echoing the "kids just want to have fun" ideal, the film finds a Ramones fan, Riff Randall (PJ Soles), ditching school to get tickets for a Ramones show for the entire class at Vince Lombardi High. The school has recently gained a new principal, the hard-nosed, sexually repressed Miss Togar, played wonderfully by Mary Woronov. The Ramones come and, when all else fails, help Riff take over the high school and eventually blow it up. Silly fun.

My problems with the film have changed over the past few years. For one, I never understood why Riff wasn't named Sheena since one of the Ramones most famous songs is "Sheena is a punk rocker." Secondly, Sole's costumes look more like Olivia Newton-John's garb for the "Physical" music video than punk wear. Finally, the film featured far too many storylines that just weren't punk, including a nerdy girl who wants to date the captain of the football team. No one in my high school clique would be so gauche as to tell anyone that they had a crush on the school's hunky football quarterback. Couldn't the scripters have come up with a better story. In his book "How I Made a Hundred Films in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime," Corman has Arkush tell how the film was called "Disco High" for a while until 4 days before shooting when the younger kids working for Corman told him that The Ramones were a punk band and not a disco group. So perhaps it is this original idea that flawed the finished film's script. But when the film does dive into it's punk mania, with a Ramones concert providing an integral chunk of the mid-section of the film, it begins to work. Riff Randall may not be your typical leather jacket wearing punk, but she wins us and the Ramones over.

"Times Square," meanwhile is all angst and typical story. In many ways it is an anti-anti-depressant film. Young Pamela Pearl (Trini Alvarado) has a father who is a big shot trying to clean up Times Square, the heart of NYC. In the hospital being treated for her angst and depression, Pamela meets petty street criminal Nicky Marotta (Robin Johnson) and the two run away, defying her father, the social worker system and the doctors who think both of them needs some good medicine. Together, they squat in an abandoned warehouse at the pier and find happiness in a suggested lesbian relationship that may or may not be strictly platonic.

Here angst is paramount as the father, his political aides, and the social workers worry. Meanwhile DJ Johnny LaGuardia (Tim Curry) seems to understand the two. Caught up in the "news story," however, LaGuardia begins to exploit his young friends. After a while, Nicky begins to break down yet again and, in a jealous rage against LaGuardia, tears up the squat that she shares with Pammy, driving the more feminine girl back to her father.

Having played some songs live as Aggie Doomed on LaGuardia's radio show and making a name for herself by tossing TV's off the rooftops in NYC (to the Cars "Moving in Stereo"), Nicky throws a concert in Times Square at midnight (on the run from police and social workers) before disappearing into the night, leaving young Pam and her father to reunite (to a disco song by Robin Gibb and Marcy Levy, no less).

Regardless of the bad and pretentious plot, the acting in the film is superb with Johnson playing the perfect punk, innocent and streetwise, naive and knowing. Alvarado makes her character's love for Johnson real, tender and important. And Curry's mellifluous tones as a overnight DJ make you wish he really did this for a living. When he intones, "It's that kind of a night and that kind of a feeling," it immediately becomes that kind of a night with that kind of a feeling.

But "Times Square" gets it all wrong because it has no idea what the new wave ideal is about. In the end, the new recruit to a lifestyle of freedom returns to her, ugh, rich father's home. The real protagonist, Nicky, gets no help and it is only suggested that she finds some solace in her moment of fame.

While neither of these films capture the true punk credo, "R'n'R HS" comes close. The film is fun and the fun ends with the ultimate teenage knock against authority, the burning down of a high school. 25 years later, we can see that kind of rebellious fun as the sort of harmless ideal that all high school students used to have, you know, before kids started shooting each other up and stuff. Back when rebellion was fun!

"Times Square," meanwhile, captures the angst and depression of the new wave lifestyle but it's ending offers up a phony resolution that satisfies no one. However, while the ending is trite and phony, we see no other ending available, then or now. At least it revels in it's new wave abandon for as long as possible. And the love between Johnson and Alvarado becomes real, real, real. We understand friends like these because these are the friends we had at 17. Hopeless, hopped up and emotionally dysfunctional.

Tiny pearls of a time passed, set to a new wave beat, "Rock 'n' Roll High School" and "Times Square" are two of my favorite films of all time.

Notes:

"Rock 'n' Roll High School" is directed by Allan Arkush, who got a little help from Joe Dante. It also stars Vince Van Patton, Clint Howard, and Paul Bartel. Music by Devo, Eno, Edie and the Hotrods, Chuck Berry, Brownsville Station, Nick Lowe, MC5, Paul McCartney (uncredited), Paley Brothers, and Todd Rundgren.

"Times Square" is directed by Allan Moyle. Written by Moyle, Jacob Brackman and Leanne Unger. It also stars Peter Coffield and Anna Maria Horsford. Music by Roxy Music, Garland Jeffries, The Ruts, The Cure, Suzie Quatro, The Pretenders, Gary Numan, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Desmond Child and Rouge, Talking Heads, XTC as well as songs sung by Robin Johnson in the film.

Report Card Script: D+ Acting: A+ Cinematography\Lighting: B- Special Effects\Make Up: B- Music: A- Final Grade: B-

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