Prior to about 1994 or so, all I ever knew about Los Angeles and its surrounding environs came from the movies – specifically era-appropriatre films like “Grease,” “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” “Valley Girl,” “Tuff Turf,” “Body Double,” Penelope Spheeris’ “Suburbia,” “Into the Night,” “Mulholland Drive” and several other choice selections. As viewed through the prism of those films, L.A. was this strange sprawl of freeway clovers, dusty back streets peppered with incongruous palm trees, shopping malls, suburban ranch homes and high schools.
But there was one film in particular that really seemed to sum up everything I thought I knew already about Los Angeles and Southern California writ large, and that was Alex Cox’s inimitably oddball sci-fi opus, “Repo Man” from 1984. In much the same way many folks latch onto the elusive exotica of New York City based on atmospheric flicks like “Taxi Driver,” “The French Connection” or even “The Warriors,” I was smitten with the idea of that chunk of the West Coast being the sort of run down, washed out, quasi-derelict urban badlands wherein Emilio Estevez’s Otto, Dick Rude’s Duke and Harry Dean Stanton’s eminently quotable Bud ran completely amok.
As mentioned in this ancient post, one of my best friends – Rob D – moved out there in the mid-90’s, essentially squatting in a well-appointed corner bungalow/cottage owned by his step-mother in Costa Mesa in nearby Orange County (or, as we laboriously referred to it, “Behind the Orange Curtain”). During his tenure there, I made a few lengthy visits to the Costa Mesa compound, entirely romanced by the notion of exploring the same endless byways, boulevards, buildings and barrooms depicted in the films I cited earlier. Once again, as mentioned in that ancient post, I was particularly smitten with locating the former site of fabled hardcore punk venue, The Cuckoo’s Nest, but never managed to pinpoint the right spot.
But about a beer-can’s reckless throw from the front lawn of Rob’s step-mother’s cottage was this deli-cum-liquor store that I would have absolutely SWORN was the one depicted in several key scenes in “Repo Man,” so much so that we came to regularly refer to the place as the Repo Market. Of course, this presumption was based on very little in the way of evidence.
Well, imagine my sad surprise to learn, this morning, by way of the exhaustively minutia-laden video below (clearly this man is my brother) wherein severl key locations from the beloved film in question are revealed. Suffice to say, that liquor store/deli was not in Costa Mesa.
Silly side bar: On some discussion board or another I frequent, someone invited people to list “movies about Punk Rock.” One participant put “Repo Man” at the very top of the list, which triggered my not-so-inner insuffferably pedantic streak. While, yes, Otto, Duke, Archie, Debbie and Kevin are all characters one would conventionally identify as “punk rockers” (to say nothing of the cameo by the Circle Jerks and a soundtrack rife with bands like Suicidal Tendencies, Fear, Iggy Pop and the Plugz), the film is really in no discenable manner about Punk Rock. It’s about a rogue scientist who kidnaps an alien’s cadaver and puts it in the trunk of an iconic 1964 Chevy Malibu and his surreal travails in dodging both federal agents and a plucky gaggle of repo men, whom protagonist Otto has taken up with, hungry to collect the bounty. If you’re looking to learn about Punk Rock, you won’t get far with “Repo Man.” Just saying.
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