Somehow I had never seen Alex Cox's Repo Man, although I'm not quite certain why I never had. Granted, 1984 was a busy year, in that I got married for the first time and finished my MA, so maybe it was simply a case of being really busy. Plus, we were pretty poor, so we didn't have a lot of extra money floating around to go to the movies. I was in graduate school, as compared to some corporate path, so it's not as if the more punk sensibilities of the film would have stood at variance with my burgeoning conservative agenda. It was in the middle of the hell of the Reagan years, and America's great break with reality, so it seems like it would have been a good fit. Anyway, it was definitely my loss. Harry Dean Stanton (as Bud) and Emilio Estevez (as Otto) star as repo men, out on the hunt for cars to repossess. Somewhere along the way they get on the trail of a Chevy Malibu, which is of extraterrestrial origins (don't look in the trunk!). Tracey Walter (as Miller) steals the show, and the car, when he drives/flies the Malibu away at the end. It's funny and fast-paced, and also a critique of consumerism and religion and the hypocrisy of the Reagan years. I think the film and the punk sentiment are summed up by the exchange at the end of the movie between Leila (played by Olivia Barash) and Otto: "But what about our relationship?", which inspires his response, "Fuck that." Here at the far end of the Reagan nightmare, I think that's my response to my relationship to America. Highly recommended.
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