What the Movies Have Taught Me About NYC, Chapter 9

[connielane]

What Can’t Stop the Music Has Taught Me About NYC

Do the milkshake!

Lesson Learned: Roller skating down Broadway is totally normal! 

This movie is what happens when you try to cash in on a fad by building a movie around it.  Invariably, by the time the film is made and finally released, the fad is over and everyone hates what they once loved.  Such was the fate of Can’t Stop the Music, which wanted to capitalize on the country’s fascination with disco and the Village People.  The backlash was ferocious, with the film receiving several Golden Raspberry awards, and first-time feature film director, Nancy Walker, never made another film.  But she had an impressive acting resumé to her credit (including a recurring role in “Rhoda,” a hilarious turn in Murder By Death, and of course the Bounty paper towel commercials), so don’t feel too bad for her.

This movie is a masterpiece of camp and flamboyance, and perhaps (definitely?) the gayest thing I've ever seen.  Just when you think it couldn't get more over the top, it goes and confounds your expectations. The opening credit sequence tells you all you need to know – glitter, a disco beat, and Steve Guttenberg roller skating down the streets of New York.  It’s a fictionalized story of how the Village People became a national phenomenon, and though it technically stars Guttenberg, Valerie Perrine, and (bzuh?) Bruce Jenner, the true stars are the real-life Village People.  There’s a rather outstanding soundtrack, which features several of their songs, including of course their biggest hit, YMCA (sadly, In the Navy and Macho Man didn't make the cut on the soundtrack or in the film).  These songs are incredibly fun musical numbers … IF you can just let it go and let yourself enjoy them for what they are.  That’s pretty much what this movie is like.  You can enjoy it if you let go of the notion that you need to see a good movie.  Make no mistake, this movie is baaaad.   But just like it’s hard not to dance to disco music, it’s hard not to have fun with Can’t Stop the Music.

I’m sure that the real Village has never, ever been the way it is portrayed in this movie – the kind of place where you think nothing of strangers popping their head in your kitchen window and wandering in and out of your apartment unannounced.  And it’s my understanding that the real Village of today is even quite different from the way it really was in 1980, when this movie was made, thanks to soaring rent prices which have driven the artistic types into SoHo and Brooklyn.  But I’d like to think that something of that spirit is still there.  I guess I’ll find out in (*gulp*) three days.

 

No really, here’s the real lesson: There’s nothing wrong with different. Different is good.

I have no intention of drawing some profound life lesson from Can’t Stop the Music.  But there’s something about Valerie Perrine’s character and her insistence that there’s nothing wrong with people who are a little different that strikes a chord.  And that's all I'll say about it, because to try and wrest deep meaning from a movie like this would absolutely ruin the whole fun of it. :-)