Celluloid Heroes

We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them — this morning, as they prepared for their journey, and waved good-bye, and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”

On January 28, 1986, I was a college junior in the middle of winter break, working in the campus bookstore. As I was pushing a cart load of used books from the warehouse someone came out and said, “The Space Shuttle exploded!” I dashed over to the student union and learned that person was terribly correct.

Before I was a movie geek, I was a space geek. I still am but, sadly, there’s a lot less space travel these days to be geeky about. On that horrible Tuesday, 20 years ago today, watching those two lonely exhaust trails spiral away from a cloud of smoke and debris was a like a kick to the gut.

Anyway, I just had to pay tribute to seven individuals who gave their lives for the belief that discovery is the greatest adventure.

They think you’re moody, make ‘em think you’re crazy. Make ‘em think you might snap. They say you got attitude, you show ‘em some real attitude.

Oh, 1990, what a quaint and backwards time you were. It’s fun to realize that, less than five or six years after Pump Up The Volume came out, technology and culture had passed it by like it was a golf cart on a drag strip. Kid misses his friends back east? Obviously never heard of e-mail, let alone instant messaging. Of course, this was during the dark ages when AOL still charged by the minute, so maybe they just can’t afford it on his dad’s school administrator’s salary. On the other hand, you could say this film was slightly ahead of its time. The protagonist’s pirate radio station is not much different in concept from the podcasters that appeared on the scene in late 2004 and early 2005. Writer/director Allan Moyle got one thing right: the liberating feeling of speaking your mind into a microphone and knowing that somebody, anybody is listening.

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