THIS PRESIDENT is getting VERY BAD advice (from himself)--Trying 2 bring back 1960s? (National Guard!). Get him OFF the NUCLEAR TRIGGER before he gets to 80s! (Reagan's nuclear warning shot, etc.).

Here’s what you don’t want (NUCLEAR WAR-wise!), a click away, from Danish writer/director Nicholas Winding Refn’s restoration of my EMERALD CITIES: https://bynwr.com/videos/emerald-cities

————-

More info from Letterboxd:

Watched by Molly Ringworm 10 Feb 2025

Crude and scrappy DIY punk filmmaking, very much in my wheelhouse. Archival news footage of early 1980s nuclear war paranoia intercut with narrative threads involving hobo Santas and far-right populist political candidates campaigning on eliminating the year 1984 along with some political promises that would really land with large swathes of the 2020s electorate. And amidst all of this is live footage of iconic and beloved San Francisco punks Flipper and the less iconic and beloved (but still terrific) fellow-SF punks, the Mutants. Flipper's performance of "Love Canal" is one for the ages.

★★★★ Watched by mumblecorgi 06 May 2025 7

If you're obsessed with the 1980s San Francisco Bay Area punk group Flipper, like I am, Rick Schmidt's Emerald Cities will make complete sense! The experimental feature from 1983 has some of the boldest assemblages of genres prior to the Wachowskis and Tykwer's Cloud Atlas. It's part road movie, man-on-the-street interview, music video, essay film, dystopian sci-fi, and documentary. And, somehow, this conglomeration of disparate forms coheres beautifully. One core thread follows a father (who is always dressed as Santa Claus) and grown daughter who live in a remote section of Death Valley. Because of his wife and her mother's death, she was "raised by television." She dreams of leaving Death Valley and becoming a movie star. When Ted Falconi, the guitarist of Flipper, shows up at the market they run, she bolts for San Francisco with him. The despondent father follows, and soon it becomes his movie (for hilariously meta reasons that are explained at film's end). Atop this narrative we get interviews with people about their thoughts on Santa Claus and the commercialism that links American values and Christianity, live concert footage of Flipper ("I Saw You Shine," "One by One," and "Love Canal") and the long-forgotten SF new wave act The Mutants, news clips about America's nuclear arsenal prominently featuring members of the Reagan administration, and a side plot about a politician who, among other things, seeks to ban the year 1984 in an effort to prevent the fear that the year will turn out like George Orwell's popular 1949 novel. The movie wonderfully taps into Cold War fears of nuclear armageddon, a seething punk hatred for Ronald Reagan, an endearing DIY sloppiness, and the power of awkward chance encounters. If you've sensibly waded deep into the waters of the Flipper discography (sample lyric from "Love Canal" -- "We are bitter / Poison is killing our very cells / We are dying / Our common grave is the love canal"), Emerald Cities comes highly recommended from this guy! Others, expecting something more structurally coherent, may want to proceed with caution.

“Brought to the screen in 1983, a visionary filmmaker explodes the myths of American culture and its social institutions. Forty two years later this film [EMERALD CITIES] is still relevant, actually its truth is unfolding in our daily life. It is a satire about Empire, if we don't laugh we will surely cry.”––William Farley, writer/director, I Wanted To Be a Man With a Gun.

————-