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OVER THE EDGEAn Oral History of the Greatest Teen Rebellion Movie of All Time(Page 9 of 10)Published September, 2009 
POST Jonathan Kaplan (director): We finished the film, but there was trouble right from the get-go. Initially, Orion decided to present the film as a horror movie. The original poster was an illustration of a few scary-looking, pale kids with wide eyes. It looked like something for Children of the Damned. Richard Linklater (director, Dazed and Confused): I once talked to Matt Dillon about it, and he said how excited he was about the film, because it was his first, but how weird it felt when he saw the poster for the movie and all the kids had their eyes rolled back in their heads like it was some kind of horror movie. Welcome to the wonderful world of film marketing. Matt Dillon (Richie): When Over the Edge was released, I was on the set for My Bodyguard, in Chicago. The production manager threw the paper at me and said, “Hey, you got a good review.” And there was a review by Roger Ebert, and it was very positive. But there was also an ad for Over the Edge, and it showed an illustration of five kids with their eyes whitened out, and there was an institution in the background—like a mental hospital. It looked like an ad for a teenage zombie movie. It was really frustrating. We all made a great film, and it was just buried. Of course, it happens all the time, but at that age, I just thought, Why would this movie not be released on a big scale? We already made the movie! And it’s good! Tim Hunter (co-screenwriter): What had happened was that around this time a few movies had recently been released—Boulevard Nights, The Warriors, The Wanderers—that were all about gangs. And there had been some violence in one or two movie theaters. Orion didn’t want this movie to have that gang affiliation, so they marketed it as a horror film. And then they just dropped it. It wasn’t shown anywhere. They were afraid of copycat violence. It was hugely disappointing. George Litto (producer): The real problem with the film was that it dealt with suburban white kids who cause a bit of violence—never against people, mind you, but against objects. If these kids had been urban and black, I think it would have scared Orion less. Jonathan Kaplan (director): I think another problem—perhaps the biggest problem—was that these were kids playing kids. They looked 12 and 13 and 14. And that scared the hell out of the studio. Charles Haas (co-screenwriter): I can’t tell you how frustrating it was for all of us. I remember reading a review in Variety that was just horrendous. They hated it. Years later, when the DVD came out, Variety actually wrote a glowing review. But back then they really hated it. I think the movie only played in a drive-in somewhere outside of LA. That was the only place you could go see it. Orion just dumped the movie. Frank Mugavero (party host): The movie did actually play for a very short time in Denver. I went there on the first day with my parents. I swear, there were maybe four people in the theater. At the most. Michael Kramer (Carl): There was a screening in New York for the East Coast actors. When I first saw it, I was horrified. I don’t know how anyone can look at themselves onscreen. I don’t get it. I don’t understand how anyone can be an objective observer of their own performance. I just looked up and saw every flaw that I had and every flaw that I feared I have. It was very hard. It’s still very hard. George Litto (producer): And that was it. The movie disappeared for years, until late 1981, when it was re-discovered. There was a film series in New York devoted to good films that were not that well known. It was shown and—wouldn’t you know it—received great reviews. Andy Holtzman (former film curator): I ran something called “Film at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater.” There was a program called “Word of Mouth,” which was for films that were very worthy but—for whatever reason—hadn’t received good distribution. They were either thrown away by the studios or were poorly marketed. I had a friend who worked for a studio, and he screened Over the Edge for me—a 16-mm print. I thought it was a really well made film, really well cut. It was a little bit ahead of its time. It really was a cut above the type of film that I had seen many times before. It was approached in a different way, though. There was a level of honesty that was missing from other films. I thought it was very worthy of being rediscovered. We invited a number of big-name critics to the screening, and Matt Dillon and Jonathan Kaplan also showed up to answer questions. It was a big success. The film started showing up on Top 10 lists, and then Vincent Canby at the New York Times gave it a rave review. From the New York Times; Vincent Canby; December 15, 1981: The movie cannot help romanticizing its mostly mindless teenagers, their inarticulate longings and fears, their demoralization, and, finally, their furious rebellion... Unlike other such films, though, Over the Edge dramatizes the boredom and pointlessness of [the teens’] world with extraordinary conviction... As you watch it, you are frequently caught halfway between a giggle and a gasp. Jonathan Kaplan (director): From there, we showed the film in California. There were about 100 seats and it was packed. I attended with Matt Dillon, and I could see that Al Pacino and Mick Jagger were in the audience. It was like, Holy shit! I talked to Pacino about it later, and he loved it. Charles Haas (co-screenwriter): The fact that Joseph Papp, a big New York theatrical producer, and a classy one—he also ran Shakespeare in the Park—was willing to screen this movie in his theater was a big deal. The movie disappeared quickly again. But because it had received such good reviews upon its re-release, it started to show up on a lot of cable in the 80s, particularly HBO. Jonathan Kaplan (director): It played nonstop on cable, and it acquired a whole new generation of fans. I think one of the reasons people like Over the Edge so much is because they have a rooting interest. They root for the kids, even though you know how fucked up they are. Charles Haas (co-screenwriter): The movie played for years on cable, but what really brought it to national attention was the fact that Kurt Cobain from Nirvana would go on and on about how much he loved this movie. He would talk about it all the time. “That movie pretty much defined my whole personality. It was really cool. Total anarchy.”—Kurt Cobain, from Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, by Michael Azerrad Jonathan Kaplan (director): Cobain had talked about the movie and had recommended it to his fans. I remember getting a call at the time from Nirvana—I thought it was some sort of village. I didn’t know what Nirvana was. My assistant just told me that Nirvana had called and that they wanted information about Over the Edge. So I sent them whatever stuff I had for the movie. I’ve still never seen the video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” but I’ve heard that it’s an homage to our movie. “Kurt worked up a treatment for the ‘Teen Spirit’ video, which originally included vignettes resembling something out of the Ramones movie Rock and Roll High School, or perhaps more like Over the Edge, an excellent 1979 movie about a band of crazed juvenile delinquents who smoke pot, drink, and vandalize a suburb. In the finale, their parents hold a meeting at the junior high school, but soon the local kids lock them inside, smash their cars, and set the building on fire... The Nirvana video was shot for a modest thirty-three thousand dollars on a Culver City, California, sound stage made up to look like a high school gym, or... a ‘pep rally from hell.’”—From Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, by Michael Azerrad Richard Linklater (director, Dazed and Confused): Like for most people, Over the Edge hadn’t hit my radar when it first came out. But it’s just a great teenage movie. I was only a couple years out of my teens [when I saw it], and I had some exposure to these planned, suburban communities that had been springing up throughout the 70s. The movie is a perfect mix of all the conformity and boredom that goes along with the local geography of these places, and the natural restlessness, anger, and antagonisms of the teenage years. I’d like to think that Over the Edge influenced Dazed and Confused, especially along the lines of its honest depiction of the teens themselves—flawed, romantic, angry, bored. Over the Edge not only has the courage of its own convictions, but it provides the ultimate in teenage revenge fantasies—what so many of us would like to do at that age: firebomb the school with the P.T.A. inside. I’ve always said, half jokingly, that that’s the truest ending to any real teenage movie I’ve ever seen. Tim Hunter (co-screenwriter): If anything, maybe, Over the Edge influenced the Steven Spielberg notion of setting films in these kind of new, man-made suburbs. You can see that in E.T. and Poltergeist. I think we had some sort of presence in seeing this kind of new suburban development, which had so little character and so little history. It was a good place to work out modern themes of alienation.
See all articles by this contributor
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