Pump Up the Volume (film)
Pump Up the Volume is a 1990 American coming-of-age teen comedy-drama film written and directed by Allan Moyle. The film stars Christian Slater, Scott Paulin, Ellen Greene, and Samantha Mathis. Plot 
High school student Mark Hunter, who lives in a sleepy suburb of Phoenix, Arizona, starts an FM pirate radio station that broadcasts from his parents' basement and functions as his sole outlet for his teenage angst and aggression. His pirate station's theme song is "Everybody Knows" by Leonard Cohen and there are glimpses of cassettes by such alternative musicians as The Jesus and Mary Chain, Camper Van Beethoven, Primal Scream, Soundgarden, Ice-T, Bad Brains, Concrete Blonde, Henry Rollins, and Pixies. By day, Mark is a loner who has difficulty socializing with other students. By night, Mark, under the nom de plume Happy Happy Hard-on, sometimes shortened to simply “Hard Harry”, expresses his outsider views about the problems with American society. When he speaks his mind about teen angst and exposes the underhanded actions of the faculty, his audience quickly grows from a handful of loyal listeners to the entire student body. One night, Malcolm Kaiser, a depressed teenager, sends a letter to Harry seeking advice about following through on committing suicide. Harry reacts flippantly, expressing disbelief that Malcom is sincere, and Malcom quickly hangs up, with Harry closing his show by telling Malcom, “Maybe you’ll feel better tomorrow.” The next day, the students and faculty are informed that Malcom committed suicide. Fellow student Nora De Niro pieces together that Mark is Hard Harry, and attempts to assuage the guilt he feels over Malcom. The radio show becomes increasingly popular and influential after Harry confronts the suicide head-on, apologizing to Malcom for not explicitly telling him not to follow through, and exhorting his listeners to confront their problems instead of surrendering to them through suicide. At the climax of his impassioned speech, an overachieving student named Paige Woodward (who has been a constant listener) jams her various medals and accolades into a microwave, causing an explosion which injures her face. Unrest at the school increases as the Harry’s show becomes ever more popular with students sharing bootleg tapes and re-playing the show during school hours. A meeting of faculty and parents concludes that the pirate DJ is responsible for the problems at the school. The local police begin investigating, first cutting off Mark’s access to the P.O. Box he used to receive letters to the show, and then cutting off his phone service when they trace a call to a neighboring house where Mark had surreptitiously hooked up a wireless phone. Mark continues to go on the air, and the FCC is called in to investigate. Realizing the jeopardy he is in, Mark decides to do an epic final broadcast. He dismantles his radio station and attaches it to his mother's Jeep, creating a mobile transmitter so the FCC will have difficulty triangulating the radio signal. Pursued by the police and the FCC, Nora drives the Jeep around while Mark broadcasts. As Harry’s broadcast is heard by the entire school who have gathered at the athletic fields, the school principal, Loretta Cresswood is confronted by one of Mark’s teachers and Mark’s father, Brian Hunter, who is the school board commissioner. They demand to know why Cresswood systematically expelled students with low test scores. Cresswood defiantly insists the students she expelled were “losers” and “troublemakers” and that she did it “for the good of the school.” Brian places Cresswood on immediate suspension. Meanwhile, the harmonizer Mark uses to disguise his voice breaks, and Mark, unable to fix it, decides to broadcast his final message as himself. They finally drive up to the crowd of students gathered at the school, and Mark tells them that the world belongs to them and that they should make their own future. He encourages them all to “steal the air” and begin their own shows to put their thoughts and feelings out into the world. The police step in and arrest Mark and Nora. As the pair are taken away, students are heard shouting their appreciation to “Harry”. Mark turns to the students a final time and tells them to, “Talk hard!” As the film ends, the voices of other students (and even one of the teachers) speak as intros for their own pirate radio shows, which can be heard broadcasting across the country. Cast 
 Christian Slater as Mark Hunter
 Samantha Mathis as Nora De Niro
 Mimi Kennedy as Marla Hunter
 Scott Paulin as Brian Hunter
 Cheryl Pollak as Paige Woodward
 Annie Ross as Principal Loretta Creswood
 Ahmet Zappa as Jaime
 Billy Morrissette as Mazz Mazzilli
 Seth Green as Joey
 Robert Schenkkan as David Deaver, guidance counselor
 Ellen Greene as Jan Emerson
 Andy Romano as Mr. Murdock
 Anthony Lucero as Malcolm Kaiser
 Lala Sloatman as Janie
 James Hampton as Arthur Watts of the FCC

Production
After his film Times Square, a new wave comedy, was taken away from him and re-edited, Allan Moyle retired from directing and began working on screenplays. One of them, about a teenager who runs his own pirate radio station for other teenagers, came to the attention of SC Entertainment, a Toronto-based company, and put into development. He was persuaded to direct his own screenplay. Moyle wrote it without a specific actor in mind but his development deal specified that the project would be canceled if a suitable actor could not be found. The director needed an actor who had to have "glee, to be ineffably sweet and at the same time demonic." He initially wanted to cast John Cusack, but Cusack turned down the role, as he didn't want to play another high school student following his role in Say Anything... Christian Slater met with Moyle and producer Sandy Stern and displayed all these qualities. Moyle has described the film's protagonist as an amalgam of Holden Caulfield and Lenny Bruce and the "Hard Harry" persona as a guy who "has to get credibility as an outsider. As the last angry man on the planet, he has to use the foulest language he can think of. He even pretends to masturbate on the air. He's obsessed with sex and death." The school in the film, Hubert Humphrey High, was based on a Montreal high school where director Moyle's sister used to teach that, according to Moyle, had a principal "who had a pact with the staff to enhance the credibility of the school scholastically at the expense of the students who were immigrants or culturally disabled in some way or another." Slater disagreed with Moyle who wanted to bring in a tap dance instructor to help orchestrate a scene that begins with "Hard Harry" faking masturbation on the air and ends with him breaking into a manic dance by himself. Slater wanted to do something more spontaneous based on his instincts. Reception
Pump Up the Volume failed to catch on at the box office. When it was released on August 24, 1990, in 799 theaters, it grossed USD $1.6 million in its opening weekend. It went on to make $11.5 million in North America. The film received generally positive reviews from critics and is currently rated 79% at Rotten Tomatoes based on 39 reviews. The consensus summarizes: "Pump Up the Volume can be a bit overbearing, but this is one teen drama with the courage of its convictions -- and a killer soundtrack." In his review for the New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, "Much like Heathers, Pump Up the Volume doesn't know how to draw out its premise, once that premise has been thoroughly explored. As the film accelerates toward its conclusion, the strands of its clever plot are too hastily and perfunctorily resolved . . . Working within the confines of the teen-age genre film, however, Pump Up the Volume still succeeds in sounding a surprising number of honest, heartfelt notes". USA Today gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, praising the film's conclusion: "the ending, though in part contrived, doesn't cop out". Awards
The movie won the Golden Space Needle Award at the Seattle International Film Festival, beating out the festival favorite, Denys Arcand's Academy Award-nominated Jesus of Montreal. Reportedly, some audience members booed when the film was named the winner. Moyle's film also won the Audience Award at the Deauville Film Festival. At the 6th Independent Spirit Awards, Pump Up the Volume received nominations for Best Feature, Best Male Lead, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. Musical adaptation 
In 2019, Point Park University's Conservatory of Performing Arts announced that it would be producing the world premiere production of the musical adaptation in conjunction with RWS Entertainment as a part of their 2019-2020 season. Jeff Thomson, composer, and Jeremy Desmon, book and lyrics, first started the project in 2006. They brought the preliminary script and music to workshop sessions at Godspeed Musicals, The Human Race Theatre, and finally Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre in 2016 to "test its legs". The world premiere production was set to open April 3, 2020, at Pittsburgh Playhouse's Highmark Theater, but was put on hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Soundtrack

References

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1990 films
1990 independent films
1990s coming-of-age comedy-drama films
1990s teen comedy-drama films
1990s English-language films
American coming-of-age comedy-drama films
American teen comedy-drama films
Films about pirate radio
Films about freedom of expression
Films shot in California
Films set in Maricopa County, Arizona
Films about radio people
Films directed by Allan Moyle
Films scored by Cliff Martinez
1990s American films