Rock and Roll Will Never Die, Part One-Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s   “Pirate Radio” (  )- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

[Yes, I am now retired but I did so with the caveat that I would on occasion dredge up my tired brain and write a little something if it interested me. Current film critic in this space, my old friend and adversary from American Film Gazette days, Sandy Salmon has mentioned to me on many occasions that he had not been washed clean (my expression not his) by the high tide of rock and roll that was the common lynchpin of our generation. Moreover he did not “give a damn” (his expression) about rock and roll reflecting in my view that stiff upper lip upbringing that he went through in New York City which included huge doses of classic music. You know Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart and the crew. The guys that the late rock and roll legend Chuck Berry gave notice to in his classic statement of the case for rock-Roll Over Beethoven- that some new sheriffs were in town.

The long and short of it was that I noticed that one of the films up for review was Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Pirate Radio which is nothing but a rather recent slice of life homage to the genre. Sandy was not going to review the film and so I have entered the lists to save this beauty of a tribute from statutory neglect. I might point out that another such effort, Jack Black’s School Of Rock was also slated for extinction and so I will review that one shortly as well. Sam Lowell] 

Pirate Radio, starring Philipp Seymour Hoffman, 2009

Probably all films are directed to the largest audience possible although they may be particularly targeted to a certain segment like I believe that the film under review Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Pirate Radio while entirely suitable for all audiences has special meaning for those of us who were washed clean by the that big wave of rock and roll that swept over us in our 1950s and early 1960 youths. I am not foolish enough at this late date in the 21^st century some sixty plus years after the genre first exploded onto the scene to tell anybody that rock and roll has had the staying power to ignite the two or so generations after the explosion but I will venture to say as I have in the headline to this review that one way or another rock and roll will never die. One hundred years from now, especially now that YouTube technology has insured preservation some shy, backward, alienated teenagers, tweens too, will be snapping their figured to Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven. And maybe watch this film to try and understand what it was like when men and women performed rock and roll for keeps. Will gravitate toward the film if for no other reason than the time capsule sound track will guide them to the source.

Here’s the play. If you can believe this back in the day, back in the early 1960s when rock had already passed its first bloom “the authorities” in this case the British authorities but it could have been any governmental agents, churchmen, school administrators, and above all parents in America (or any place on the planet where the category of “teenager” had currency) banned rock and roll from the state-run airwaves. Damn. Except some guys thought of an ingenious way to go around that prohibition by rigging up ships with radio studio equipment and related technologies and anchoring them out beyond the British legal jurisdiction, anchored them in international waters. The kids in the British Isles just like hear then could listen on their coveted transistor radios up in the privacy of their parents forbidden bedrooms. (Transistor radios by the way were the iPod /MP3s of their day.)           

      

One drawback was that the radio station crew had to stay on board and so the wacky crew and their antics and animosities headlined by Hoffman are given full play. That did not stop the furor to live and die by the motto “drugs, sex, and rock and roll (although the one female on board was a lesbian there was no shortage of mainland female listeners ready, willing and able to take the nearest boat out to join the crew. Various segments of the film deal with the sex lives, or non-sex lives of the larger than life looney tunes on board.   

Naturally this flaunting of the law, this thumb in the eye drove the governmental bureaucrats crazy, drove them to a white heat to get rid of the crew of crazies and degenerates who were corrupting the morals of the youth of the nation (this would be mild compared to what would go down later in that same decade). And in the end through treachery and convenient legislation they would prove victorious in their attempts to shut down the operations. Left the ship being highlighted out in the deep to flounder. But in the end the crew was saved by their audience, literally, coming out and rescuing them. Yeah, with an audience like that no wonder everybody believed, fervently believed that rock and roll would never die. Enough said.