FIGHT THE POWER: PUMP UP THE VOLUME, A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM
Though we didn't get to hear the famous line "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" in movies until Paddy Chayefsky's NETWORK in 1976, this was hardly a new sentiment from movies. Hollywood movies of old were full of little people taking on some kind of system or upper class, though usually it was done as a Horatio Alger type story. By the time of NETWORK, these type of movies actually questioned the system to some point. Nowadays, when Hollywood basically IS the system, we don't get a lot of movies questioning it, though Allan Moyle's PUMP UP THE VOLUME and Jan Egleson's A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM, in different ways, do just that.
The hero of PUMP UP THE VOLUME is sort of a teenage Howard Beale. Mark Hunter (Christian Slater) is an outsider at Hubert H. Humphrey High School in Arizona. He's originally from New York, but now living there since his father (Scott Paulin) has a job running the school board there. Mark has a ham radio set his father gave him, which he originally hoped to use to contact his friends back in New York. But instead, he's become a pirate DJ, broadcasting anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 hours a night, under the name Hard Harry. While there's the obligatory colorful humor involved, he also broadcasts outsider music, and takes on everything from life as a teenager in general to life at high school. Being the son of the head of the school board, of course, enables him to be specific about laying waste to his targets, such as David Deaver (Robert Schenkkan), the guidance counselor who gets Cheryl (Holly Samspon), a pregnant teen, kicked out of school, and the principal, Loretta Creswood (Annie Ross), who seems to be suspending or expelling an unusually high number of students.
The plot turns come in two forms. In one, Harry calls Malcolm Kaiser (Anthony Lucero), a suicidal teen, and is unable to stop him from killing himself (Kaiser hangs up the phone before he does it, so Mark doesn't find out until the next day). This sets off a wave of outrage across the community, and the police decide to call in the FCC (he's broadcasting on a pirate radio station being taped and listened to across state lines, which is illegal). The other plot turn involves Nora (Samantha Mathis, in her film debut), who's almost as outwardly shy and inwardly rebellious as Mark/Harry is. She sends Harry a sexually explicit letter every few days, but never leaves a number to call back. However, she's intrigued enough to try and figure out who Harry really is, figures out it's Mark, and becomes attracted to him.
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