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L.I.E. REVIEWS
( Long Island Expressway )
Michael Cuesta, Writer/Director of L.I.E.
Directed by Michael Cuesta. Written by Stephen M. Ryder, Michael Cuesta, and Gerald Cuesta. With Brian Cox, Paul Franklin Dano, Billy Kay, Bruce Altman, James Costa, Tony Donnelly, Walter Masterson, and Adam LeFevre. A Lot 47 Films release. At the Copley Place, the Kendall Square, the Coolidge Corner, and the West Newton and in the suburbs.
The title refers to the Long Island Expressway, which is where people like Harry Chapin, Alan Pakula, and the mother of Howie Blitzer (Paul Franklin Dano) have died, and which, as a metaphor, is the only thing that doesn’t ring true in Michael Cuesta’s brilliant debut. But the symbolism diminishes in importance to the palpable anomie and nascent nightmare of the setting. No filmmaker in recent memory has so successfully re-created the landscape of ephemeral trauma and desire that is middle-class suburbia of the 21st century, or done comparable justice to the much exploited and misunderstood spirit of adolescent transgression and angst.
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Stephen Ryder Tells A L.I.E.
An Emily Blunt Interview
I recently spoke with Stephen Ryder one of the writers, who along with Michael Cuesta, has produced the ultra-controversial independent movie L.I.E.
The story is about Howie Blitzer, an average American teen coming of age. They've created a sometimes shocking snap shot in everyday--anywhere America but show some not so everyday mundane growing pains and truths facing this boy. L.I.E. is brilliant, and honest.
Our anti-hero, and hero, Big John Harrigan played by Brian Cox, is a somewhat charming, eccentric patriot and a pedophile. I know, charm and pedophile in the same sentence, that's the key to L.I.E it's manipulation of our emotions and the three dimensional characters that stay with you long after the films credits have concluded.
Writer Stephen Ryder agreed to chat with me about his current work, how he got here, and what's next for the man, and the writer, who's certainly not afraid to shine his visceral penlight onto the darker side of the human character.
EB: Thank you Mr. Ryder.
SR: It's my pleasure.
EB: You began your career as a police officer in NYC, I believe, then as a police reporter and then a correspondent for The New York Daily news. Both seem like wonderful, if not macabre, breeding grounds for creative, intriguing writing. Human stories, so, what switched the tracks over to screen writing?
SR: Well, yes... I could really not answer that because I probably wrote my first screenplay when I was seventeen years old. I dabbled a little bit. I was always a writer; I was writing poetry since Jr. High school and I was writing for the newspaper. I was always a writer. But it wasn't a living, it was an avocation. Obviously, I was a teenager so I was in school but I seemed to have some facility with the language and teachers noticed it ... I went with it. My goal had always been to be a cop. Which is what I did do.
EB: People can't hear you, but you do sound like the quintessential cop
SR: Well I tell ya, if I had a nickel for every time I was told that I could retire already.
EB: You mean I'm not unique in my observances?
SR: The other thing is I'm a 265-pound guy with a handlebar moustache and I kind of look like a cop and these really icy blue eyes they say and it gives people the creeps! So, whenever I get into an argument over a parking space -- I usually get the parking space.
EB: I can imagine. L.I.E captures all the angst of discovering who you are as childhood slips away, and learning the lessons that things are not always as they seem. How did the process for L.I.E begin?
SR: Well, Michael came to me he knew my reputation as a script doctor and a dialog guy, and he came to me some years ago with this idea. He had an idea- he grew up in Long Island- I think it was called "The Last Days of March" and it was about four, what I saw was four handwritten pages about boys who were breaking into houses. More or less and it was a mysterious amorphous character known as "the bloated man" and it was just mentioned. And that's kind of all I saw. He hired me to write the script. And I did. Immediately when I saw it I thought it was a great idea. I grew up in the Bronx we had a guy in my neighborhood who was like this, we called him Big John in fact. He was a nice guy too.
EB: It seemed like you captured the three dimension of this character. Most New Yorkers know the title L.I.E. right off the bat. It's intriguing and such a great metaphor. Any unobvious significant on the title?
SR: No. The thing about the title, this is another benile story very brief, Michael called me up and said I don't like the title I need a better title I said "L-I-E" he said "that's great"
EB:It's just wonderful. When I got the press kit I thought it "that's brilliant." The young actors play intelligent, streetwise kids, even though they appear to be in a relatively " nicer" neighborhood. Like Bully, you show how it's not always the have nots that steal and experiment. This inner knowledge, was it from the police force days?
SR: I grew up in the Bronx 1940's and 50's. I'm an old guy --58 years old I saw a lot of life. You just learn that in life. No when becoming a cop everyday you live you learn stuff on a rate of about ten days to the normal person you know? And it's all underside. I moved to Long Island and saw that, it just became a factual storehouse of information. I wouldn't attribute it to growing up in the Bronx or growing up in Long Island I was just trying to be living and observing.
EB: The lead, a brilliantly understated Paul Franklin Dano, played the internally suffering Howie Blitzer.
SR: Incredible kid.
EB: A great actor too. He did it with that general disinterest in life so many teens seem to project. He's lost his mom on L.I.E, His dad is already sharing his bedroom with a loud female friend and his best friend, Gary's, extracurricular activity he isn't shocked into space, but begins to almost toy with the idea. How did you and director, Michael Cuesta, manage to get him so uncanny?
SR: Well I wrote the dialog and he played the part [laughter] there, nothing was really required of Paul. I mean kind of what you see, I mean other than his acting, it's his personality. It's hard to describe. He's a wonderfully talented and brave actor a sweetheart of a person and a wonderful family. I can't say enough about him. Such a pleasure working with him. And he we didn't have crack any whips to get him to play that role he did that himself a lot of that stuff he nailed on the first take. And of course I wasn't on the set so I can't speak for Michael direction, which of course is fabulous, but basically he nailed. There's an interesting story how he got the part, we were casting. We had cast about four days, Judy Henderson, --got to be one of the best casting agents in the business in New York, so she said "I've got a kid for you" so I couldn't be there so I asked Michael if you could put the castings of the primary characters on video and messenger up to me, and he was courteous enough to do it-cause I'm only a screenwriter I don't have anything to do about the casting…but Michael was interested in my opinion. So, four days into casting the kid walks into the casting and blows every one out of the room so I call up I say how's it going? Judy says" you gotta see this we gonna messenger this up to you" Michael says, "You gotta see this kid. But I don't know, the thing comes and I look at'im [Paul] on the tape and I said " this, this is the guy" So Michael says, "I don't know" cause he's the director he wants to see everybody he didn't believe we, he's always joking about this. He didn't believe we could find the right kid in four days. We figured the casting was going to take months. We were going to see thousands of people. He figured if he just went with the first kid that he was taking a short cut and that is not professional. So as Michael is fond of saying, his wife saw the tape and threatened to divorce him if he didn't cast Paul and the producer said, "this is the kid, this is the kid," so we had him on a call back. So the call back I drove into Manhattan and I watched the kid in person and in my view when I was envisioning the character in my head he didn't look or act anything like Paul Dano. But when I saw Paul Dano bring himself to the role I said, "this is better!" [laughter] This is better than what I had in mind when I wrote it. So he got it. No one else was even close. Billy Kay, when he was actually auditioning for the part of Howie. Michael saw him and said, " I want you to read Gary" He's the perfect Gary. He said, "What do you think?" I said "he's the perfect Gary." So we hit one two three, Brian Cox there wasn't even a question. We knew he was the perfect Big John.
EB: How did you find Brian?
SR: Judy Henderson the casting director. This was one of the finest casting jobs I have ever seen in the business.
EB: Absolutely.
SR: She got her first choice for every character. Judy Henderson's first choice for the lead character-- Brian Cox. Her first choice for Howie-- Paul Dano, and her first choice for Gary --Billy Kay. We fell into line after that. We had been doing some casting before that and we were weren't even close. We were having a hell of a time. Some actors, name actors, kids especially wouldn't take the role because of the material. Mothers didn't want them to take it because the kids didn't want to take it. You know, we ran into some initial rejection because America's a pretty uptight place and don't think the creative community is any different than say upper Eyesocket Wyoming-cause it's not! [laughter]
EB: Brian Cox deserves an academy award. I doubt that they'll give it to him, a pedophile character. But, um. It's amazing because he's such a charming actor, and if you know of any of his other work, he's usually a good guy a calm man and that's why, I think, he was so perfect for the role. You didn't want to believe in him. It took me a good couple of scenes to actually grasp him as the villain and sure enough you switched it and played with our emotions and we actually are sitting there liking a pedophile. It was amazing
SR: That was my plan [laughter]-- My evil plan.
EB: It worked! You've taken a taboo subject and managed to explain, humanize it. Actually subjects, as the pedophile is also gay. While homosexuality is beginning to, finally be accepted, if not in some cases peacefully tolerated, (idiot Jerry Falwell aside), the pedophile in L.I.E is human.
SR: He's not a pedophile
EB: Oh? He's not?
SR: NO. Pedophiles don't like people over the age of thirteen. Any doctor of psychology or professional behavioral scientist will tell you pedophile like people prior to puberty.
(Webmasters note: The proper word for the character is "PEDERAST." A male that likes people past puberty.
EB: I didn't know that.
SR: Yeah the other thing is in the movie Howie is fifteen going on sixteen, it's that age when we grow. Almost every nation in the civilized world, industrial nations, right? Fifteen is the age of sexual consent for both boys and for girls. You wouldn't even be committing a crime-including Canada- in almost any other country on earth he'd just be considered a gay man with young lovers.
EB: Wow.
SR: So this is something, when I was writing this and I travel a lot in Europe and I'm talking to you from Canada, it's always been my understanding that these are just regular ordinary nonfelonious people. Now these are consensual relationships where they are not predating anybody and they're not coercing and they're not feeding people drugs and they're not laying large sums of money on them these are consensual arrangements. Of course they're doing a power trip over somebody who's much younger. Of course they have problems of course I'm not approving or recommending it and stuff it's the whole Buttafuco thing. There's lots of um dirt bag heterosexuals who are 40 and 50 years old who have fifteen year old girlfriends and nobody calls them pedophiles. For instance, Elvis Presley! The most famous pedophile in American history, when he met his wife Pricilla she was twelve. I mean he was in love with her but he agreed with her father not to doing anything with her till she was fourteen. When she was fourteen she came home from Germany to live with him here. Now here you have a man living with a fourteen-year-old girl and he's on a postage stamp in America!
EB: Good point.
SR: Okay. But Big John who is living with a twenty year old, you know the Walter character, the kid who played Scott.
EB: Yes, Walter Masterson
SR: Right, Walter Masterson. Now pedophiles do not have sex with adult people under any circumstances okay. Pedophiles don't have sex with post pubescent people. But I don't know, maybe this is too much of a psychology lesson [laughter]
EB: Well, you enlightened me! I just assumed -I am an American and pretty prudish-I just assumed the kids under age dammit! I just went that route I admit.
SR: That's a slippery slope because, fifteen is legal in Connecticut, seventeen in New York and I think in Texas the age of consent is thirty-five now! [laughter]
EB: Well Jerry Lee Lewis was another one and he even went within his own breeding pool. The family tree. Didn't he marry his thirteen-year-old cousin?
SR: That's what everybody did in the neck of the woods that Jerry Lee Lewis came from!
EB' Yep
SR: When you think about it twice.
EB: It's funny when I was a thirteen year old girl I was madly in love with Keith Richards.
SR: And Keith Richards would have had you. Emily Keith Richards was madly in love with you just didn't know it! [laughter]
EB: I didn't look thirteen believe me.
SR: I'm saying if he had met you two would have been an item. [laughter]
EB: Well, thank you. You've seen me so you know I'm a chickbabe.
SR: Yeah!
EB: How did the collaboration between you and Michael Cuesta transpire, was he a student or a friend?
SR: No I use to write dialog for his father and write TV commercials for his father. Who was a great man and a very successful director of television commercial in this business in the television business and he's like a God.
EB: What's his name?
SR: Michael Cuesta
EB: Same name as the son and your co-writer/director?
SR: Yeah, everybody in the business knew 'Im and loved 'Im, and loves him still a very great gentleman. And I knew him for quite some time and I had done some work for him and for a couple of little movies, the scripts and all of the all of this stuff and I was also and actor I was in the Screen actors Guild and he got me some jobs and some commercials you know. So he sort of gave me my start in the business back twenty years ago. So when Michael decided to write a movie, well, he had started writing it alone and couldn't do it then he got hooked up with his brother Gerald, and apparently they had a fight or a falling out or something as brothers often do so it didn't get very far and but he never stopped believing in the story so he wanted to work with me and I know that he asked his father "hey maybe I can call Steve' and his father said "no, no-don't'--don't call him. [laughter]
EB: Well I'm glad he did make that call because [together] you've created a powerful movie it is absolutely wonderful.
SR: Well we did a lot of work Michael insisted on going over every word of dialog, every line he use to aggravate the hell out of me, go over every line. I had to explain what my intentions were what the feelings were, on everything he made the changes though, Held my feet to the fire and ultimately made the movie he wanted to make! Which was not always the movie that I wanted to make but I'm not a director. It was something, it was stormy I have a strong assertive personality and he's no wimp either, so it was a colorful collaboration-that's for sure!
EB: With L.I.E. already stirring critical acclaim, and buzz of controversy, what's next for you? Can you talk about your "Only Perfect" which you've told me "it will raise more eyebrows than even L.I.E.?
SR: Yeah, "Only Perfect" is a script of mine -I kind of got this idea when I came up to Montreal and I noticed there was an interesting social divide between the Franco Quebecois you know the French speaking Canadians and the Anglophones Canadians here and I felt, and they're very civil, they tell you it's no big deal it's just about language, but I've been living here for 3 months and I can tell you that divide is as big as the ocean that divides the united states from England. They put it subcutaneous - it's under the surface. So, I got this idea that here it is the Plantagenets {maybe he meant Capulets} and the Montagues again.
EB: Ahhh
SR: But I decided to do it this time with twelve and thirteen year olds a boy and a girl Romeo and Juliet but I decided to respect their no so innocent attraction to each other and not treat it just for laughs the way they do in America. You know making the teenage boy some kind of monster of hornyness and the girl some kind of mindless coquette. Instead of doing that I decided to treated it with respect. For instance when I said to the producers, and how I got started on this I said do you remember the seventh grade? They said yes. Emily I'll test this on you, you remember the seventh grade?
EB: Yes.
SR: What was his name?
EB: David
SR: Thank you!!! Every person that I've asked that question doesn't hesitate more than two seconds and they come up with a name no matter how old they are.
EB: I couldn't even speak to him; I was so shy-still am.
SR: Right. I, mine was Sharon. But every adult human being that I've spoken to has been able to name a girl or a boy from that year in school. Now this movie is about David and you. It's about the curiosity the innocent etc wild unfocused undeveloped love, etc-- etc. This is about that treating with reverence and respect that it deserves.
EB: I can't wait to see it.
SR: And she is a Francophone, she's upscale French girl who also speaks English, and he's a downscale Anglophone which is exactly the reverse polarity of the socio economic position those two ethnic groups actually occupy in this town and its down to the English are usually the ones who are the wealthy ones and the Francophones are somewhat downtrodden economically. So what I've done is I reversed that cause it's kind of a clich' up here and I've been interviewing directors some of the finest directors in Canada have expressed a keen interest in doing this film, only perfect. And by the way how he describes his girlfriend when his friends, his lascivious little friends, when they ask, "Is she built, is she popular?" he responds "no she's, um, only perfect."
EB: Awwe
SR: It's going to be deep. What we are going to do with the camera is linger on the details, I remember and I can tell you this, when we were twelve and thirteen, what we thought was daring and exciting and wonderful about looking at the person that we were in love with was their earlobe, their wrists..their feet.
EB: How true.
SR: How true right? Or the way they smelled or the admire the clothes that they were wearing that day and we'd go home and we'd think about that shirt---or those shoes [laughter] It will never be like that again. After that year it will never be like that after we got much more primary in our lustfulness. So it is the last day of innocence, and it is the first day of love in your life and you'll never love like that again. So, I felt this was an impossible to resist subject to deal with a great director and a great cameraman and of course a great script and a Steve Ryder script well I don't have to say.
EB: Say no more-there you go! If it's anything like L.I.E. -you've captured these characters they are soulful. You're a busy man with requests for a script of your from handsome Amand Assantee.
SR: Amand and I spoke in Boston.
EB: You will pass my private line onto Mr. Mambo won't you?
SR: Sure!
EB: I'm only kidding. [laughter]
SR: Yeah? He expressed an interest in my script "The Night Of The Black Mamba." It is a spy thriller.
EB: You're all over the genres. You do all sorts of writing.
SR: Well, I teach at a NY university, screenwriting there at NYU and I'm interviewing on Tuesday with a university up here in Montreal wants me to teach screen writing up here.
EB: Wonderful. Is there anything you'd like to say to aspiring writers, screenwriters?
SR: Ohhh, Yeah. Find another way to make a living [laughter] it's taken me forty years to become an overnight success. No, I'd say. There is something I'd like to say be fearless, and don't listen to anyone and be unreasonable and get a really good manager to take care of the money! Never make the deal yourself. Don't write on spec.[laughter]
EB: Do you have a favorite movie, or perhaps movies for different reasons?
SR: Okay in the Bronx when I grew up you had about eight movie houses within five blocks of my house I went to the movie about everyday-about five days a week in those movies they had two features, as you know, cartoons, the shorts the news the Warner news, cartoons and coming attractions. The coming attractions were for about six different movies. So after I'd go to one I go see two movies in one theater then I'd go to another and see two more some weeks I saw eight movies This went on for a long time. So to ask a guy like me what his favorite movie is I would say the number one favorite movie of all time, "Casablanca;" best mindless action movie of all time would have to be the "Wild Bunch" by Sam Peckinpaw; best contemporary wild mindless funny movie would be true lies with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis. Literally a wonderful intelligent movie. It may not have looked it to the people who don't know much about the spy business, but let me tell you there was a lot of good technical consultation going on in that movie. My taste in movies is pretty eclectic. If it's good I like it! I wouldn't say I like foreign films. Of course "Death In Venice" was great. "The Conformist" was great, by Bertolucci. Luchino Vasconti's "Death in Venice" was unbelievable as a visual treatment. Those all. My all time favorite of those is "Leolo" a Canadian film
EB: I haven't seen that.
SR: Do yourself a favor you gotta see this L-e-o-l-o It's gonna be hard for you to get but you can find an art house video that is the one that one every awards in Canada. To give you some idea of what you in for with "Only Perfect" because that's being filmed up here. And one of the reason's it's being filmed up here is I don't think we'd be able to film it in the United States.
EB: Why would that be?
SR: Legal reasons. The kids are too young. We had a lawyer at my side half of the time we were writing the movie, this L.I.E. thing. Because a lot of this stuff, there are laws about this stuff that are very very strict. Jerry Falwell has a big following in the law enforcement community and we have very restricted laws about art and stuff. In the United States.
EB: I'm amazed that Bully got made with all the teen sex.
SR: Yeah but they're all eighteen years old.
EB: I know the actors are...but they play didn't look it to me.
SR: I didn't see it.
EB: well they put a little too much sex in it I thought they ruined the story they did it like a free for all and they didn't get into the character development -you didn't feel for them.
SR: I'm not much of a Larry Clark fan Emily.
EB: Me neither.
SR: Because it's just an easy way to go, take a bunch of kids take all their clothes off and have then bold in front of the camera.
EB: That's what it was, a sex ballet of the under aged 1-2-3-sex scene, 1-2-3- sex scene. It got tiring. I wanted them to tell us more about the characters! If you get a chance to see it for nothing else but to see how not to do it [laughter]. Well, thank you for your time; it's been a thrill. And I love writer like you who can still manipulate my mind. As you I see so many movies and so few are this unique and disturbing. I have been thinking about Howie and Jon for weeks now. I still say wow! How did he do that?
SR: Well thank you, every once in a while, I leave you with this, every once in a while, a great while in a professional career comes a confluence of circumstance and talent and what happened here was we got very lucky; the right director was there, the right actors, the right writer and the right story idea all came together, somewhat seamlessly, and have been resonating in the American artistic community ever since. [end]
What a powerful interview huh? A brilliant guy - who, as like he says - has become an over night success in forty years. The film's playing around the country presently. Find it-but read the review first. It's not family fare. It is graphic and frankly quite blunt about Howie's relationship with his friends, Big John, and his growing isolation.
Steve's "Only Perfect" sounds like another hit if he stays true to his own advise and makes another fearless piece of celluloid for us.
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L.I.E. REVIWES
The truth in L.I.E., 2001advocate.com
The teen stars of L.I.E. hope their controversial film might open
a few minds
By Bruce C. Steele
From The Advocate, September 11, 2001. Includes questions and answers not published in the magazine
When the film L.I.E. earned sustained applause from an overflow crowd at its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, its two 16-year-old stars were there to soak it up. Paul Franklin Dano, who plays 15-year-old Howie, sat and smiled broadly as costar Billy Kay, who plays coquettish Gary, stood and hooted with pride in support of the film and its makers. Maybe others in the audience were silently wincing over the film's exploration of two teenage boys' mutual (but unrequited) sexual attraction and their interactions with an unrepentant pedophile called Big John, but for Dano and Kay it was simply a job well-done.
The next day the boys appear for an interview, eager yet serious, two seasoned pros. Kay, who graduated early from his Long Island, N.Y., high school (and who turned 17 in April), is a regular on the soap Guiding Light. He didn't hesitate to play omnisexual delinquent and underage hustler Gary: When I read the script, I said, Wow, this is such an out-there character. This role is definitely going to be cool.
Dano, a high school senior who's been acting since age 10, says what drew him to the lead role of Howie, who is just coming into sexual awareness, was that Howie was a lot more intimate with the [other] characters, such as Gary and Big John something he hadn't played before.
Clearly these are not your squeamish up-and-coming actors of the past.
The Advocate: You guys have a lot of sexually charged moments together that you both seem comfortable with.
Kay: It definitely helped out the chemistry with me and Paul because we've been such good friends for a long time. It made it a lot easier for us and it, I think it came out well overall. And the audience like we saw yesterday took it pretty well. And we were believable enough.
Dano: I've been at his house. I've slept over there, met all his friends.
What did you each think when you first read the script?
Kay: Gary originally was supposed to be black. I went up for [Howie] and [the director] Michael [Cuesta] said, "Will you read Gary for me" I'm like, "Isn't Gary supposed to be the black kid." He said, "I see you in this role." I'm like, "OK, cool." And I loved it and I got to have such cool tattoos and everything, it was great. It was one of the most challenging roles I've ever done.
Dano: Definitely I thought it was one of the most unique things I've auditioned for, very different from what I was used to at least. And it was a lot more intimate with the [other] characters, such as Gary and Big John, which was different for me. So again it was a challenge, and that was one of the things I had to take on in accepting the role and making sure I felt I could do it well.
How do you each relate to your characters from your own life? Where do you go to school?
Dano: I go to public high school in my town [in Connecticut]. I'm a junior there, 11th grade.
Is it a lot like the kids they portray in the movie?
Dano: Long Island's different from where I live. I mean, kids do the things that kids do. I don't know anyone who breaks into houses [as Gary, Howie, and their friends do]. Drinking beers, [like] in the movie, and stuff like that, that happens. I mean that's kids in high school.
Kay: I don't go to high school anymore. I graduated early for work purposes. [I have] an equivalency diploma in California.
There's a definite class difference between Howie and Gary.
Kay: We're definitely from two different parts of the world [in the film]. [Howie] was raised in the upper-class family and he's always had everything and [Gary has] always been down in the slums. And Big John was also a big part of [the development of] my character, as Michael [Cuesta] said to me. I think if you look at Gary three years before, you'd see Gary's a totally different person.
Both boys do change during the course of the movie. What do you think your characters are thinking at the beginning of the movie and how has it changed at the end?
Dano: Well, Howie's very innocent, compared to Gary, at least. He likes poetry and writing. And his mom just died six months ago and he's looking for a relationship with his dad and he can't find it. And so in the beginning of the movie he's really lost and he's not grown-up yet. And he feels very young and innocent, and he meets Gary, who becomes one of his best friends. They become very intimate together. And I think he grows a lot with Gary because of the person Gary is. Gary's a lot more streetwise, a lot more out there. Then [Howie] meets Big John, who becomes like a father-like figure to him. Because Howie's dad goes off to federal prison, he really doesn't have a father in the movie. And so Howie grows from the beginning. I mean it's like a coming-of-age story for Howie. He grows up, he becomes able to handle himself, and at the end he has nobody [to look after him] but he's able to take care of himself and he has confidence. He's not all upset about it, and he believes in himself.
You don't know what's up with Howie at the end...
Dano: I think the idea behind that is, a kid living by himself on Long Island, it shows how strong Howie has become that he thinks he can do that, be dependent on himself, how much he's grown. I think the movie ends really strong with [Howie's] little poem.
So, Billy, what's up with Gary?
Kay: When I started filming, I kind of had my own story in my head [about] what's happening behind-the-scenes that was not shown. And I assumed that Howie and Gary had probably seen each other throughout the years of school and whatnot and they never really became friends until this year. And Gary is a big part, just like Big John, in how he makes [Howie] think about many different things. I challenge him sexually, emotionally, in many different ways. And I feel that I'm originally trying [to be friends with because, hey, he's a rich kid and I'm looking to make some money, I'm looking to pick up a few bucks. And I feel that [Gary's other two friends] Brian and Kevin have already been that, this is my next victim. And I think eventually Gary begins to care for Howie. But he already got too deep into what he was doing to fall back on [that affection]. And he decided to go out to California and leave [Howie] behind and just take care of himself. I think he's a very individual person and he likes to stay solitary. And he does whatever he does to survive.
And that's what he's thinking when he gets into the taxi to leave Howie and Long Island behind and head to California?
Kay: Yeah. And Michael changed something: Originally I was supposed to turn to Howie and scream, "Screw you, I'm never coming back!" Something like that. I liked that, but I liked the way he changed it, where [Howie is no longer in the scene, and] it just leaves [people wondering] what he's thinking. Every person who sees the film can have a different [idea]. It doesn't matter.
I assumed you were thinking about Howie.
Kay: That's what I was thinking. We did a couple takes saying, Think of Howie; think, I just want to get out of Long Island and go continue my life, continue my career. And stuff like that. It's different.
Is Gary gay?
Kay: He's bisexual, and it's said in the film actually. He says [about Howie's dad's voluptuous girlfriend], "Hey, I'd fuck her. I'd fuck anything." He's more of a hustler than just to say he's gay [or] he's straight. He takes whatever he likes, whatever he needs to take, I think. And it's basically, he's just a hustler, would be the definition I would use.
He just wants the freedom to explore...
Kay: Howie's the one who's exploring the most, I think. And you leave it at the end, you don't know what he has decided to do. What do you think, Paul?
Dano: Howie's definitely in exploration throughout the movie. I don't think he knows in the movie if he's bisexual, gay, or straight. And I think at the end of the movie, the audiences are supposed to be thinking, Well, we know that this kid is determined, he's going to go out on his own, and whatever he wants he's gonna do, but they don't exactly know what he wants. And I think he experiments throughout the movie trying to find out what he wants, exploring sexually, because he really doesn't know. He's so lost and confused, it's all too much for him at one time, discovering [his] sexuality, if he has one, and all the things going on with his father [who gets arrested] and mother [who has recently died] and Gary leaving him and Big John. It's not supposed to be known what Howie is, he doesn't even know himself.
Howie hasn't thought about these things before.
Kay: There's a deep, dark innocence to Howie.
Did you do any research for your roles, talk to any gay kids, for example?
Kay: Me, personally, I've been working in so many different fields, I've worked with a lot of gay people, bisexual people, and I have a lot of gay friends. I actually shared an apartment in the city with a good friend of mine [who's gay] that just moved out to Florida, doing some Nickelodeon work. I've been around [gay people] my whole life. I definitely had my own thoughts, I used my own thoughts and intuitions through my life. Because I've been around gay people and bisexual people and I get along with them just as good as I get along with any other person. And I've seen different reflections of how they act and whatnot and how I act and I just put two and two together and I made my own version of it. I didn't really go with any research particularly on people.
Paul, did Howie come from anywhere in your life?
Dano: In this business there are a lot of gay people and bisexual people. So anything to do with that I just brought stuff from real life that I kind of transposed into something that would happen to Howie to make emotions come through. Because I didn't really know what to compare it to because the script and the film were so different [from] other movies I've seen and such. I tried to bring real-life emotions and make those into what Howie was thinking, what he was feeling.
You guys seem very comfortable with the movie's subject matter, while a lot of older people, straight and gay, will find it very edgy, even dangerous. Do you think there's a generational difference? That your generation is simply less freaked out by different sexualities?
Kay: I think there's always going go be those people who are going to look at the film and not like what we're saying. It's a different look at life that people don't want to see. It's something that the public hides behind their back. And I think it needs to be shown. And I feel that we've gone through, in this country in particular, we've gone through so many things with racism and being sexists and whatnot. It needs to end, already. It's ridiculous. Let people live their life and let them be happy the way they want to be. And I think that's also what L.I.E.'s stating: Be what you want.
There are going to be some people in the gay community saying this is going to reinforce the bad stereotype: the older gay man seducing underage boys.
Kay: Oh, it does, yeah. Do you think it does [reinforce] all the bad stereotypes?
Dano: I think people have matured, a lot. People in general. And I think they still are [maturing], and people who see this movie, I don't think they should look down upon it for what it deals with. Because what it deals with is real. It's not something that doesn't happen. And it's not something that's not real life. People are really like this sometimes. Not just in Long Island.
Kay: Kind of like an equation that you can plug anything into. That's how I think of it.
The movie doesn't endorse Big John's having sex with boys, but it does eventually make him a sympathetic figure. What do you say to people who think you should never portray people like Big John in a positive way?
Kay: That's their decision...
Why should you portray Big John and give him a chance to be human?
Dano: Because he's a person. There are people out there who are like that and just because a person's like that, you can't...
Kay: You can't deny them their rights.
What about the flip side, the right-wing religious groups who are going to point to L.I.E. and say, "See? That's what gay people are like. They're after our children..."
Dano: Well, you know, you have to look at it from another point of view. It is a film. I think [some] people look at a film and they try to make all the worst comments they possibly can. It's a form of entertainment, and it's a form of knowledge. It's both, and I think it was written that way too. For you to go in there and enjoy yourself, challenge your mind, and let you see things that you haven't seen before. And learn something. And I think the film is going to do that, if people open their mind to try to see that. If it was only, like, two-dimensional, and didn't look past and behind the wall and behind the emotions of these characters, then you're not going to enjoy the film at all. [If you can't handle it,] I suggest not seeing it.
Kay: I think some films become scapegoats. Yesterday we had a question about [why Big John was a Vietnam vet, and was the film condemning] Vietnam. People are just looking to bash some films and stuff and use them as scapegoats. I think that's unfair. People have to have open minds about this.
Dano: And even if you're antigay or something like that and you can go there and just see that side of the world, I think that's fine. And if you can just open your mind to be like, Hey, I respect that, I don't have to do it. We're not making you do anything. We're not making any decisions for you.
Apart from Big John, the interaction between you guys has an intense sexual subtext to it, and the other two boys in the film accused Howie of being gay. Does that still happen where you go to school, Paul?
Dano: I think kids nowadays have respect enough to respect anybody in our school who's bisexual or gay. In fact we have a few kids who are like that, who have come out in our school. There's probably others who keep it to themselves. But there are a few kids who've come out. But people respect that. And I think the only reason, at least in my town, [someone] would do something like shove [Howie] up against the lockers and make fun of him so forth is if he tried to do something to someone who was straight. I think the level of respect through kids has grown a lot. They still have the same friends after they came out. I know some of these kids who've come out and say they're gay and stuff. And they still have the same level of respect. One of them still plays a sport, he plays football. I mean they take showers in the shower room. It doesn't bother people. He's a normal person.
Kay: When I was still in high school [on Long Island], I saw there's always going to be the part [of the school] that's still gonna be antigay, who are very homophobic. It's ridiculous. And of course there's always going to be people in my school who were like, Hey, whatever, I'm fine with it. And there's those people who [used] just horrible names they called people and whatnot. I mean, just let the people live their life, it's ridiculous. That's think. And I've seen in my school, it's more, I think, more homophobic than [in Paul's school]. It was in Long Island. This [movie] is from a Long Island point of view.
Dano: His area's a little tougher than mine. Mine's a little more posh. I love it, I've got great friends and stuff. I've been at his house, I've slept over I've met all his friends and stuff and they're a lot different than my town.
Do you think your generation is more willing to talk about this sort of stuff?
Kay: It's definitely more willing.
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'L.I.E.' boldly explores difficult topic
By Joe Baltake
Sacramento Bee Movie Critic
( Oct. 5,
2001)
The ratings board of the Motion Picture Association of America has dropped the ball on more than one occasion recently, and its latest -- and biggest -- blunder is the way-too-harsh NC-17 rating it slapped on Michael Cuesta's amazing first feature, "L.I.E."
To the best of my knowledge, it is not the job of the MPAA to critique movies, but to objectively analyze the various elements (language, sexual activity, the level of violence, nudity) that make up any given film and rate it for the different age groups that attend movies today. "L.I.E." contains no nudity, its sexuality (except for one strictly heterosexual scene) is only talked about, and its violence is neither graphic nor exploitative. It does, however, have its share of profane language, most of it spoken by its largely teenage cast.
This sounds like an R movie to me, but the problem is not what "L.I.E." contains but what it's about.
Cuesta's film is about the unexpected friendship that develops between a troubled teenage boy and the neighborhood pederast, an ex-Marine and pillar of the community who harbors a terrible secret -- but who is there when the kid needs him.
"L.I.E." apparently was rated NC-17 because of its theme, but more than that, it is being punished because its depiction of the pederast, while certainly not sympathetic, is not black-and-white either. Cuesta has given this character too much gray shading and nuance for most people's comfort, and star Brian Cox complements his director's mature, layered film with a truly brave, unapologetic performance. "L.I.E." is adult in the best sense of the word -- not "triple-X" adult, but grown-up in an uncompromising way, and it is unafraid to fully explore its difficult subject.
If you're open-minded and adventurous in your moviegoing, and if you can handle a disturbing but major performance, then by all means see it.
If not, stay away.
The film's title is the abbreviation for the Long Island Expressway, considered "the world's largest parking lot" as it goes from New York's East River to the Hamptons in Eastern Long Island, passing by beautiful, tree-lined streets with handsome homes where parents are generally absentee and their unsupervised children look like homeless urchins from somewhere more urban.
This is where a 15-year-old disenfranchised kid named Howie Blitzer (Paul Franklin Dano in an impressive performance) lives with his widower-father, Marty (Bruce Altman). Marty, who has taken up with a playmate and brings her home for sex, is a shady businessman. His sale of faulty business materials that caused a fire will have him apprehended by the FBI, leaving Howie more stranded than usual.
In a voice-over narration, Howie tells us about the people who died on the L.I.E. -- singer Harry Chapin, filmmaker Alan J. Pakula and Sylvia Blitzer -- "My mom," Howie says, "who died in a crash at Exit 52. It's taken a lot of people. I hope it doesn't get me."
Cuesta has layered his film in a fascinating way, doling out little details here and there. Howie, for example, misses his mom and has saved her cosmetics. He routinely sprays her perfume on himself and applies her lipstick to his own lips. We then learn that he and his incorrigible "bad boy" best friend, Gary Terrio (Billy Kay, also excellent), are half in love with each other and dream of running off to California together.
They get their money by joining other kids in breaking into homes in the Suffolk County town of Dix Hills, where they live. Gary also does tricks for the men who cruise the L.I.E. This is where Big John Harrigan (Cox) comes into the picture. Big John is one of the men Gary has serviced, and his home is one of the places burgled by Gary, Howie and their friends. Gary and Howie steal the man's small but prized gun collection.
Big John, a Vietnam vet who is savvy and charismatic, tracks them down and ends up in a relationship with Howie. But it's not the kind of relationship that either he -- or us, for that matter -- expects. Howie, a smart kid who can speak French and quote Walt Whitman, disarms Big John. In a role-reversal twist, Big John looks at Howie and asks, "Are you trying to seduce me?"
Cuesta has pulled off a tough movie, so he can be forgiven for an ending that panders to audiences -- his film's only real compromise.
British actor Cox, who was the original (and, in my opinion, superior) Hannibal Lecter in Michael Mann's "Manhunter" (1986), never plays Big John as a stock character or an outright villain. The man he conjures up is a weird commingling of danger and warmth, paternal in all the wrong ways -- but in ways that the boys reach out for. I won't say whether it's right or wrong to play such a man for empathy, but it's different and unexpected -- and, for me, it worked.
Dano, meanwhile, brings a preternaturally deep understanding to the conflicted boy he's playing. He's always believable. And Kay is so movie star-ish in his daring, entertaining turn as Gary that he is sorely missed when his character disappears from the plot.
Such heartfelt acting deserves Oscar nominations, but the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, I'm afraid, is every bit as timid and judgmental as its sibling, the MPAA. Frankly, these performances are too scarily alive to win awards, least of all Oscars.
The Bee's Joe Baltake
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`L.I.E.' takes chances, and wins
''L.I.E.,'' one of the year's most impressive films, much less one of the Boston Film Festival's, stands for Long Island Expressway, and it opens with its young protagonist balanced on the guard rail of an overpass. It's a smart way of imparting the precariousness of Paul Franklin Dano's teenage protagonist, Howie Blitzer, whose mother died in a car crash on the expressway, and whose own life seems to be dangerously up for grabs. His contractor father, preoccupied with confirming his own virility by clapping a construction hard hat on his head and having sex with his secretary, is soon to be preoccupied with legal trouble over shoddy building materials. Howie and three pals get their kicks burglarizing the upper-middle-class homes in their neighborhood. And Howie's emerging sense of his own sexual identity is focused on his smart-talking pal from a few rungs lower on the socio-economic ladder, Gary (Billy Kay).
On the strength of these elements alone, and an ability to capture the seemingly aimless yet poignant speech of teens adrift, Michael Cuesta's debut feature would invite comparison to ''The 400 Blows.'' What makes it even more remarkable and provocative is its decision to present the most complex and even sympathetic pedophile ever put on screen. Brian Cox delivers a brave and beautifully modulated performance as Big John, an ex-Marine and respected member of the community who happens to be attracted to boys, and is capable, in the case of one of them, to behave in an unselfish and even magnanimous manner. It's riveting, risk-taking acting of a sort one only sees a few times a year at the movies. ''L.I.E'' is superior and original filmmaking. Like its young protagonist, it teeters precariously between the repulsive and the affirmative. You won't be able to take your eyes off it.
JAY CARR
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L.I.E.
September 21, 2001
Big John Harrigan: Brian Cox
Howie Blitzer: Paul Franklin
Dano
Gary Terrio: Billy Kay
Marty Blitzer: Bruce Altman
Kevin Cole:
James Costa
Brian: Tony Donnelly
Scott: Walter Masterson
Lot 47 presents a film directed by Michael Cuesta. Written by Stephen M. Ryder, Michael Cuesta and Gerald Cuesta. Running time: 97 minutes. Rated: three ways: Not rated, NC-17 & R.
BY ROGER EBERT
Some pederasts are besotted by sentimentality, seeing their transgression through a misty-eyed desire to be understood. The popular arts usually paint them as monsters, and even a great novel like Michel Tournier's The Ogre goes straight for a link between the pederast's idealization of young men and the psycho-sexual impulses of Nazism. The most remarkable thing about "L.I.E.," a drama about a 15-year-old boy and a middle-aged ex-Marine, is that it sees both of its characters without turning them into caricatures. The man is helpless in the face of his compulsion, but he seeks only where he is possibly welcome.
The title is an abbreviation for the Long Island Expressway, and in the opening shot we see Howie (Paul Franklin Dano) hazardously balanced on one foot on a guard rail above the speeding traffic. In narration, he tells us the expressway "has taken a lot of people and I hope it doesn't get me." He lists some of the victims: "Harry Chapin, the director Alan Pakula, and my mother."
Howie lives with his father, who has taken a bimbo girlfriend with unseemly haste. He skips school, hangs out with the kinds of boys his mother would have warned him against, breaks into houses, deals uncertainly with the erotic feelings he has for his best friend Gary (Billy Kay). Billy is actively gay, we learn, and hustles older guys for money, but he keeps that side of his life secret from his friends. One of the houses they break into belongs to Big John Harrigan (Brian Cox, who played Hannibal Lecter in "Manhunter"). Big John, a client of Gary's, tracks Howie down, confronts him with proof of his crime, and offers him a choice between arrest and friendship. He does not quite require sex as part of the bargain, and perhaps Howie does not quite understand the nature of the older man; some of his naivete is real, and some is deliberately chosen. When Howie's father is arrested on fraud charges connected to his business, Howie ends up at Big John's home, and uncertainly begins to offer what he thinks is expected. Big John turns him away: "It's not about sex, Howie." Isn't it? We have a feeling that for Big John sex is an activity that takes place at the local parks where male hustlers do business, and Howie represents something more complex and, in a twisted way, idealistic.
Make no mistake: "L.I.E." is not an apologia for pederasty. It does not argue in defense of Big John. But its director, Michael Cuesta, has the stubborn curiosity of an artist who won't settle for formulas but is intrigued by the secrets and mysteries of his characters. My guess is that for every actual sexual liaison of this sort, there are dozens or hundreds of ambiguous, unfulfilled, tentative "friendships." Many men can remember that when they were boys there were sometimes older men around who used friendship or mentoring as a metaphor for a vague unexpressed yearning. This movie is balanced along that murky divide just as Howie is balanced above the expressway.
Brian Cox has been a superb actor in more than 50 movies, from "Braveheart" to "Rob Roy" to "Rushmore" to Shakespeare. His character here is macho to an extreme (his door bell plays a patriotic march). He is a man's man in both meanings of the phrase. His achievement in "L.I.E." is to remain just outside our comprehension: We do not approve of what he does, but he is just subtle enough so that we are sometimes not sure exactly what he's doing. The courts would judge this case in black and white, but the movie occupies the darker shades of gray.
The ending is a cheap shot. An inconclusive ending would have been better, and perhaps more honest. The movie and the ending have so little in common that it's as if the last scene is spliced in from a different film. Although "L.I.E." is rated NC-17 as it is, one almost suspects that this ending replaces another one that was removed for one reason or another. That is the only plausible explanation.
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My only regret is that the jury didn't find a way to acknowledge a gripping first film called "L.I.E." (for Long Island Expressway), made by former commercial director Michael Cuesta. It's another movie bound to provoke controversy, as its most fascinating character, beautifully played by Brian Cox, is a hearty Vietnam vet and apparent pillar of the community who preys on young teenage boys. His courtship of the film's protagonist, a smart, alienated 15 year old (Paul Franklin Dano), will make many uncomfortable, because the Cox character is presented with great complexity and a certain amount of sympathy. He's a predator and a manipulator, to be sure, but you can also see why the boy "whose own father is clueless and distant" would be drawn to him.
David Ansen, Newsweek Online
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L.I.E.
Drama | Rated NC17 | 108 Minutes | 2001
L.I.E., stupidly rated NC-17 by the reliably dense Motion Picture Association of America, concerns teenage boys and an older man who preys on them sexually. It's a disturbing fact of life, and when handled responsibly, as it is by director/co-writer Michael Cuesta in L.I.E. - meaning without nudity or pandering - the topic can provoke a vital discussion between older teens and parents. The NC-17 rating, barring those under seventeen from attending the film, cuts off the discussion. Such hypocrisy is invariably at the expense of indie films, while studio product such as American Beauty, in which Kevin Spacey enjoys graphic fantasies of the underage Mena Suvari, slides by with an R rating. The system stinks; Cuesta's movie does not. It's a powerful and provocative achievement from a first-time filmmaker of enormous promise. L.I.E. stands for the Long Island Expressway, which runs past the New York suburb where fifteen-year-old Howie (newcomer Paul Franklin Dano is remarkable) lives with his widowed, workaholic father, Marty (Bruce Altman). Howie's pal Gary (the terrific Billy Kay), for whom Howie is feeling erotic stirrings, gets him involved with a teen gang that robs houses. One day they break into a house owned by Big John (Brian Cox), a local kingpin who buys sex from boys. When Howie's dad is arrested for using unsafe building materials and Howie is virtually abandoned, Big John steps in as paternal figure and predator. The ambiguity of the role is sure to stir controversy, but Cox - who delivers one of the year's best performances - catches the troubling complexity of a man who can't be written off as a stereotype. Real villains don't wear signs to warn vulnerable kids. How like the ratings board to censor a film from which both teens and parents might actually learn something.
PETER TRAVERS
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The opening shot of L.I.E. could stand as a metaphor for the whole film: teen-age boy climbs onto an overpass spanning the Long Island Expressway, and stands on one foot, tottering precariously yet somehow maintaining his balance. In the same way, a movie that often seems about to topple and go splat on the asphalt, rights itself every time like a gyroscope, opening onto unexpected vistas or taking a character where you least expected him to go. And it's precisely this one-legged balancing act that makes the first feature from Michael Cuesta so daring, improvisatory and fresh.
A sense of imminent disaster also dogs Howie Blitzer (Paul Franklin Dano), a 15-year-old who lives in the well-groomed burbs off the expressway's Exit 51. Howie is still mourning his mother, who was killed in the not-distant past in an expressway accident. (In a poignant scene, he sorts through a shoebox of her cosmetics, trying to conjure her presence by sniffing her bottle of perfume.) Dad (Bruce Altman), a macho contractor (like a white-collar Joey Buttafuoco) who amassed funny money during the '80s, seems mainly puzzled by his son's existence, and likes to wear a hardhat while doing it doggy-style with his buff girlfriend in front of the window.
Howie runs with a crowd of teenage boys who rob neighbors' houses for the sport of it. He's unaware that his good buddy Gary (Billy Kay), a pierced and tattooed pretty-boy, secretly swaps money for sex with Big John (Brian Cox), a sixty-ish ex-Marine and neighborhood pedophile. Gary persuades Howie to help him steal Big John's weapons from his basement, fences one of the guns and lights out for California (after promising Howie they'd escape Long Island together.) He also abandons Howie to the wrath of Big John-and his offer of immunity in exchange for sexual favors. Howie declines. But when his father is hauled off to the federal pen for embezzlement, Howie turns for solace to Big John, a parental figure who initially seems as benign as Riding Hood's grandma.
We could have had a clich here: coming-of-ager about sensitive, neglected teen; the sexual predator as chicken hawk, on the loose in the leafy burbs; the misery and mayhem lurking at the end of all those pristine driveways. But the film is rescued by the singularity and grittiness of an auteur's vision: This is a from-the-gut recreation of the tortured, geeky period of adolescence, which anyone who grew up in suburban America will recognize. (It rings truer than the slick, over-hyped American Beauty, which seemed more manufactured 'concept' than felt experience.). And we root for Howie as he reels under a succession of blows almost too much for one kid to bear. Director Michael Cuesta and Paul Franklin Dano have crafted a luminous local hero who draws on deep reserves of resilience and takes form right before our eyes.
In another inspired casting choice, Marcia DeBonis plays a blousy, Bohemian-looking guidance counselor, well-intentioned but helpless to guide Howie. Brian Cox brings multi-shadings to the role of Big John, something of a family man when not cruising the exits for lanky boys. His scenes with the vulnerable Howie turn surprising loop-de-loops, paternal tenderness vying with baser impulses. A gay pedophile as mensch? Well, yeah. And in Howie's friendship with Gary, the film also delicately speculates on Howie's sexual orientation, without trying to resolve it. (None of this, however, could justify the NC-17 rating unfairly slapped on a film that's far more restrained than, say, Boogie Nights.)
The subtle score avoids cueing viewers with the usual teen surround sound, opting instead for a kind of muted, grinding synthesizer. And Cuesta's camera deftly captures middle-class sprawl beyond the exit signs, with desolate, angular images of buildings and sky in a stark white and blue palette; shots of Howie's antiseptically bright house, which could be some eternal model home floating over the rot within, and the sinister, somehow dirty gold and brown of Big John's ranch house, complete with shag rug. And the camera's always drawn back to the expressway, with its ever-audible hum, sometimes shot in fast-motion as a network of pulsing streaks, an arterial hell. Here's a low-budget, deceptively minimalist drama that delivers big.
Erica Abeel
_______________________________________________________________
L.I.E. SOUNDTRACK
TITLE: Hurdy Gurdy Man
SCENE: Big John driving (used on
trailer)
PERFORMED BY: Donovan Leitch
WRITTEN BY: Peer Music,
International Donovan Leitch
TITLE: Lungo Fillaccio
SCENE: Pizza Place
PERFORMED BY: R.
Cardinali
WRITTEN BY: Dewolfe Music, R. Cardinali
TITLE: The Bugs
SCENE: 1st Break In
PERFORMED BY:
Walken
WRITTEN BY: Walken
TITLE: For He's A Jolly Good Fellow
SCENE: Birthday Party
PERFORMED BY: Brian Cox
WRITTEN BY: Public Domain
TITLE: Pterodactyl Ptales
SCENE: Birthday Party Break In
PERFORMED BY: Tom Morrell
WRITTEN BY: Shanachie, Entertainment Corp., Tom
Morrell
TITLE: Harrigan Song
SCENE: Birthday Party
PERFORMED BY:
Brian Cox
WRITTEN BY: George M. Cohan
TITLE: When You're Around
SCENE: Diner
PERFORMED BY: Booga
Suga
WRITTEN BY: Tim Cloherty
TITLE: Tune In Turn On Drop Dead
SCENE: 2nd Break In
PERFORMED BY: Psycore
WRITTEN BY: V2 Records, M Kinnander / H Baumgartner /
C Sepulveda / H Walholm
TITLE: I Can't Give You Anything but Love
SCENE: Howie and Big
John in car
PERFORMED BY: Tom Morrell
WRITTEN BY: Shanachie
Entertainment Corp., Public Domain
TITLE: Marines Hymn
SCENE: Howie at Big John's house
PERFORMED BY: U.S. Naval Academy Band
WRITTEN BY: Public Domain
TITLE: Sunrise
SCENE: Howie Dream sequence
PERFORMED BY:
Mark Wike
WRITTEN BY: Mark Wike
TITLE: My Sh*t is Digital
SCENE: Outside Pizza Place
PERFORMED BY: Dove
WRITTEN BY: Dove
TITLE: 5 Inches
SCENE: Boca Baby
PERFORMED BY: Mark
Wike
WRITTEN BY: Mark Wike
TITLE: Danny Boy
SCENE: Big John On Piano
PERFORMED BY:
Brian Cox
WRITTEN BY: Public Domain
TITLE: Wanting
SCENE: Breakfast Time
PERFORMED BY: Mark
Wike
WRITTEN BY: Mark Wike
TITLE: Lascia ch'io Pianga
SCENE: Big John Driving
PERFORMED BY: Vienna Boys Choir
WRITTEN BY: Handel
_______________________________________________________________
Purchase the DVD at AMAZON.COM L.I.E.
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