Plate of shrimp

Repo Man

(1984)

Have I ever told you about the first time I saw this? Actually, I guess I started to, but let's add some detail. It was in a suburban multiplex, which right there tells you something was wrong with the picture, if not with the Picture, if you catch my drift. I was half the audience, and the only half that was laughing. But that was OK, because I was laughing enough for a much bigger audience.

Aside from the no-mindfucks-barred screwiness of the flick, which I probably wouldn't have been ready for 3 years earlier, there was the punk score--Fear, Circle Jerks, the Plugz, Iggy Pop, Black Flag, Burning Sensations doing a song I didn't even realize at the time was Jonathan Richman's--and Harry Dean Stanton (didn't even occur to me tonight that I was going for a HDS weekend--except I'm pretty sure he's not in the Netflix movie that's waiting for me) and Tracey Walter and Zander Schloss and this kid with a Hispanic name who was a dead ringer for Martin Sheen only younger (honest, that's what I thought at the time: I had no idea it was in fact his kid).

Anyway, it became a benchmark for good-weird, and I watched it repeatedly, so often that I finally tired of it, but after giving it a vacation, I found the love rekindled. And it's a deep font for catchphrases, including the one that serves here as the heading, which I rarely go a month without using, even though I then often have to explain it.