Raw and Authentic –Out of the Blue
One of film’s most raw performances
Linda Manz captures teen confidence and insecurity in equal measure
Sid Vicious and Elvis obsessed Cebe (Manz) and her twisted father Don (Hopper)On Friday 30 September we’re celebrating Out of The Blue on Friday night at the Rio Cinema, in Dalston – kicking off with a DJ in the bar (people do dance! Or just chat!) from 9pm
On the big screen before - Primal Scream’s Kill All Hippies (which was a seminal video and samples Linda Manz’s opening dialogue from Out of The Blue) – it’s a proper night out and all our audiences are interesting, chilled, fun, and welcoming!
Out of The Blue at 11pm
We’ve got the last remaining copies of Another Magazine so we’ll be giving them out too!
“Linda Manz: the androgynous New Yorker who brought a raw, exposed kind of girlhood to screens like nobody else had, or ever would.”
Another Magazine
Get dressed up in your 1980s double denim and faded sweatshirts … and channel that small town America sense of boredom and no-where to go. Whether you grew up in a small northern town or a suburb of London there’s something universal about teenage dreams and angst…
DJ Martin Green selecting the next track ...I re-watched Out of The Blue this week … Linda Manz is a teenager in the film – she was 19 when she filmed it (looks younger). She plays troubled teen Cebe in a beyond–dysfunctional family with a literally absent (banged up) father and fucked up mother.
‘A haunting portrait of juvenile delinquency that ranks among the most powerful in American cinema.’ – Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader
Manz’s character Cebe is cocky, insecure, spiky, emotionally longing and confused. It’s genuinely one of the best representations of a teenage on film.
Dennis Hopper took the direction of the film on after the original director’s first disastrous week.
‘Hopper, as director and uncredited writer, extends no hope whatsoever, and there’s something vital and cleansing about the movie’s thorough nihilism.’ – Rob Gonsalves, eFilmCritic.com
Hopper rewrote the script away from a study of a child psychologist and teenage girl into something darker … he gave Linda Manz a vehicle for her authentic portrayal of a street-smart kid (she literally grew up on New York streets – see this interview HERE where she mischievously twinkles as she recounts growing up in New York (watch from 0.50)
Out of The Blue was originally was meant to be a sequel to Easy Rider (focussing on Hopper’s character – er, how? … yes, exactly … PLOT SPOILER - Billy (Hopper in Easy Rider) dies so not sure how this would work BUT it’s more that it’s a window into a destructive time (entering the 80s) with a truly immoral damaged dark (so dark) person imploding with disastrous consequences in a small post-industrial town. It’s horrible but you can’t turn away …
The scenes on the streets of small-town America - such as the diner and the bowling alley in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon/ Washington) - seem filtered through a seventies/ early eighties Kodachrome washed out worn out post-industrial lens.
Hopper directs some beautiful scenes – the tracking in the diner when we first meet Cebe’s mother is entrancing (mixed with Linda Manz’s movement – she moves in such a cocksure but elegant way…
‘In the late Dennis Hopper’s mind a better film than Bertolucci’s Luna and his own Easy Rider, the actor-director’s brilliant, still shockingly subversive 1980 cherry bomb is as sad and unsettling as dysfunctional-family dramas come.’ – Aaron Hillis, Village Voice
The costumes are so authentic so spot on it’s easy to see why so many fashion designers and stylists discovered this once forgotten film and made it a cult classic.
It’s been given a 4k restoration helped in part by a Kickstarter promoted by Natasha Lyonne and Chloe Sevigny and by the work of Producers John Alan Simon and Elizabeth Karr who’ve made this all happen
Another Magazine on
facebook.com/OutOfTheBlueDennisHopper
facebook.com/Discovery-Productions
instagram.com/outofthebluefilm
The history of Out of The Blue
Despite critical acclaim at its original Cannes premiere in 1980, OUT OF THE BLUE went unreleased because it was considered too bleak for U.S. audiences. John Alan Simon, then a film critic/journalist, rescued the film from the shelf, secured distribution rights and took it on the road with Dennis Hopper back in 1982 to art house theaters across the U.S. including a 17-week record-breaking run at the Coolidge Corner Cinema in Boston and then NYC and Los Angeles theatrical releases.
“It’s incredibly important to us that OUT OF THE BLUE be preserved for future generations to experience its emotional impact and as the artistic achievement that helped re-establish Dennis Hopper as an important American director,” Elizabeth Karr for Discovery Productions.
“For me, this restoration project was pay-back for all I learned from Dennis Hopper when we originally took OUT OF THE BLUE on the road in 1982 after I rescued it from the shelf. He was an amazing artist and friend and OUT OF THE BLUE remains as unforgettable as he was and serves as an indelible tribute to the talents of Linda Manz,”
John Alan Simon
