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Director: Randall Jahnson. Director of Photography: John Hart.
Shot at the Sepulveda Dam in LA's San Fernando Valley the weekend of May 12 and 13, 1984.
Bill Judkins was behind the second camera, a hand-held, spring-wound 16mm Bolex. Crew included Carson Lestikow, Rick Perkins, Richard Green, and Jon Black.
The machine gun bullets strafing the band were the handiwork of a wonderful pyro, "Crazy Phil" Mikkelson, who rigged a string of fire crackers to a car battery.
From the director: At the same location we shot an alternative scenario in which the Minutemen were World War II GIs pinned down in a foxhole. They had helmets and prop weapons, and there were several realistic-looking hand grenades resting on the lip of the hole. Right in the middle of a take, a police helicopter suddenly appeared and hovered over the set. We started waving frantically, pointing to the cameras, trying to communicate that it was just a movie. It buzzed away, but since we were shooting without permits, we expected the cops to show at any second and close us down. We kept filming anyway and the cops never showed. Turns out, being an election year, Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale was speaking in the nearby park and the police were patrolling the perimeter. Needless to say, if that were to occur today, we all would have been arrested.
Footage of Reagan and the planes was lifted from "The Japanese Zero," a World War II training film, and from the famous "Why We Fight" series by director Frank Capra. Both are in the public domain.
The Los Angeles Times called it "A total crackup" and scored it higher than videos by Duran Duran, Bruce Springsteen, and Madonna. It made light rotation on MTV.
16 сен 2024
