Crimes
- Being a shameless ripoff of American Graffiti and Animal House, with 25-year-old high-schoolers named "Newbomb Turk" and "Dudley Laywicker" cruising a Beverly Hills drive-in and annoying the local stuffed shirts
- Attempting to merge vague social consciousness and smirking nostalgia by making loaded references to the conflict in Vietnam and "the car of the future, Studebaker"
- Stringing together episodes of humorless crudity, peppered with awkwardly smutty phrases like "bite my weenie" and "take a squirt"
Defender
Writer-director Floyd Mutrux
Tone Of Commentary
Earnest and self-satisfied. Because The Hollywood Knights made money (at a time when any teen movie with gratuitous nudity made money), Mutrux presumes that he broke new ground. "I always liked the idea of having a disc jockey narrate a picture," he says at the outset, as though no one had ever thought of that before. Later, he boasts, "The idea of guys trying to find a place to spy on girls… later, they made it fairly famous in Porky's." He also talks a lot about Knights fans who quote Robert Wuhl's prankster character and ask how they did the scene where the comedian farts "Volare."
What Went Wrong
Nothing, according to Mutrux, although he admits, "I took on too many people to tell too many stories." That would include the stories of nominal stars Michelle Pfeiffer and Tony Danza, who barely appear in the film.
Comments On The Cast
Mutrux offers surprisingly few comments on the cast, though he often mentions Wuhl's bright ideas. "He kept saying he was going to do it like De Niro. I said, 'Bob, don't go there.'"
Inevitable Dash Of Pretension
Just a dash? Prior to Knights, Mutrux directed well-regarded sensitive-young-people-in-L.A. movies like Dusty And Sweets McGee, so he clings doggedly to the idea that this movie is as relevant: "After Kennedy was assassinated, there was a whole change in the country. A lot of things that were held over from the '50s were phasing out. These car clubs and high-school fraternities were all changing. Their consciousness was different. Everyone was kind of moving to higher ground." And yet…
Commentary In A Nutshell
"[Studio head] Frank Price asked me what this movie was going to be about, and I said, 'Well, there's this guy who can fart "Volare,"' and he said, 'Let's make the movie.'"