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SLC Punk!

1998 film by James Merendino

SLC Punk! is a 1998 film about two punks living in Salt Lake City, Utah in the 1980s.

Directed & Written by James Merendino
God bless America...they're going to need it. #taglines

Stevo

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  • The thing with me and Bob and pretty much all of us was we hated rednecks, more than anything else, period. Because rednecks for us were pretty much America incarnate, and America? Well, fuck America!
  • Posers were people who looked like punks but they did it for fashion. And they were fools, they'd say "anarchy in the UK." What the fuck's that? Anarchy in the UK. What good is that to those of us in Utah, America? It was a Sex Pistols thing. They were British, they were allowed to go on about Anarchy in the UK. You don't live your life by lyrics.
  • See, to me, England was nothing more then a big fucking American state like North Dakota or Canada.
  • You see life is like that. We change, that's all. You see, the guy I am now is not the guy I was then. If the guy I was then met the guy I am now he'd beat the shit out of me. Those are the facts.
  • It's like fucking Jesus Christ took a shit and it landed right here, so you can be happy all you fucking want.
  • The Fight: What does it mean and where does it come from? An Essay:
    Homosapien. A man. He is alone in the universe. A punker. Still a man. He is alone in the universe, but he connects. How? They hit each other. Ooh! No clearer way to evaluate whether or not you're alive. Now, complications. A reason to fight. Somebody different. Difference creates dispute. Dispute is a reason to fight. To fight is a reason to feel pain. Life is pain. So to fight with reason is to be alive with reason. Final analysis: To fight, a reason to live. Problems and Contradictions: I am an anarchist. I believe that there should be no rules, only chaos. Fighting appears to be chaos and when we slam in the pit a show it is. But when we fight for a reason, like rednecks, there's a system. We fight for what we stand for, chaos, but fighting is a structure, to establish power, power is government and government is not anarchy. Government is war and war is fighting. The circle goes like this: our redneck skirmishes are cheap perversions of conventional warfare. War implies extreme government because wars are fought to enforce rules or ideals, even freedom. But other people's ideals forced on someone else, even if it is something like freedom, is still a rule; not anarchy. This contradiction was becoming clear to me in the fall of '85. Even as early as my first party, "Why did I love to fight?" I framed it, but still, I don't understand it. It goes against my beliefs as a true anarchist. But there it was. Competition, fighting, capitalism, government, THE SYSTEM. That's what we did. It's what we always did. Rednecks kicked the shit out of punks, punks kicked the shit out of mods, mods kicked the shit out of skinheads, skinheads took out the heavy metal guys, and the heavy metal guys beat the living shit out of new wavers and the new wavers didn't do anything. They were the new hippies. So what was the point? Final summation? None.
  • Another thing that pisses me off, talking about who started punk rock music. Was it...the Sex Pistols in England? Was it... the Ramones and the Velvet Underground in New York? "It was the Ramones!", "It was the Sex Pistols!" Who cares who started it?! It's music. I don't know who started it, and I don't give a shit. The one thing I know is that we did it harder, we did it faster, and we definitely did it with more love baby. You can't take that away from us.
  • What do you do when your foundation falls apart? I don't know. They don't teach you that in school.
  • Only posers die!
  • See Sean was fucked up, not the world. The world was just confused, and not the world really, just the people in it.
  • It wasn't that I loved Sandy—I knew that we had an understanding—but I discovered then that Chris was right. All things had systems, even me. I was about to beat the living shit out of this guy because he invaded my territory. It was my territory, no question about it, just like in the wild. I was following nature, nature was order, and order is the system.
  • And so there I was. I was gonna go to Harvard. It was obvious. I was gonna be a lawyer and play in the God-damned system, and that was that. I was my old man. He knew, so what else could I do? I mean, there's no future in anarchy; I mean let's face it. But when I was into it, there was never a thought of the future. I mean we were certain the world was gonna end, but when it didn't, I had to do something, so fuck it. I could always be a litigator in New York and piss the shit out of the judges. I mean that was me: a trouble maker of the future. The guy that was one of those guys that my parents so arrogantly saved the world for, so we could fuck it up. We can do a hell of a lot more damage in the system than outside of it. That was the final irony, I think. That, and well, this. And "fuck you" for all of you who were thinking it: I guess when all was said and done, I was nothing more than a God-damned, trendy-ass poser.

Heroin Bob

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  • Chemicals, man. They'll fuck you up.
  • Well, it's a crazy, fucked up world! And we're all just barely floating along, waiting for somebody that can walk on water.
  • I hate doctors, man. I hate 'em.
  • You're like a poet, dude!
  • Those doctors can kiss my ASS!
  • How Goes It?
  • If somebody called me somethin' that I wasn't, I could see getting mad.

Sean

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  • Satan is in the house, he killed my mom and turned her into a bull.
  • You're not Jesus! You're Bob!
  • You know what Bob? You ARE Jesus.
  • If I get off this chair, I'll drown—you wanna know why, Bob? Because I can't swim...

Sandy

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  • Beauty is the end, Stevo. The end.

Dialogue

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Stevo: You're a Nazi, dad.
Dad: How can I be a Nazi, Steven? I'm Jewish.
Heroin Bob: You know that shit you guys do? You're fucking yourselves up, man. Fucking acid, it never leaves your body. It's in your fucking spinal cord forever. Let me tell you something about the nature of chemicals, man. You know that dude, Napoleon? Yeah. He was banished to an island when the French got sick of him. That's right! He supposedly died of stomach problems, right? Wrong! He was actually poisoned over a long period of time; murdered by arsenic, a preservative. And you know how?
Stevo: No idea.
Heroin Bob: His hair.
Stevo: His hair.
Heroin Bob: His fucking hair! It was arsenic. You could tell how long he was being poisoned by following the traces of poison up his hair. Dude, dude, dude, if you do enough hits of it, you're dead!
Stevo: Really makes you think, doesn't it, Bob?
Heroin Bob: Th-think what?
Stevo: That chemistry's the wrong fucking major for a guy like you! It's the wrong major, Bob!
Heroin Bob: Well, you should lay off the acid anyways, man!
Stevo: Wait, time out. I just wanted to ask real quick, if I can. You believe in rebellion, freedom and love, right?
Mom: Absolutely, yes.
Dad: Rebellion, freedom, love.
Stevo: You two are divorced. So love failed. Two: Mom, you're a New Ager, clinging to every scrap of Eastern religion that may justify why the above said love failed. Three: Dad, you're a slick, corporate, preppy-ass lawyer. I don't really have to say anything else about you do I dad? Four: You move from New York City, the Mecca and hub of the cultural world to Utah! Nowhere! To change nothing! More to perpetuate this cycle of greed, fascism and triviality. Your movement of the people, by and for the people got you... nothing! You just hide behind some lost sense of drugs, sex and rock and roll. Ooooh, Kumbaya! I am the future! I am the future of this great nation which you, father, so arrogantly saved this world for. Look, I have my own agenda. Harvard, out. University of Utah, in. I'm gonna get a 4.0 in damage. I love you guys! Don't get me wrong, it's all about this. But for the first time in my life, I'm 18 and I can say "FUUUUUCK YOU!"
Dad: Steven, I didn't sell out son. I bought in. Keep that in mind. That kid's gonna make a hell of a lawyer, huh?
Mom: Yeah, he takes after his father. He's a son of a bitch.
Dad: Fuck you dear.
Mark: I had two bags of grass in this kitchen. They are always trying to stiff me, you know?
Stevo: Who is?
Mark: Who? Everybody. You know I give to everybody, Stevo. You know that. And they just go ahead and try to take whatever they want. It makes me want to kill...which I've done in the past, believe me. I'm not saying it makes me a man or anything. I'm just passing on the information.
Stevo: When did you kill?
Mark: In Miami I shot two men. Why do you think I'm here? 'Cause I love this place? 'Salt Lake Shitty'? They tried to rob me, so I shot them in the head. You have to put at least one bullet in the head just to make sure.
Stevo: Get out of here. Come on. You didn't kill anybody. Fuck you.
Mark: You don't believe me, huh? Well...[pulls revolver out of a nearby drawer]
Stevo: Hey.
Mark: With this. You want to be a cowboy, I show you cowboy. [waves gun around at Stevo]
Stevo: Come on. Just put that thing away. I hate those things. [laughs] Put it away, I get the joke. Now put it away.
Mark: When I was a kid, my family died in a crash.
Stevo: [closes the open drawer] I know.
Mark: You know? My mother told me to buckle up because things were going to get bumpy...so I did. I looked at her, and she smiled. And then like this, boom, the plane was going down. My dad was next to the pilot, and he told us not to worry. But, hey, even at five I knew we had trouble because the pilot was crying. So I looked at my sister and she was like "Oh, man. We're getting close". So I looked at my mom again, and she smiled at me again...and so this time I smiled. And then we hit the ground, and something came through that plane...and cut my mother's head off. So now this head was flying straight at me, and she never took her eyes off of me. That's when I passed out. And when I woke up, my family was all around me in pieces. I saw my mother's arm, my sister's leg...my brother's head...but I couldn't find my father. I wanted to, though...'cause I was going to kick his FUCKIN' dead body - 'Cause he lied. You know what I'm trying to tell you, Stevo? It's so easy, so easy to get it taken away from you. And they try...every chance they get, they try.
Stevo: It's bad...I mean, it's really bad.

Cast

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