The pulse and abandon of a San Francisco rave, a wild underground dance party, are what writer- director Greg Harrison aims to capture in “Groove,” the new Sony Pictures Classics release that marks the erstwhile film editor’s first feature. A rave, Harrison noted in a recent Dallas interview, is kind of “a technologically advanced be-in,” showing “a continuum from sixties culture. It’s not anything completely new, it’s a permutation of a certain way of life, a counter-culture. Though raves in different locales have what Harrison described as “different flavors, the subculture of raves tends to be essentially the same, especially when you look at the social ideas behind it, often based on creativity, personal expression, and acceptance.” He added that “one of the age-old premises of rave” is the acronym PLUR–meaning peace, love, unity and respect.
Harrison said that “Groove” “definitely comes from a personal place. I didn’t really set out to be the voice of the [rave] scene, or [to make] the definitive movie on the rave scene. It really came out of some personal experience in the underground rave scene in San Francisco…. The script really was based on my experiences between 1993 and 1996 in the scene.”
The Michigan native explained that the idea for the film grew out of his life first as a film editor in Los Angeles and then as a writer and
composer in San Francisco. “In 1993 I went to my first rave in L.A., and was really struck by the music–the power of the music on the dance floor and the power of the DJ and the skill of the DJ. As an editor I really related to the DJ as a live editor, because he uses raw material like footage–it just happens to be records, and he puts them down and he juxtaposes them, and he thinks of the through line and the dramatic arc of the night. I was really entranced by that, the whole culture. And my interest in the scene and the music grew parallel to my pursuit of my personal creativity. I moved to San Francisco to pursue my own writing and my own creative voice…and was struck by the creativity in the scene.” It was the confluence of Harrison’s own drive for creativity and his recognition of the creative power of the scene he was involved in that led to his writing the script. “For me,” Harrison said, “this movie is about taking all the expectations and cliches and generalities about raves and turning them on their head by being specific…. I tried to be as specific as I could, because one thing about the rave scene is that it’s quite diverse, and there’s a lot of different kinds of parties, a lot of different kinds of music, a lot of different reasons raves are thrown. So I really just focused on a few rave collectives that put on parties in San Francisco, very much like the one you see in the film, and tried to be as specific as I could…. It was about capturing the underground scene [and] the people that make it happen in San Francisco.” 
“The characters come from people that I’ve known and met,” Harrison continued, “and I did a lot of research, interviewing people–a lot of DJs and a lot of ravers, asking them about their personal experiences. I was trying to get at the question of ‘why’–what’s so compelling about the experience, why are people drawn to this sort of event? And so I did really go into the scene to find out.”The intense desire to make the picture real entered into actual shooting as well. “In the production of it we involved the scene heavily,” Harrison explained. “All the DJs are real, the music is authentic music made in people’s home studios on their MACs, and all that sort of stuff.” The hope was “to capture all the creativity that’s within the scene, the grassroots scene–a really vibrant community of people that have this ‘do-it-yourself’ thought. So we involved them in the production of the film quite heavily.” That notion led to casting choices that mixed professionals from stage and screen with non-actors who were actually part of the scene. Lead Hamish Linklater, for example, had done a lot of Shakespeare on the East Coast but had never attended a rave, which made him a perfect fit for the role of David, the reluctant first-timer dragged to the party by his younger brother. Many of his co-stars (as well as the extras), however, came from the scene itself, selected through open casting calls held in San Francisco. “As a director the real challenge was to stitch the two worlds”–of actors and ravers–“together,” Harrison said with a smile. “The key was the camaraderie between the two worlds–a real fusion and a real openness to trade back and forth.”
The shape of the picture, Harrison went on, was determined by its subject. “It was never my goal in making the film to superimpose a false drama on top of the milieu of raving,” he said. “I wanted to let the rave be the structure, be the story-line.” So the film follows the party chronologically as the evening progresses, showing the arrangements made by the promoters, the succession of DJs and their different sets, and the experiences of various ravers as the night goes on; the intensity builds up to the appearance of superstar DJ John Digweed, who, as Harrison put it, “supplies the emotional climax to the dance floor” as his set closes out the event. 
What Harrison hopes the picture gets across is the idea that the rave is an intensely collaborative experience involving the promoters, the DJs and the crowd. “The promoters mix the DJs and the DJs mix the records,” he explained. “There’s a conscious effort to craft an emotional experience for the attendees–and it’s a very participatory event: the party is the people. The DJs need the dancers as much as the dancers need the DJs.” By the climax, he added, he aims for the film to show “how the music brings people into an altered state on the dance floor. That for me was the final exclamation point of what I felt the rave scene was about–an existential joy and cathartic experience that you don’t really find much in society.” 
And if Harrison’s done his job well, viewers of “Groove” may vicariously feel the same sense of release and catharsis that ravers feel directly on the dance floor.

Grade: B

Julien Temple’s new documentary dealing with the revolutionary
Punk Rock band The Sex Pistols can be bookended with his
earlier “The Great Rock and Roll Swindle” (1980), which told
the tale of the group’s brief, notorious history and ultimate
collapse from the point of view of its self-serving manager
Malcolm McLaren, who gave himself total credit for the Pistols’
meteoric rise and put blame for their calamitous descent on the
unruly members of the band. The second picture covers much of
the same territory, but is told from the band’s perspective,
with McLaren portrayed in a far less favorable light. The
juxtaposition of the two makes for an intriguing experiment in
oral and cinematic history. And on its own terms, “The Filth
and the Fury” (the title, of course, has a Shakespearean twist,
but actually derives from a headline about the Pistols’ antics
which appeared in a Fleet Street tabloid) is certainly engaging
to watch and often compelling to ruminate on. Using lots of
found footage and old interview tapes, as well as newly-
recorded conversations, Temple manages not only to rehearse
the unhappy story of the group’s rise and fall, but to capture
quite effectively the English milieu of the time, with its
combination of economic woe, gaudy gashion and political unrest.
A good deal of the credit has to go to editor Niven Howie, who
creates some really impressive cinematic collages that catch
the frenzied spirit of the late seventies in Britain (even if
most American viewers won’t recognize figures such as Harold
Wilson and Edward Heath, who pass by in the blur). Temple also
uses found footage well to suggest that the Pistols’ raucous,
offensive style had roots in the British music-hall tradition
and the grosser side of English TV vaudeville. And the excerpts
from the Pistols’ concerts, contemporary television appearances
and offstage antics still retain the power simultaneously to
shock, amuse and appall. One can also be taken by the periodic
appearances of Laurence Olivier as the smirking villain of his
filmization of “Richard III” as witty commentary on the fashion
in which the Pistols played on their bad-boy images during their
brief time in the sun (the credit sequence is patterned after
that of Oliver’s film, too); they also amusingly reinforce
the Shakespearean tone of the title.

It must be added, however, that anybody who’s seen Temple’s
earlier film on the group and/or read John (Johnny Rotten)
Lydon’s 1994 autobiography won’t find a great deal here that’s
terribly surprising or revelatory. The new interviews with
band members–all of them, except for Rotten, curiously filmed
with their faces obscured in shadow, to no apparent point–
pretty much reiterate their old diatribes against McLaren, who’s
heard speaking through a rubber bondage mask of the sort he
used to sell in a London boutique. The visual flourishes
involved in such proceedings are intriguing, but there doesn’t
seem much purpose behind them except to energize the recycled
material.

On the other hand, it’s certainly useful to have a few bits
from a late-in-life interview by Sid Vicious, the band member
who was accused of murdering his girlfriend and later died of
a drug overdose (and who was, it appears, quite instrumental in
insuring the group’s demise, too), even if his remarks aren’t
entirely coherent and their presence won’t displace the primacy
still rightfully held by Alex Cox’s “Sid and Nancy” (1986) on
the subject, whatever the dramatic licenses taken in that
renegade biopic.

“The Filth and the Fury” doesn’t exactly fill an enormous gap
in material on The Sex Pistols, therefore, and viewers familiar
with their story will find a good deal that’s repetitious and
redundant here. Nevertheless the group’s music, sizable
chunks of which are included, still has surprising power and
resonance in spite of (or perhaps because of) their rather
serious technical limitations, and Temple and Howie’s swift,
virtuoso editing keeps the eye and ear engaged even when
they’re not being offered anything terribly new. If you’re
unacquainted with the subject, moreover, you should find that
the piece stands on its own quite nicely and provides some
fascinating cultural history to boot.