LA Punk Comes to Nashville

This Friday and Saturday, the Belcourt Theatre, in Nashville, Tennessee, will screen British filmmaker Alex Cox’s 1984 debut feature, Repo Man, as part of its weekly midnight movie program. Pulsing with the rhythms of Iggy Pop, Black Flag, and other punk icons, this outlandish send-up of Reagan-era politics follows the adventures of an aging repo man (Harry Dean Stanton) and the fresh-faced young rocker (Emilio Estevez) he lures into working for him. Great Dutch cinematographer Robby Müller’s anarchic compositions capture the wild urban sprawl of Los Angeles in both its grungy daytime textures and its neon-lit nighttime glow. As Sam McPheeters explains in his liner notes for our edition, Cox’s “vehemently odd” sci-fi comedy was an unlikely candidate for mainstream success, but the film’s emergence during the golden age of VHS and its edgy hit soundtrack secured its status as an eighties cult classic. In the clip below, Iggy Pop talks about his experience contributing to the film’s iconic music.