I didn’t like Dudes the first time I saw it on a rented VHS. I was expecting Suburbia, and it’s not that. Was I supposed to believe Jon Cryer as the lead punk? The soundtrack had The Vandals, also with the legit punk show footage, but then the rest of the soundtrack featured the likes of Keel and WASP. but the rest And even for my very limited time in the punk scene, the punks looked a little cheesy—not as bad as the punks from shows like Quincy, but not the perfect punks from the aforementioned Suburbia. But this was 19881, and I was very concerned with what was “punk” and what wasn’t.
I had very high expectations for this film back then and it let me down. There were a lot of moments in the punk scene like this—I refer you to the scene in Repo Man when the Circle Jerks play an acoustic version of “Coup D’Etat” and Emilio Estevez says, “I can’t believe I used to like these guys.” Bands I waited all summer for came to town and sucked ass. I bought a new record by a band I liked and it was horrible. That was just part of the whole experience. But lately, when I saw Dudes was streaming on Prime and thought I should give it another chance.
I enjoyed it, for reasons that weren’t available to me then, and I thought about doing some behind-the-scenes research on the film. But I was beaten to that by Will Harris in a fantastic and thorough post here on Substack.
But let me back up and tell you why I had high expectations: Penelope Spheeris made the two best punk films ever: The Decline of Western Civilization and Suburbia. There are a few other punk docs like Another State of Mind and films like Repo Man (the soundtrack is basically a punk starter kit), and maybe if you were lucky enough, you got to see The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, which I didn’t get to see until I moved to San Francisco and saw it on a twin bill with Sid and Nancy at the old Strand theater on Market Street, back when they still allowed smoking in the balcony. But Penelope’s films were must-see for every young punker—you just weren’t really punk until you had seen them—it was like a subculture confirmation process.
If you weren’t living in a coastal urban area in the ‘80s, it was really difficult to see pictures of punk bands2, much less documentary video. Most of the images of punks came from weird TV shows, such as the Agent Orange episode of 21 Jump Street or the notorious skinhead episode of Oprah. And many a sitcom and drama had a punk episode that looked absolutely ridiculous.
But while we may have been far from a cool record store and much farther from a punk-booking venue, it was the peak time of video stores, and they often had no idea what was on the shelves. In hicktown America, the mom and pops of the business ordered titles from a line item in a catalog, unaware of what they were, but all they knew is their business depended on having a lot of different titles3. So you had small towns in fundamentalist populations with shelves of Penelope’s films, Troma films, Spike & Mike animation collections, and indie slashers.
Decline, as we called it, not only had a great lineup of bands, but we also got to see what we were supposed to look like in the crowd, which was monumentally important. Oh, the irony of every “no fucks given” subculture that has many fucks to give! We all wanted to look like we were born at a Stooges show and grew up jaded children with our playpens in CBGBs. The last thing I wanted then was to look like a poser. The shame of not always having been punk!
Suburbia was a revelation. In California, punks lived in abandoned houses, stole their food, and went to see awesome shows! The movie showed us lifestyle more importantly than exposing us to the music. I looked carefully at the scenes to figure out how to be legit. And it’s why, when I pictured myself being seen from the squares in public, that in my mind, I walked in slow motion with a cool soundtrack.
And when I took a spoken word stage for the first time at a punk venue, which forever changed the direction of my life, I got my confidence and enthusiasm by picturing myself as an outtake from Penelope’s films. Poetry is punk, too!
This time, watching Dudes, I enjoyed it as more of a midnight movie than a sequel to my punk-Bible films. Three punks go on a roadtrip and run afoul of gun-toting redneck weirdos. There’s a scene with The Vandals, drugs, violence, and ghostly visions. Lee Ving from Fear as the bad guy! What’s not to like?
I really enjoyed how hard the two main characters wanted to be super punk, dressing the part crossing the desert, and sleeping fully decked out in their spikey bracelets and combat boots—it reminded me of my insistence to wear a leather biker jacket in the peak of a St. Louis summer. The leads were no more legit than any of the rest of us, as noted by Cryer’s Sid Vicious-copycatted padlock necklace.
Speaking of Jon Cryer, I got in mind that this film was a weird Pretty in Pink sequel—Duckie when from being into College Rock (as we called alternative rock back then) into punk, and Dudes was what happened to him after graduating high school. And while I was much bigger than he, I’m sure my babyface was no more intimidating than his at the time. When I see old pictures of my punk friends, I can’t help but think how cute we were, not the savage urban primitives we thought we were, but in our defense, we did freak out the squares.
And how charming Flea was in his role—had he had a few more good roles, might we have been spared the decades of horrible RHCP albums that came later? There’s no contesting his charisma; he sucked the gravity out of every scene he was in, and I think he could have made a commanding lead actor had he gone down that road.
Had Dudes not had my very high expectations of Spheeris, I probably would have liked it in that space in my head where it will go now: odd culty films like Rubin and Ed or The Dark Backward.
I like to judge an artist by their best work. Spheeris not only made these two films, but The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years is an all-timer, which as far as I know, was the first ironic comedy documentary. If you get a chance, see the trilogy on Blu-Ray from Shout—the extras are amazing and the video and sound are perfect. And she also gave us Wayne’s World, which could have easily sucked as bad as most of the SNL films but was handled perfectly.
It may have been later. I’m guessing the year. The film came out in 1987 but I definitely saw it on video after moving to California in 1988.
Shoutout to the few seminal early punk books, like Hardcore California.
For more on this era, check out Roger Corman’s How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime and Lloyd Kaufman’s All I Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger. Before Blockbuster came along, video stores ordered just one copy of everything. As teens, we spent a lot of time looking at the weird stuff no one else rented, since the new stuff was always checked out.
I only saw this once in the theater and remember having a similar reaction—why can’t the punks look punker, like in Repo Man? I remember it had a couple of memorable moments but overall was kind of cheesy. Now I’m curious to maybe revisit it again.
I did end up rewatching—fun, scruffy movie with a tone that’s all over the place. “Our friend was just murdered in cold blood but no time for trauma! We’ve got screwball hijinks to indulge!”