Photo Courtesy of MPRM
Even if you don’t like horror
movies, you might not want to rule out a trip to the theater to see Detention. The new film, by Joseph Kahn the
director of the motorcycle cult classic Torque,
looks like a slasher flick on the surface but it’s actually a multi-genre
adventure. And it’s chock full of so many pop culture references even we
couldn’t keep up.
At a recent press event that
we attended on behalf of ScreenCrave.com, director Joseph Kahn talked about the
movie’s many nods to the ‘90s. “One of the big debates we had, the
screenwriter and I, was over Oasis. Because he thought [lead character] Clapton
Davis [played by Josh Hutcherson] as a music critic, would not like Oasis and
it was too obvious. And I explained to him that an 18-year-old watching this
film doesn't even know who Oasis is. That obvious '90s reference now becomes
obscure and by him saying it, it makes him sound more like an interesting film
critic to an 18-year-old. And he was like, 'No, I still don't agree with you.'
So then I wrote in the line, 'They're a Beatles cover band.' And he was like,
'Okay, we're cool.'”
If any 30 year-old on the
planet has his finger on the Internet generation’s pulse, it’s Joseph. While he
dabbles in directing feature films, his day job is directing music videos for
the likes of Lady Gaga and Eminem.
He talked about being in
touch with youth culture, saying ‘I have a day job that's very odd. Most people
by the time they're 25 glom on to one part of music and that's what they listen
to for the rest of their lives. I'm turning 40 this year, yet I still have
every record company sending me every new hot track to me to do music videos, so
I'm chained by the foot to pop culture. So I still know what kids dress like. I
know what they speak like. I hang out with them, unfortunately from some
people's perspective. It's just the nature of my day job. I am a freak of
nature that has to understand them.”
But
when writing Detention with film
critic Mark Palermo, Joseph turned to his own teen years for
inspiration. He remarked about his multi-genre movie, “It's a mash-up. You have
a little Donnie Darko. You have The Fly. You have Back to the Future. You have Scream.
You have Freaky Friday. Breakfast Club. Raising Arizona. It's a fusion of almost everything in the way that
I think that society today tends to take cultural memory. And because there's
an Internet, it's on there forever.”
In fact
Joseph believes that thanks to technology the younger generations looks at the
concept of the past differently. “That's the way that I think that kids see the
world today. For instance, retro ideas, they actually speak to each other using
retro concepts now. Like for instance wearing a vintage t-shirt, you didn't
really have vintage t-shirts 20 years ago unless they were really vintage. But
today you have Hop Topic and Urban Outfitters and things like that. It's
because the Internet culture has kept that memory alive constantly. So the film
on a certain level retains a certain culture memory.”
He
continued, “A lot of the '90s references are meaningless, but it doesn't
matter. Do kids really understand what they're wearing when they wear a Led
Zeppelin shirt? Some of these kids? No. But it looks cool and it seems to have
some sort of cultural cache… I describe it as that, kids today, they're sold so
much by corporations and media and commercials and advertising and music
videos, that I do. A lot of times they almost retain that stuff and wear it,
like that's the concept of a hipster is to own it and redefine it on their own
level. It doesn't have to mean Coca-Cola when they wear Coca-Cola. It may mean
I am hipper than Coca-Cola or I am controlling Coca-Cola. It's a way of
retaining control and meaning in a world where everything is being told to you,
to think in a certain way.”
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