If any proof was needed that public sentiment had turned against disco, it came in the form of Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Ill. on July 12, 1979. The brainchild of famed baseball promoter, Bill Veeck, Disco Demolition Night drew more than 90,000 to a stadium that held only 52,000.
In between games of a doubleheader, fans charged onto the field, smashing and burning disco records and causing so much general mayhem that the second game was canceled. It is safe to say that much of the populace hated disco as the 1970’s drew to a close.
There is a distinct difference between not liking something and hating it. The people that showed up at Comiskey that night didn’t just dislike disco, they hated it. Surely the hatred displayed in Chicago was a microcosm of the backlash that disco was experiencing around the country.
On June 20, 1980, almost a year after Disco Demolition Night, Can’t Stop the Music was released in theaters. The musical was a fake origin story of one of disco’s most notorious torchbearers, the Village People.
Not surprisingly, the film flopped in theaters, making only $2 million dollars (it had a $20 million budget).
Can’t Stop the Music is ostensibly a story about the Village People, but is actually the story of songwriter and DJ, Jack Morell (Steve Guttenberg). In the film’s opening, we find Morell quitting his job at a record store because he is worried he will be late for his DJ spot that evening, even though it is clearly the middle of the day and his gig isn’t until late that night.
When he exits the store, he is inexplicably wearing roller stakes, in which he frolics throughout the title sequence. As the cheesy song about New York fades out, he runs into his roommate and former model, Samantha Simpson (Valarie Perrine).
As they arrive home, we quickly learn that Morell has “little brother status” with Samantha. Also in the house at the time is a man dressed as a Native American, except for a pair of daisy dukes.
The Native American in Daisy Dukes, Samantha and Morell discuss something.
I understand camp, and throughout the film, without much historical perspective, I tried hard to ascertain if this was indeed camp. I couldn’t tell, but I doubt it.
At the club that night, Morell DJs (playing his song about Samantha) while we get excessive up-skirt shots of the Native American dancing on the stage while couples dry hump around him.
The next day, Samantha reveals to Morell that she actually has connections to the record industry, an ex-boyfriend. I marveled at the laziness of the screenwriters. One moment, she is calling Morell her little brother, the next she is revealing something that would be known even to an acquaintance. A litany of these lazy, unexplained moments litter the film.
She also lets Morell know that his voice sucks.
Samantha then leaves the house and, one-by-one, runs into different “people” she knows on the street, all who have (previously unknown to her) singing talent. One of these people, a mustachioed guy, gets a crazy imagination montage that has to be seen to be believed. (Sadly, I couldn’t find this clip on YouTube, you are just going to have to trust me, it was WEIRD!)
They decide to form the Village People. Then Ron White (Bruce Jenner Kardashian), a yuppie lawyer, shows up and chastises Samantha for hanging out with the village scum. Eventually they hold even more auditions and add the hairy-chested biker who sings “Danny Boy.”
Inexplicably, the yuppie lawyer soon sees the error in his ways and befriends the group, becoming kind of a defacto manager, a role that is already being played by Morell and Samantha. Perhaps they just needed someone in the film to wear this shirt:
Jenner showing off his hairy midriff.
Can you guess where this band, which is short on funds, decides to rehearse?
The YMCA, of course.
This basically amounts to a montage of them doing the song that terrorizes me at every sporting event and wedding in the YMCA. Some of the footage includes men pumping iron, men racing each other, men wrestling and a bunch of men naked in the shower.
Throughout the film, things are introduced and then dropped, only to return later in the laziest manner possible, at the end of the film.
That is the case with Samantha’s music producer ex-boyfriend, who refused to sign the band throughout the movie, only to relent in an airplane with Morell and, for some reason, his mother, coercing the producer, while they are on their way to San Francisco for the Village People’s biggest gig to date.
Then the yuppie lawyer proposes to Samantha and she says, “yes.”
The Village People perform the title track while confetti rains from the ceiling and Morell, Samantha and the yuppie lawyer dance with their arms around each other on stage.
Sometimes I wonder if plot, in musicals like this, is just a device to get to the next song, which actually kind of reminds me of a different type of movie where the dialogue is also superfluous but music is not the climax (if you know what I mean).
Any way you slice it, this was likely a terrible movie in 1980 and it remains a terrible movie today. The good thing is that the title isn’t actually true, I could stop the music, and the second the credits rolled, I did!
Verdict: KEEP IN THE HEAP
Films to watch instead: 1961’s West Side Story, a Best Picture and my favorite musical of all-time. Also, 1984’s Best Picture, Amadeus, about Mozart and his rival, Salieri.
Best Picture goes to: Ordinary People ’80- Psychiatrist tries 2 save mourning family from self-destruction. Film feels painfully dated, even with message of hope. -@NLH_13
Next time in the Hollywood Trash Heap: 1981’s Mommie Dearest
