I Want You Around by Armstrong Stephen B

Author:Armstrong, Stephen B.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Globe Pequot
Published: 2023-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

DOWN AT THE ROCKATORIUM

The Ramones had just three days of shooting before their commitment to Rock ‘n’ Roll High School was up. With all their school-set scenes in the can, now the guys were needed to film the concert sequence at the Rockatorium, the movie’s musical centerpiece, along with a scene leading up to the spectacular show, when the band arrives at the club by convertible, and one following, a backstage meeting between Riff and the band, which plays in the finished movie like a parody of Arkush’s first conversation with Marky, Dee Dee, Joey, and Johnny at Hurrah.

There wasn’t a single rock club in Los Angeles in 1978 that had the layout or look that Arkush wanted in his effort to evoke the Fillmore East, which was his intention, and he and Finnell and Cundey for the scenes based at the Rockatorium wound up using three different sites: the Whisky a Go Go and the Roxy on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood for interiors and, downtown, the Mayan, a porno theater, which would serve for the rock hall exterior. These three venues were all scenic, and the use of them, rented one day each, one day at a time, was cheaper than trying to create anything comparable on a leased soundstage.

The first day of shooting the Rockatorium scenes, Tuesday, December 11, took place at the Mayan on South Hill Street, which was going to provide the outdoor space where Riff camps in front of a box office to have first chance to buy tickets for the upcoming concert. The Mayan had been built in 1927 as an homage to Mexico’s pre-colonial history, with idealized renderings of life in the Yucatan and abstract designs made from vibrantly hued tiles that ran along the building’s walls. The Mayan had a recessed entrance and a wide sidewalk running along the front and an enormous rectangular marquee, which, that day, had “THE ROCKATORIUM PRESENTS THE RAMONES” spelled across it. Promotional stills of the band clung to the Mayan’s arabesque walls. Posters promoting Road to Ruin, with Holmstrom’s cartoon and the band’s name written in bright yellow (a design element introduced by Spencer Drate), had been hung up over the spicy posters the theater used to lure in its regular crowd.

The day’s first shots had P. J. as Riff setting up a folding chaise lounge outside the Rockatorium’s box office. Riff makes the space outside the Rockatorium as much a home as she can. She’s brought along a drying rack for clothes, and a cardboard record-store display (contributed by Sire Records’ PR department) of the Ramones for company: same lineup again, when Tommy was still in the band, but larger than the black-and-white cutout of the band in her bedroom. Riff briefly obscures the band’s first drummer’s face with a scarf. She herself wears catsup-red leggings, buttercup-yellow socks, a shiny sateen red-rose jacket with blue stripes on the sleeves, plus oversized high-tops. She’s also brought along food—pizza—that she offers to Joey’s cardboard likeness. A massive thermos dangles from the armrest of her beach chair.

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