Best Reels: Cult Cuts | "Out of the Blue" is Quintessential Vancouver Cult
I am unabashed in my fierce admiration for the late Dennis Hopper. At first, it was because the notorious renegade of film had the uncanny (but not unwelcome) ability to spring up, seemingly out of smoke-thick air, in all of my most treasured cult films, from Blue Velvet (1986), to The American Friend (1977), to River’s Edge (1986). But later, as I read more on Hopper, I couldn’t help but become fascinated by his mythos off-screen; by the stories recounting his intense, uncompromising personality, his legendary party status and, perhaps most notably, his rugged pursuit of art and enlightenment.
Then, a little over a year ago, when I first watched his third film as director, Out of the Blue, my fandom reached dizzying new heights. With Out of the Blue, Hopper became the director of one of my all-time favourite films. The fact that it is filmed and set in my hometown of Vancouver, well—that just cemented everything.
John Alan Simon with Discovery Productions saw what was special in the film from the start. Thanks to actors Chloë Sevigny and Natasha Lyonne, as well as hundreds of crowdsourced donations, his efforts were recently bolstered, and Out of the Blue was able to see a 4K restoration in time for its 40th anniversary in 2020. This brought it to the Vancouver International Film Festival, where I first encountered it, as well as Venice Film Festival, and a number of other major screening events. Today, the campaign to bring the restored version of Hopper’s work to more theatres and wider audiences continues, Simon and Elizabeth Karr with Discovery Productions touring the film across North America. A Blu-ray and DVD of the restored print has recently hit France and the UK, courtesy of Potemkine and BFI, respectively. Discovery Productions has partnered with Severin Films to bring a new Blu-ray release of the film to the U.S. and Canada.
To introduce someone to this film, even today, gives one an extra rush, as it is almost as if the entire world is starting to catch wind of this cult masterpiece as we speak. While it is not as if the film had been dramatically outlawed or oppressed over the past forty years, it is true that it has existed primarily off the radar. This is not owing to the critical reception it received upon its premier at Cannes Film Festival in 1980—the film’s inititial London and Berlin reviews were raves—but it is the result of the film’s awkward, Canadian pedigree. Infighting amongst the film’s Canadian producers resulted when the film lost its Canadian status, and therefore tax shelter benefits among the producers. And elsewhere in North America, the film was judged to be too controversial and dark for the USA’s sunny Reagan era.
The film was initially developed as a made-for-TV movie in Canada, a saccharine and pandering family drama originally titled The Case of Cindy Barnes—or, “Cebe”. But Hopper hijacked the film two weeks after being cast, and gave it a fuel injection and a punk edge that turned it into something more potent. Hopper’s mad mutiny impressed the likes of critics Roger Ebert and Vincent Canby, but because its Canadian backers only had TV airplay envisioned, and because response from U.S. distributors was lacklustre, the film landed with a thud.
But punk is not dead. In its many years sitting shelved, Out of the Blue was still seen by the right people, and now it primal-screams out again. Like a stray clip of a voice projected through a CB radio, later picked up as a phantom signal, or like a punk revivalist band, Hopper’s vision is clawing its way out of obscurity.
Out of the Blue chronicles the rough, tumble, and bitterly tragic story of the fifteen-year-old Cebe (Linda Manz), a young girl who must struggle to accept her incarcerated father, Don (Hopper), back into her life. In her father’s absence, and with her mom (Sharon Farrell) falling into skeevy affairs and heroin use, Cebe finds her rearing in idols like Elvis and Johnny Rotten. This gives her a penchant for espousing odd strings of punk mantras she has co-opted, decking herself out in all denim (Canadian tuxedo, anyone?), smoking, and looking to stir up trouble just about everywhere. When Don comes crashing back into her homestead, her family isn’t made to feel any more “whole;” instead, their twisted dynamics are contorted into forms much more destructive. Cebe’s parents continue to antagonize one another—often under the influence of drugs and alcohol—Don’s crimes come back to haunt everyone, and Cebe leans further into delinquency in order to cope.
When I first finished Out of the Blue, I remember having felt devastated, even a little sick. There are times during Hopper’s gruff film that can seem excessively bleak and misanthropic, to the point where the film almost comes off as aggressively mean. Almost all of Hopper’s characters are detestable, and their actions morally repugnant on levels that usually go undocumented in film. In the end, grounds for redemption are all but completely decimated.
Evidently, Hopper looked at the original script for The Case of Cindy Barnes, then he looked at Vancouver in the late 70s—a city of “rude and rough energy,” “a port city, filled with burnt out leftovers warbling Elvis tunes on Hastings Street,” as Dorothy Woodend illustrates—and he saw a grim desperation he felt compelled to capture. No stranger to playing oddballs and scoundrels himself, once blacklisted from Hollywood, Hopper also probably felt like he needed to inflect his brand of anarchy into the film, and make horribly vivid his pessimistic worldviews. We see this most strikingly in his Don character. Hopper was never responsible for the heinous crimes that Don is seen committing, of course, but around the time of filming for Out of the Blue, the man was, as David Stewart writing for Please Kill Me clarifies, at the height of his excessive behaviour. Stories of Hopper’s unhinged antics abound; you have only to read further into Stewart’s article to learn of him pissing on the floors of his sets and dealing cocaine to his cast and crewmembers. One can only wonder what the script for The Case of Cindy Barnes was like before Hopper got his grubby hands on it, but one can bet it didn’t have much Hopper was interested in. Now, watching Out of the Blue, I can’t help but feel as if I am channeling Hopper’s exact wavelength, peering through his mad eyes at the wild world he rode for all it was worth.
But then, there is also the incomparable Linda Manz as Cebe. Out of the Blue is undeniably Hopper’s film, but what endears us to it today is Manz’s brave and bristling, full-of-bravado performance; a performance that goes toe-to-toe with Hopper’s larger-than-life presence and legend. As Cebe, she struts and pinballs around a grimy, late-70s Vancouver in a way that would make Nardwuar blush. She fires back at every institution she encounters with a moxie and impish persistence, as if setting the blueprint for Susan Berman’s Wren in Susan Seidelman’s punk classic Smithereens (1982). But Cebe is also layered beyond her put-on punk persona. When Out of the Blue begins, we see her as a capricious troublemaker, and maybe even a lost cause, but as the film progresses, and as we see her world constantly force her inside herself, we come to realize that beneath the leather jackets and the brash cussing, she’s just a little girl who wants to suck her thumb and play with her bear. Here, you realize that the punk mantras she spouts so devoutly are really the bright choruses that ring out amongst the film’s oppressive darkness.
Known previously for her breakout role as Linda in Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, Manz famously receded from the public eye and left the acting business shortly after Out of the Blue, only her third major role, but her small filmography left a formidable impression. Manz commands in Out of the Blue, which couldn’t have been an easy task, especially considering her environment both on-screen and off-screen was trying to corrupt and swallow her.
Finally, we come to maybe the film’s third major character, its setting of Vancouver, Canada. Though not a film that explicitly names its locale, Out of the Blue is still a film that unquestionably claims and owes itself to Vancouver. Major Vancouver landmarks are clearly visible in Hopper’s shots—from the Harbour Centre tower, to the Waterfront train yards, to a neon-illuminated Hastings Street—and Vancouver punk band The Pointed Sticks are even featured in a scene where Cebe attends a concert. Like other film enthusiasts in Vancouver, I’ve watched film after film that has been shot in Vancouver, looking for hints of recognizable storefronts or alleyways, but I’ve always been slightly disappointed to learn that these films are set in Seattle, San Francisco, or New York. (As this fantastic YouTube essay illuminates, Vancouver Never Plays Itself.) Out of the Blue, on the other hand, places its characters firmly in the dreary, mountain-backed skids of Vancouver’s Lower Eastside, an area that even today sees its streets populated by some of the city’s most down-and-out inhabitants. Hopper plunges his cameras into these scenes guerilla-style, his extended takes making one wonder just how many times his camera must have gotten bowled over accidentally. In many ways, watching Hopper’s film is like taking Hopper’s personal tour through Vancouver in 1979.
But as exhilarating and as personally fulfilling as Out of the Blue is for me, it is still hard to come out of the film not feeling like you’ve been through the ringer, like the world has stepped on your neck. Even in the film’s more “wholesome” scenes, a potential for calamity always infects the frame, whether it is Don’s insistence on having booze on him wherever he goes, or Don’s friend Charlie (Don Gordon) trying to weasel his way into Kathy’s good graces. Hopper’s Vancouver is damningly depraved, and, unfortunately, it seems to offer no way out. This is the Vancouver many are, tragically, grappling with today, and while it is easy to ignore these stories as you pass them on the city’s streets, films like Out of the Blue make it glaringly, urgently clear that these stories may not discontinue to exist.
Beyond what we can extrapolate from Out of the Blue, though, what we have to truly admire about it today is how unapologetic and gutsy it is. It is a film belonging to a league in which few other films exist. This will make it easy to dismiss for some, but hard to shake for others. In other words, Out of the Blue is essential cult, and this viewer wouldn’t accept the film any other way. If Hopper were still with us, I would bet he would feel the same.
Out of the Blue continues to tour around North America, and this writer would recommend you do everything in your power to catch it if you can.