Movie Details
| Title: | Rock Opera | |
| Director: | Bob Ray | |
| Year: | 1999 | |
| Genre: | Stoner | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 06.15.19 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 06.15.19 | Internet | I stumbled upon this and wound up watching it... pretty much just to see some Austin circa 1999. I feel like it was sort of going for somewhere between Slacker and True Romance but it wound up just being a lot of scenes of dudes doing drugs. Kind of funny, this director Bob Ray would go on to create these absolutely bizarre... ads? shorts? collaborations with a controversial lawyer here in town named Adam Reposa which are pretty great. I definitely feel like people like Bob Ray and Adam Reposa and maybe Alex Jones represent the fiercely independent strain of Austin culture... and by that I guess I mean they're fuckin' nuts. This movie felt like an indie from the early 90s except it was made just a few years before I got here. Looking at imdb, it looks like this might not've premiered until 2005, just a month or two after I moved. It feels a lot older than that, with lots of key ignitions and pay phones and whatnot. Sort of as usual though, most of Austin's cinematic output hasn't been as good as it should be. This starts off slow and meandering then becomes low-grade psychedelia followed by amateurish thriller. But there seems to be a ton of local bands both on the soundtrack and acting in the movie, which I suppose has some value. Mostly it just felt like a super weird artifact of this city and I kinda liked it seen through that lens. |
