Licorice Pizza: OST OCD

5/20/2007

OST OCD - "S.F.W."

I came home early from the bar Friday night, put on Comedy Central and was surprised by a showing of “SFW.” They were airing the 1994 flick as part of their late night “Secret Stash” series. (“No commercials, no editing and some really sweet curse words. It's our Secret Stash, man.”)

I thought I had seen the movie before, but it didn’t seem too familiar. I concluded that was probably a result of one or more of the following: a) I’d seen it, but a LONG time ago; b) I’ve never seen it; or c) Too many beers to remember ever having seen it.

Your basic plot summary, from All Movie:

Embracing the supposed nihilism and cynicism of the “slacker” generation, “S.F.W.” caused nary a blip on the media-saturated cultural radar screen that it criticized. Stephen Dorff stars as Cliff Spab, an aimless, hard-drinking youth. Spab becomes a national hero when he is one of several people held hostage by gun-toting terrorists in a convenience store. He doesn't care much about his own life or anything else, and his attitude of “so fucking what?” translates into debates with his terrorist captors and gloomy pronouncements that charm viewers. After a month-long siege, a crisis erupts when the store runs out of beer and junk food, so Cliff finds himself a free man whose celebrity image is emblazoned on t-shirts and whose presence is requested at a rock concert where he is required to do nothing other than appear. In the meantime, Spab's girlfriend Wendy becomes a ubiquitous talk show guest. Ostensibly a satire of the celebrity-obsessed culture of the 1990s, the film was withheld from distribution for a year because of thematic similarities to Oliver Stone's “Natural Born Killers”.

You might recognize Wendy as a very young (18 years old) Reese Witherspoon in one of her first leading roles. An almost-as-young Tobey Macguire also has a small role as “Al”. Jefery Levy directed SFW, which was based on a novel by Andrew Wellman.

The soundtrack reflects the heavy, “SFW” attitude of the film. Along with the couple of songs I’ve posted today, Monster Magnet and Radiohead’s first big hits are on the album and there are also tracks from Suicidal Tendencies and Soundgarden. As a reviewer on Amazon said, “This disc will surely please any metal-head with a short attention span.”