Modern Vespa

and now I don't know which is my more pressing need:

1) A trip to the vintage Vespa store;
2) A trip to the sea shore;
3) A trip to rehab.

Good Lord. A duffle coat. Before all the rest, in order.

Don't you just want to make out against a building and get lucky...!

I cast my vote in favor of the seashore. I might have to get out there since it is a lovely 73 degrees in LA.

Maken out is better than the sea shore....

Making out on the seashore is even better...just be careful to not get sand in your mouth.

I just want to go sing in the bath tub

I actually rode out to Beachy Head the other day (the cliff where Jimmy's scooter takes a dive off at the end) it was lovley and sunny and the car park was full of Subiru Imprezzas (sp?)
next time i go over there (about 15 miles from my house) i'll take some pics for you..

I have been thinking about taking a series of photos of the infamous spots in and around Brighton that feature in the film... what do you think?

That would be so outrageously cool, I'm not sure I could handle it. Those cliffs are amazing.

If you did that I would though my Brush at ya...

.....how young did Sting look? Really young!!!

Ok then, i'll just have to dig out the video and give it a watch just as a reminder and i'll get on the case. 1st stop ... the alley way where Jimmy does Lesley Ash

Way cool!

I was in Brighton with some rellies last August on the way back from IOW.

Loved it.

Did the Pier, but what was the best were some funky little back streets, down behind the railway station, with second hand stores and a hip little coffee shop called 'the beat', I think...?
All way Mod scooter cool...shops with porkpie hats, mid century modern knick-knacks and all.
Kicking myself I left the camera in the car.
Some pics would be great!

Are there any other scooter-featuring movies to be recommended?

I would choose the "Beaches"...Now where is that racoon tail?

Dave

Beaches with Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey?


That was so sad

I couldn't sit through that movie, Luckily I watched it on T.V., I changed channels.

Dave

Summer Holiday with Cliff Richard, always puts me in the scooter mode.

- that could be because of when and where i grew up, not quite sure.

Some small pics here, (fun site with movie location stuff and other info), but be fun to see more.

http://www.movie-locations.com/movies/q/quadrophenia.html

Here's one.

Not what you'd call 'hollywood', like...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4778132079018706516&q=vespa&hl=en

There are worse places to get sand when you are making out on the seashore.

when/if we get good weather in the UK and the rallies/rides begin I will be taking loads of video.

Got myself a helmet and can't wait to film a big ride out.

I'll probably stick em on youtube or me own website ... I'll keep you informed

Mick

Funnily enough I was there yesterday on riding the downs on my Mountain Bike.

A movie about a brat. Yay. A movie about a brat and his friends who are not as bratty as he is but still a little confused by the condition of youth. Just as goofy as the other Who movies but with scooters.

Anyone want to try making another scooter movie with a redeeming plot? Something where the lead character pulls a major dumbarse maneuver, takes responsibility for his actions and rides off into the sunset with his friends on scooters. I would love to see that.


The Roadbum

Hi Mick, you want to get yourself a camera of some sorts as well as a helmet, helmets dont focus very well and tend to run the barttery down very quickly

What the movie was "about" is open to interpretation. Your lack of empathy for the plight of the British angst-ridden youth of the time might place you as one of the characters in the movie; "I find your attitude quite perplexing indeed."

(Which was sort of the whole point, I think - the generation gap, the abysmal deariness of day-to-day life, the unfulfilled search for meaning etc...)

The character's mother said, "What you're doing, it's not normal!", to which he replied, "Oh yeah, well what's normal, then, eh?" That sort of captured the broader issue right there, I think, regardless of what this particular character chose to do about that situation.

While the character and his gang went further than most of "his generation", is there really any doubt that the movie presented a legitimate time-capsule-ish slice of British life from the period?

In any event, a more "Up With People" sort of presentation featuring similar vintage (or modern) Vespas, complete with unicorns riding them over rainbows to their gum-drop fields, inhabitants of a magical forest dancing their way along gold brick paved streets, and little blue birdies flying towards us so they can drape silk capes over our shoulders could be fun to watch as well.

(Maybe photoshop some scooters into "Yellow Submarine"?)

I think you missed the point of my post. Nope, I'm sure of it. Up with People, unicorns and all that other stuff came from your thought process not mine. That movie doesn't encapsulate anything that isn't already apparent to anyone cognizant of the world around us. What it doesn't show, and what I think is important to the storyline is the consequence of the main character's actions. It doesn't do much to explain teenage angst either because teenage angst doesn't begin with taking some mind altering substances. It begins well before that and has a little to do with the home situation and the parents. In other words I believe teenage angst is just the physical reaction to earlier psychological affronts brought on by numerous changes in a young person's life. Those occurances have to happen first in order for a young person to react to them. Action-reaction.

What the story is, as it stands, is incomplete. Its waiting for the consequences to hit the main character and define how he deals with them. The whole story leads to a climax which prepares the viewer in order to ask the right questions. What will happen to the kid when the Sting chacter finds out? What will his parents do when they find out? etc etc. The whole movie leads up to the absolute perfect tension where the kid is going to get it from almost all sides. The cliff is the perfect metaphor for how the kid stands at the precipice of his immature years, about to cross into something he doesn't understand. Like the Chrome Vespa, his youth's dreams are smashed by his own actions and are ultimately the cost he must choose to pay or choose to run away from.

He seems willing to throw it all away. Is he really? But even so, there is a consequence to that action also. In doing so he has unwittingly, naively tossed other peoples' lives into turmoil along with his own. How will they react to what he's done? See, to me the story just starts to become interesting and then... We're supposed to accept a wall?

This isn't even a decent movie about teenage angst. Its just an incomplete tale. Like someone tore the paperback in two and all you found was the first half.

I'll wager there's a second half to that script covered in dust somewhere. Its the only justification there could be to the (hopefully) first half of the story. Otherwise...

The Roadbum

Hey,look!! They DIDN'T throw it over...

I never said you said that. Sorry I missed your point, but thank you for clarifying it for me. I would agree with you that teenage angst is a result of many influences, not just taking drugs - in fact, drugs are most certainly a symptom of such angst, not a cause. But I also believe that the particular brand of angst shown in the movie had do with the particular society (and, yes, parents) the character had to work with, as well as factors having to with young people coming of age in general. I'm sure certain other societies have done a better job in integrating their young people in adult mainstream society than the England of that period did. Having said all that, I'm not saying the movie portrayed "typical" British teens of the period. That's weird. I didn't get the sense that Jimmy was especially concerned with his parents', or Sting's reaction, as I was watching the movie, and as a result I wasn't either. I saw it as him having the things he thought were important in his life pulled out from under him, one by one, until there was nothing left. He had hitched his wagon to a series of ephemeral values, in other words. Seeing his hero emasculated was the last straw, for him.

I took the cliff as metaphorical of life itself. He had been running along the edge of it at an unsafe speed for some time. He uncourageously chose to go over the edge rather than pull back and deal with things more effectively, as his peers were able to do, despite them having similar influences as he had. Jimmy was a sort of anti-hero in that respect.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the precipice of his immature years" or what you're suggesting he might cross into. Um. Yes? I would go with "uncaringly", but that's just my interpretation. I thought he committed suicide at the end. Did you think he jumped off the bike? I know that the bike smashed to the ground by itself, but I took that as a cinematic device. The last line, sung before the credits rolled, was "You stopped dancing..." As a result, the film took on the flavor of being a "cautionary tale", in my mind.

One last point to consider: the film is called "Quadrophenia", meaning 4 separate personalities, or severe mental disorder. I'm not sure if it's defensible from a medical point of view to say that Jimmy really had that condition, but I think his mental illness is an additional potential factor to consider when evaluating the moral rectitude of the character. His father at one point told a story of how Jimmy's uncle had committed suicide and that Jimmy was just like him.

Sweet!

Yeah, it was like Thelma and Louise. They never took responsibility either.

Quadrophenia was as resolved a it should be. If they had resolved all the issues, even Jimmy's death or whatever, it wouldn't have been the movie it was. As an opera, as a cinematic song, it leaves the viewer wanting more. That's just as you expressed. That's why this movie was almost entirely responsible for the 2nd Mod movement throughout the early 1980's.

Today, this scooter revival we're a part of isn't Mod. It's just scooter. I think that's an entirely different film. We could write that film. Going to rally's, have a clash between the vintage riders and the autotwisters, but nobody gets hurt because the fighting is done on-line.

Jimmy doesn't take responsibility, he doesn't ever learn to. That's reality. There's a lot of that going around. I appreciate that realism. Issues are not resolved and that's reality too. But like a good song, sometimes we don't want it to end, but it has to. And that's what happens to people too.

Wow! We do have different views on how to interpret this movie. I think you've poured more thought into it than I have after my one time watching it. You reminded me of a few scenes I'd forgotten about by the way lol. Still, as you said he seemed not to care about the feelings of others. I think he wanted their respect without earning it and when he either didn't get the type of responses he was looking for, or didn't get them period he just went further to get them. He struck me as someone who wanted attention. I don't think he ended his life but he ended what his life was. The music meant something different to you than it did me in that last scene. I suppose if the coat had drifted to the rocks or its presence near the bike had been added it would be easier for me to imply he'd killed himself.

One last thing. The part about seeing his hero emasculated seemed to have less to do with the individual as it did the scooter oddly enough. Because he didn't really confront the Sting character. Sure he yelled at him but he never waited to face him and confront him directly. In his passive aggression he took it out on the thing which held him and his whole circle of "friends" together. The bikes were the central glue in the story. When his rocker friend asked him why he hung out with those people his response was something to the effect that you had to belong to something. The scooters and being a scooterist was his link as I saw it. He didn't speak of the people he hung around with, he talked about the scooters as the adhesive. They weren't friends who happened to ride scooters, they were scooterists who happened to get along well enough. When he found out the guy with the nicest scooter didn't in his estimation deserve to have it he took it away from him.

I'm having more fun and finding more interest in this conversation with you than I did the movie.

The Roadbum

Wow,
This is getting heavy...

Pick up the DVD and watch the Sting interview, Sting will explain everything.

I really think the move is about the life of a Self Medicated Bi-Polor guy named Jimmy. I think it would be able to understand the history without him going overboard on all his temper tantrums.

At least he gets to Make Out...

He didn't go over.You see him walking back from the cliff at the start of the film.And if you slo-mo the scooter going over,you see a tiny little figure on top of the cliff..

More pressing,how does he take his screen off,then put it back on in mere seconds,as he turns round prior to riding it off the edge?

Cripes, I think we're trying to evaluate a movie produced by a bunch of rock stars like it ws a Felini flick!

Who do the Borg REALLY represent in Star Trek anyway????

Is the Pope Catholic?

Ah, damnit - I only have the VHS version. What does Sting say, in a nutshell? ("Help! Help! I'm in a nutshell!" ?)

"I kept wheelying the scooter along Brighton seafront"...

(True! watch whenever you see him on it...really nervous,2 feet on the floor.. )

Yea I was kidding
Sting said something like this.
Yea I was lucky the movie was released about the same time the Police had thier first hit. It was instant fame. At first I dident have any lines in the Movie. The movie had scooters in it and was about some mod rocker thing.... Basicly Sting gives no hard insite on the Film. It' kinda funny...

Yea and trying to find some amazing eyeopener about life from this film is kinda hard. I think you might find a better meaning of life in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. At least MeatLoaf rides a Motorcycle around the dinner table.

The Borg oh thats easy. The Borg are all Tax Collectors. But 7of9 thats enough reason to become a Borg....