There are two really good movies about dance music DJs: Party Girl and It's All Gone Pete Tong. Maybe they're even great, minor classics in their own way. But neither of these were mass market hits in the States. Instead, they lie somewhere in a very small "Cult DJ Movie" section of some imaginary video store.
In the last five years, U.S. movie studios and TV networks have been snapping up EDM-centric scripts in an attempt to translate dizzying dance festival ticket sales into hits at the box office and on TV. Like most spec scripts, many of these projects will never see release and will be relegated to Development Purgatory, but the ones that have gotten lucky enough to go into production will soon be in the world. The first major offering, We Are Your Friends, starring Zac Efron and Emily Ratajkowski, just released an extended trailer.
There's a lot going on in these three minutes. In a summer where "Entourage" returns in movie form, We Are Your Friends knows it's an obvious "Entourage" knockoff: working class kid makes good; one of the main bros is called "Squirrel"; themes of "male friendship"; the enduring struggle of bros vs. hoes; the delicate balance of light drama and tit jokes. Amid his rise to fame, Efron develops super powers that allow him to gaze inside the thoraxes of hot dancers. It further mythologizes things we already know about millennial life in 2015: all you need is a laptop to be a successful DJ, it’s difficult for college grads to get jobs, everyone’s looking for that shortcut to success (in this case, a Beatport top download). The most telling detail is that it is unironically named for a Justiceremix of a Simian track that broke out as a crossover hit in 2006. The director/co-writer is Max Joseph of "Catfish" fame who has directed a short film about the history of DFA, which functioned more as an artful infomercial for the label. It posits Justice and LCD Soundsystem as the main cultural touchstones of influence, which should tell you as much as you need to know.
Plot-wise, We Are Your Friends telegraphs that Wes Bentley, playing the role of DJ mentor, is going to mentor Efron’s character and will impart to the upstart an appreciation for listening to the sounds of the real world (like electric drills, birds, et al), which will in turn define his signature style. A style which includes starting his sets at 125 BPM and slowly ramping them up to a whopping 128 BPM, trying to match the tempo of his (Ed) bangers to the heart rate of a nubile 19-year-old. Bentley, we understand from the minute he appears, will ultimately clash with Efron over a girl; it’s The Color of Money set in the "Spring Awakening" now. While there is nothing wrong with that, save for the predictable and turgid plot, it feels like the writers' first exposure to dance music was the blog house crest of the mid aughts, which primed the kids for America's take on dubstep and, more generally, EDM. How much this movie does not know makes it instantly outdated, and makes you wonder how many years elapsed between when the script was written and when the film went into production.
Last month, Pete Tong, one of dance music’s most recognizable international figures, bemoaned that no one has made a "great" film about dance music culture, post-disco. We have plenty of popular fictional filmic depictions of rappers, dancers, rockers, singer-songwriters, white jazz drummers. So why not DJs? Tong suggests that Hollywood execs, writers, directors, and agents are largely ignorant of America’s rich history as being the place that invented house, techno, disco, soul, boogie, rap, basically everything that informs EDM. But maybe it goes deeper than just ignorance. American dance music, pre-EDM colonization, was very queer and not particularly white, so given what we know about Hollywood/America/everything, it’s not surprising that the studio execs are interested now that dance music culture has gone mainstream, and its superstars are all straight, middle class, white, male superstar DJs.
There is no indication that We Are Your Friends will be the great movie it seemingly wants to be; it’s pretty self-serious for a flick aimed at 14-year-old ravers and the neo-Over the Edge-style teen angst it aims for remains elusive. Though perhaps shirtless Efron might be the magic bullet to compensate for the film’s myriad inadequacies.
Ultimately, it’s difficult to fault this movie for what it is. Viewed through a certain pragmatic lens, it had to be this way in order to get this far. The film was lucky enough to pass through all the gatekeepers and get into and through production with the marketeers still behind it. The first EDM drama out of the gate, it bears all the risk and is just the first in what might be a long string of EDM projects looking to piggyback. There's the Will Ferrell-fostered I'm in Love with the DJ, which is probably the best bet for an entertaining and broad crossover. It’s a rom com about three American women trying to find a DJ in Europe. (I'm in Love is written by Lauryn Kahn, with Rachel Lee Goldberg of Funny or Die rumored to be in talks to direct.) But, from the outside, it seems less about DJ culture and more about Americans in some sort of fish-out-of-water romp across Europe where the DJing could easily be swapped with bullfighting. Or parkour.
There are other films in development and shows at networks like HBO, where names like Diplo, Irvine Welsh, Will Smith, Calvin Harris, and Jay Z have been bandied about. There's the seemingly doomed DJ version of "American Idol" called "Ultimate DJ" which has finally found a home on Yahoo’s fledgling network. We have a burgeoning glut of EDM-related content but just don't know what to do with it. And then, there's a well-circulated script called Spinback that sold a few years ago. You can imagine it was pitched as something along the lines of "Point Break meets Point Blank." It’s the story of a dude that’s gotta learn how to DJ to infiltrate a crime syndicate to avenge his brother’s death. As one does.
Here is a snippet of a scene from page 1 of Spinback that best illustrates Hollywood's problem:
...
TWENTY-THOUSAND dancers in space-age costumes -- RAGE -- A sea of pulsating, futuristic glowrods.Sweat, skin, sex, and passion -- and don’t forget the halfnaked women -- and the naked ones.
A FAMOUS DJ on stage, fist pumps, orchestrating the crowd like a mystical conductor….
...BASS THUMPS and the whole arena VIBRATES to the beat -- SILVER-TINGED FIREBALLS EXPLODE.
This is insanity to the max. Electric alien euphoria.
WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC.
While Spinback may never see the light of day (which would be a shame as this sounds like prime hatewatching), there’s no reason a take on artistically suspect main room DJs can’t work. A viewer doesn’t need to like the style of music featured in a film for the story to work. It's All Gone Pete Tong embraces the gooniness of its protagonist who churns out generic tech-house tunes. It succeeds not based on whether the audience would listen to the music outside of a darkened theatre. It succeeds by tapping into a simple, clean conflict—a drug addled DJ starts to lose his hearing, which fucks up his career, his life, and his sanity. It makes honest observations within the culture and has fun with it.
None of Hollywood’s upcoming EDM projects seem to have anything to say about its subjects. Maybe it's because the stories are all hatched by interlopers who don't really care to dig beneath the surface. Or, maybe, it’s because the filmmakers can't or won’t address what would be really interesting conflicts. Why can’t a screenwriter dramatize one of the wild characters of dance music's past—you know, the early first and second wave DJs, many of whom developed DJing as a career and were almost entirely wiped out by AIDS? The French art house film Eden gets a small release on June 19th and looks promising, but will anyone in America care? Or why can’t someone pitch a series that depicts drugs in club culture in a way that is interesting or funny or dramatic or fresh? Where’s our '90s rave period piece? Where’s the Detroit techno Dazed and Confused? Or if you don’t want to get political or wistful, why not totally deride everything about EDM and send up the corny, faux-spiritual, empty-headed, shitty boys club à la Spinal Tap, and make the jokes fucking pop? Don’t let this Efron vehicle be the best we can do.
Or, another free idea: why can't there be a story about a plucky young woman who's trying to make a living as a DJ and climb the EDM ladder, even though the industry is designed to shut women out almost entirely? That's conflict. Call it Twerking Girl. You’re welcome, Hollywood.