This film could easily be called just "1979" – what a year, and certainly, Fritz Lang's industrial vision had then come to pass in the UK. We were heading for 1984 – with suspicion, and if Orwell had not written, 1984 – we would have lapsed into robot conformity exactly on time as per the great writer's prediction. Radio On has everything from the obsession of keeping an "antique" car on the road - not so antique, then; the rare white Christmas coming, the remnant hotels and high-rise low income tenanted towers jutting up next to the flyovers; and the Fritz Lang lens poking in and out of random industrial scenarios. Even my favorite panning effect using the flyover in transit to view the Grosvenor Hotel room of the German protagonists predates the same effect used in the 1991 film Zentropa by Lars 'von' Trier but then shot from a train line viaduct, into the protagonist's home.
We were there, in Bristol in 1979, we went to the Devo concert, and also saw Lene Lovich at the Bristol, Locarno. We bought Stiff Samplers to hear Wreckless Eric, we bought Ian Dury records and listened to Kraftwerk at home on the stereo; as well as hearing the chameleon (David Bowie) on the radio, when the John Peel Radio Show wasn't on. Radio On is a home movie of all our lives from 1979, but here is a thought, instead of just talent scouting good looking boys and mysterious brunettes, how about talent scouting some writers from all their junk jobs all over the planet, as Radio On is devoid of a script. But approximately 65% of all film scripts ever written in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, are not worthy of the name.
We were there, in Bristol in 1979, we went to the Devo concert, and also saw Lene Lovich at the Bristol, Locarno. We bought Stiff Samplers to hear Wreckless Eric, we bought Ian Dury records and listened to Kraftwerk at home on the stereo; as well as hearing the chameleon (David Bowie) on the radio, when the John Peel Radio Show wasn't on. Radio On is a home movie of all our lives from 1979, but here is a thought, instead of just talent scouting good looking boys and mysterious brunettes, how about talent scouting some writers from all their junk jobs all over the planet, as Radio On is devoid of a script. But approximately 65% of all film scripts ever written in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, are not worthy of the name.