“Leave Me on the Moon“
from the Kill the Moonlight soundtrack
1994
Kill the Moonlight is a feature with a soundtrack so awesome that the movie should probably be a music video. The DVD is actually accompanied by a CD, featuring many previously unreleased songs by Beck. (Beck’s close association with Hanft during the making of this movie inspired Beck’s hit, “Loser.”) In line with director Steven Hanft’s L.A. slacker aesthetic, this film flaunts a slow-moving plot and footage that looks as if it were shot in the 1970s, replete with muscle cars, hot chicks lounging around apartment complex swimming pools, and multiple garage gigs and house parties. The protagonist, Chance (played by Thomas Hendrix), aims to earn enough cash working crappy day jobs to fix his Camaro’s engine for the upcoming stock car race, but is doomed to failure. Chance is a major loser, repeatedly accepting the lamest work opportunities, like roadside cocaine sales and chemical spill clean-up. His growing dependency on Vic’s Formula 44 cough syrup eventually results in his passing out at the wheel and crashing his beloved car. Although the plot is painfully remiss, Chance and his friends, who are also brain-dead, emit redneck glamour associated with the San Fernando Valley outside Los Angeles, similar to that of hicks from the Deep South. In this way, Hanft foreshadows Harmony Korine’s love of eccentric white trash; even Chance’s father is uncannily similar to Werner Herzog’s character in Korine’s Julien Donkey Boy. Kill the Moonlight stylishly highlights how podunk the outskirts of Los Angeles can be, with “totally rad” results.