Streets of Fire
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| Streets of Fire | |
|---|---|
| File:Streets of fire movie.jpg Theatrical Poster | |
| Directed by | Walter Hill |
| Written by | Walter Hill Larry Gross |
| Produced by | Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver |
| Starring | Michael Pare Diane Lane Rick Moranis Amy Madigan Willem Dafoe Deborah Van Valkenburgh |
| Cinematography | Andrew Laszlo |
| Edited by | Freeman A. Davies Michael Ripps |
| Music by | Ry Cooder |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release dates | June 1,1984 |
Running time | 93 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $14.5 million |
Universal Studio's Streets of Fire, directed by Walter Hill, and co-written by Hill and Larry Gross in the fall and winter of 1983, was described in previews, trailers, and posters as "A Rock & Roll Fable." It's an unusual mix of musical, drama and comedy with elements both retro 1950's and [contemporary] the 1980's.
The film stars Michael Paré, Diane Lane, Rick Moranis, Amy Madigan, E.G. Daily, and Willem Dafoe, and includes cameos by future stars of stage and screen. The film, a box office flop, was a summer release in 1984.
In recent years, Streets of Fire has achieved cult status. Its MTV-like visuals and editing, a varied soundtrack of established musical artists and genres (blues to rockabilly to even some pop), and solid acting with a cohesive storyline is simply fun to watch.
Plot
In a fictional city, the film opens with a concert featuring Ellen Aim (Diane Lane), a "girl from the neighborhood" known as "The Richmond." She is now the famous lead singer of the eponymous band Ellen Aim and The Attackers, and has returned home to give a concert. The biker gang the Bombers enter the auditorium during the song.
As she is finishing "Nowhere Fast," Ellen is attacked and kidnapped by Raven Shaddock (Willem Dafoe), the leader of The Bombers. Some in the crowd try to save Ellen, but to no avail.
Witnessing all of this is Reva Cody (Deborah Van Valkenburgh), who runs the local diner. She wires her kid brother Tom Cody (Michael Pare), an ex-solider and Ellen's ex-boyfriend, to rescue her.
Tom arrives by elevated train, and after taking Reva home, checks out the local tavern The Blackhawk, where Clyde (Bill Paxton) tends bar. He is annoyed by a tomboyish looking McCoy (Amy Madigan), another ex-soldier whose is a mechanic and "could drive anything," as well as being good with her fists; she decks Clyde for being "an asshole" and grabs a bottle of Tequila from the bar.
They leave the bar and McCoy asks for a place to stay for the night. Tom obliges, taking her home, where she gets the couch. That night Tom and Reva plan to rescue Ellen; Reva is to contact Billy Fish (Rick Moranis), Ellen's manager and current boyfriend to meet at the diner in the morning.
While Reva and McCoy go to the diner to wait for Billy, Tom goes to Richmond Auto to see his friend Pete, who keeps a trunk full of weapons. The cache includes a chrome-plated quick-pump action shotgun, a .50 caliber chromed six-shot handgun and a Winchester lever action rifle.
Tom and Billy meet at the diner and Tom agrees to the rescue, on the condition that Billy pays him $10,000 - and that he goes with Tom back into "the Battery" to get Ellen. Billy agrees and, Tom hires McCoy, who "needs the job," to drive for 10%.
In the Battery they visit Torchie's (also seen in other Walter Hill films, The Driver and 48 Hrs.), where Billy used to book bands. They wait until nightfall, down the block under an overpass, watching a lot of bikers come and go.
Inside Torchie's, The Blasters play "One Bad Stud" while a dancer (cameo by Marine Jahan) gyrates on a small stage. Raven has Ellen tied up to a bed in a room upstairs. As Tom, Billy and McCoy approach Torchies, Tom directs Billy to return to the car and be out front in fifteen minutes. Tom plans to go in topside while McCoy uses the front door.
The Blasters are now playing "Blue Shadows" as McCoy enters and is stopped by one of the Bombers. McCoy, pretending to like him, follows him to his special "party room", just down the hall from where Raven is playing poker. McCoy pulls a handgun on him, telling him she wants to play a new game called "lights out" and knocks him out with the butt of the gun.
Tom explores the building across from the bar until he is directly across from Ellen's window. As planned, fifteen minutes later, McCoy bursts into the card game and gets the drop on Raven and the rest. Tom starts to blow up the bikes, shooting their gas tanks, then stylishly slides down and runs into Torchies, up to Ellen's room. He cuts her free and, with McCoy's help, escapes just as Billy arrives at the front door.
As the others jump into the convertible, Tom sends them off to meet at the Grant Street Overpass, then blows up the gas pumps outside the bar as a diversion. One bike having survived, he begins to escape on it when Raven appears out of the flames and chaos to confront him. After learning who Tom is, Raven warns he'll be back for her - and for him, too. Tom escapes.
Billy is persuading Ellen to wise up, telling her the only reason her ex-boyfriend rescued her was for money. Tom arrives and jumps into the car, and McCoy pointedly explains to Billy that Tom used to be Ellen's old flame.
Ditching the very visible street rod in a parking garage, Ellen follows Tom up the stairs, while Billy and McCoy take the elevator. Ellen and Tom fight as Billy and McCoy go back and forth once again about Tom and Ellen's love affair. When they all meet up on the street, they are in the Battery with a crowd dressed in a range of 50's, 70's, and 80's types, neon on all sides and bar everywhere, and vintage cars, but with a 80's video jukebox playing a video of Ellen singing, "Sorcerer" (actually written by Stevie Nicks).
The group returns Ellen safely home where she initially rejects her home town as well as Tom. Later, he goes to the hotel where Ellen and Billy are staying to collect his reward. He only takes McCoy's cut and throws the rest in Billy's face. He then tells Ellen that there was a time he would've done anything for her but no more. As Tom Storms out, Ellen follows and the two embrace in the rain.
Meanwhile, Raven informs the police chief that he wants Tom to confront him alone. If he agrees he will leave the Richmond alone. The chief tells Tom to get out of town. Tom, Ellen and McCoy leave on a train. He knocks out Ellen and returns to town for a climatic battle with Raven involving pick-axes. Tom defeats Raven. Later that night, he says a final goodbye to Ellen and rides off with McCoy.
Production
Streets of Fire reunited Walter Hill with producers Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver and screenwriter Larry Gross all of whom worked together on 48 Hrs.. The four men began planning Streets of Fire while completing 48 Hrs. Afterwards, Gross and Hill worked on the screenplay, writing ten pages a day.[1] Hill said, "When we finished, we submitted it to Universal on a Friday (in January of 1983) and by the end of the weekend, they gave us the go-ahead."[1] The film's title came from a song written and recorded by Bruce Springsteen on his album "Darkness on the Edge of Town."[1] Originally, plans were made for the song to be featured on the film's soundtrack, but when he was told that the song would be re-recorded by other vocalists, he withdrew permission for the song to be used.[1]
When it came to casting the movie, Hill wanted to go with a young group of relative unknowns. He heard about Michael Pare from the same agent who recommended Eddie Murphy to him for 48 Hrs.[1] At the time he was cast, the actor had two films, Eddie and the Cruisers and Undercover, which hadn’t even been released. For Hill, Pare "had the right quality. He was the only actor I found who was right for the part...a striking combination of toughness and innocence."[1]
Diane Lane had made more than ten films by the time she did Streets of Fire. Hill was so impressed with her work on the film that he wrote additional scenes for her during the shoot.[1] Amy Madigan originally read for one of the other parts and told Hill and Silver that she wanted to play the role of McCoy which, she remembers, "was written to be played by an overweight male who was a good soldier and really needed a job. It could still be tough and strong and have a woman do it without rewriting the part."[1] Hill liked the idea and cast her.
Production began on location in Chicago, then moved to Los Angeles and finally two weeks at a soap factory in Wilmington, California with additional filming taking place at Universal Studios. Shooting wrapped on August 18, 1983.[1]
All ten days of filming in Chicago were exteriors at night on locations that included platforms of elevated subway lines and the depths of Lower Wacker Drive. For Hill, the subways and their look was crucial to the world of the film and represented one of three modes of transportation (the other two being cars and motorcycles).[1] While shooting in Chicago, the production was plagued by inclement weather that included rain, hail and snow and a combination of all three.[1]
Production designer John Vallone and his team constructed an elevated train line on the backlot of Universal Studios that perfectly matched the ones in Chicago. The film crew tarped-in the New Street and Brownstone street sets to double for the Richmond District setting and completely covering them so that night scenes could be filmed during the day.[1] This tarp measured 1,240 feet long by 220 feet wide over both sets. However, this presented unusual problems. The sound of the tarp flapping in the wind interfered with the actors’ dialogue. Birds who had nested in the tarp provided their own noisy interruptions.[1]
The car that Cody drives in the movie is a 1951 Mercury that was chopped, channeled, nosed and decked. In addition, 12 1950 and 1951 model Studebakers were used as police cars with more than 50 motorcycles and their drivers taken from real L.A. based clubs – The Crusaders and The Heathens.[1]
The subway cars seen throughout the entire film are the Chicago Transit Authority's famed 6000 series cars. They first entered service in August, 1950, and were retired in December, 1992. There are cameos of other CTA subway equipment, including the 2000 series Pullman cars, and the 2400 series Boeing cars.
Streets of Fire was intended to be the first in a trilogy of action films starring Michael Pare as Tom Cody. When the film was released in the summer of 1984 (after some delays), the science-fiction film magazine Starlog magazine stated a rumor that the proposed titles of the two sequels would be The Return of Tom Cody and The Far City. However, the film's eventual failure at the box office [citation needed] put an end to the project.
Locations
The subway scenes were filmed on location in Chicago, with many locations including: LaSalle Street (Blue line), Lake Street (Green line), Sheridan Road (Red, Purple lines), and Belmont Avenue (Red, Brown, and Purple lines). The Damen Avenue stop (Blue Line, at Damen, North, and Milwaukee Avenues) was also used. It was the backdrop for many other films, including Wicker Park and High Fidelity.
Though only three districts are seen, the city has a total of five districts: The Richmond, The Strip, The Battery, The Cliffside, and The Bayside.
The factory scenes were filmed at a rotting soap factory in Wilmington, California for ten nights.
The Ardmore Police roadblock was filmed near 6th street in East Los Angeles near the flood basin.
Soundtrack
| Untitled | |
|---|---|
Dan Hartman's "I Can Dream About You" is the most successful song from this movie and became a Billboard top 10 hit in 1984.
Two Wagnerian rock songs written by Jim Steinman were part of the soundtrack: "Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young" and "Nowhere Fast", both performed by Fire Inc. with Holly Sherwood as lead vocal. The title of the former was used as the tagline on some promotional materials for the film. While they did not garner much attention, his fans have considered them of his best songs to date [1].
'The Attackers' were the real-life (Face to Face) bandmates of Laurie Sargent, who provided the lead vocals on Ellen Aim's songs "Never Be You" and "Sorcerer" and supporting vocals on "Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young."
Track listing
- Fire Inc. - "Nowhere Fast" 6:02
- Marilyn Martin - "Sorcerer" 5:06
- The Fixx - "Deeper and Deeper" 3:45
- The Fixx - "Countdown to Love" 3:00
- The Blasters - "One Bad Stud" 2:28
- Fire Inc. - "Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young" 6:58
- Maria McKee - "Never Be You" 4:06
- Dan Hartman - "I Can Dream About You" 4:07
- Ry Cooder - "Hold That Snake" 2:36
- The Blasters - Blue Shadows 3:17