Amoeba Music

On April, 8, 2000, Mark Hogancamp was brutally attacked in a bar in Kingston, New York. His attackers were five teenagers, and the damage done was horrific. Plastic surgery was needed in order to repair his face and he was in a coma for nine days. When he came to, his memory and motor skills had been erased. He was hospitalized for 40 days until his medical insurance could no longer pay for his treatment and he was released. At 38 and without a means of income, he had to build his life from scratch.

This documentary is separated into ten chapters which chronicle Mark's outstanding efforts to reclaim his life and latch on to the only thing that wasn't taken away by his attackers: his imagination. Chapter 1 is titled “The Attack” and it introduces us to many people in Mark's life. The first is his attorney, but it’s an introduction that is far from ordinary. Standing still is Emmanuel Nneji, his attorney, and to the right of the screen is a 1/6 scale toy figure in his likeness. Nneji presents us with the facts of the case and, occasionally, video clips of the bar and photos of Mark's disfigured appearance after the accident.

There's something comforting in movies about a small-time guy who ends up making it big despite the odds. But, as the Horatio Alger Myth goes, that small-time guy usually squanders his chance at sustaining wealth and power. The Boost is about Larry Brown (James Woods), a rigid freelance salesman based out of New York. He's too busy doubting himself and making his situation appear more glorious than it actually is—so busy that he doesn't realize that he's found what most people look for their entire lives: unconditional true love.

Based on the book Ludes: A Ballad of the Drug & the Dream by Ben Stein, the story is one of those “boys and girls get off the bus to come to L.A.” tales that leaves your mind fuzzy and with a bitter taste in your mouth. Lenny was lucky enough to find a gorgeous, hard-working woman to marry him and believe in him—even when he makes a fool of himself. With his risky profession as a salesman and hers as a paralegal, the two did alright for themselves. While figuratively drowning during a particular sale and groping for a lifeline, he ends up catching the eye of Max Sherman: a man gifted at taking little fish and turning them into soaring birds. Sherman works in Southern California real estate and wants the over-achieving Lenny on his team. So Lenny starts seeing dollar bills and asks his wife Linda (Sean Young) to take a risk with him and move to Los Angeles.

In what may be the Citizen Kane of xenophobia-ploitation flicks of the ‘70s, no matter how manipulative, hateful, and offensive Midnight Express may be, it’s also some amazingly intense filmmaking. After his first feature film, the misfire kiddie musical Bugsy Malone, British director Alan Parker announced himself as a major talent with Midnight Express, as did the obscure screenwriter Oliver Stone, who won an Oscar for his adaptation of Billy Hayes’s autobiographical account of his traumatic years in a Turkish prison. Though Stone famously spiced up the account to make it even more dramatic and has since even apologized to the people of Turkey for making them look like slimy monsters, the film is still an edge-of-your-seat piece of entertainment.

Along with his compatriots Ridley Scott and Adrian Lyne, director Parker would usher in a new era of filmmakers who came out of a commercial background. Like most of his pals’ films of the era, though, Midnight Express and a number of his other films are heavy on grit and realistic detail but there still seems to be a slight gloss over their work that sometimes makes their films, no matter how gritty, look like champagne commercials. But still Parker has had a most fascinating career, peeking early with Midnight Express and then following with a run in the 1980s with Fame, Shoot the Moon, Pink Floyd The Wall, Birdy, and then Angel Heart and Mississippi Burning—all pretty good movies. But for an immigrant, it ‘s a distinctly American resume, and in some ways Midnight Express is his most American film in terms of values and the naively dim view most Americans have on the rest of the world.