Music

Watch SLC Punk on AUX Box Office

by Allan Tong

Watch it July 15, 9:30 pm, and July 16, 12:30 am & 1:30 pm

It’s tough being a punk in a city of Mormons.  That’s the premise of this satire about two teenage punks coming of age in Salt Lake City in 1985.  It’s the age of Reagan, which was a lot like George W. Bush: uptight, morally superior and materialistic.  Stevo and Heroin Bob swim against the conservateive tide by dyeing their hair and listening to the wholesome tunes of Fear, the Dead Kennedys and the Stooges featured on a great soundtrack.  Our two heroes used to be Dungeons & Dragons geeks until they did a cultural U-turn and adopted a new identity.  Or is punk just another uniform?

SLC Punk doesn’t have much of a plot, but is told with great energy and enough moments of wit to keep the viewer going.  Matthew Lillard from Scream makes for a charismatic Stevo as he shares his angry thoughts and funny observations on the soundtrack.  In fact, there’s too much voice-over at times and you wish you could just watch Stevo in action instead of him telling you how he feels.  Essentially, SLC Punk is a rites of passage story, and an honest one about  challenging the system and growing up.