FM

Saw this movie in the theater and had an old home recorded VHS copy of it. Finally got it on DVD. Its a great movie, very underrated, and deserved better praise from the critics. It contains rare footage inside the iconic Tower Records store on Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles that is now gone. Good story and the concerts are fun to watch. Casting was great too. Love this movie.

It is a great movie. Music is amazing in this movie. Classic…

If you miss the Golden Age of FM radio, when disk jockeys played whatever they wanted and actually took requests from listeners, then grab a copy of "FM" (or rent it on Prime Video - me, I prefer a physical copy). The acting is great, the songs played on Q-SKY are the ultimate soundtrack to the 1970's (the original "FM" soundtrack album was a double LP!), and, along with actual concert footage from Linda Ronstadt and Jimmy Buffet, there are cameo appearances of REO Speedwagon and Tom Petty!On top of this, the film itself is hilarious, touching, and surprisingly educational about the nuts and bolts (now outdated) involved in running a radio station (ever wonder how they did the commercials in the old days? You get to see that).One technical note: This is a very "no-frills" disk. No menu, no special features, no "more from this studio" ads - when you insert the DVD, the movie starts, and the player stops when the movie is over. Given the subject, that's quite appropriate. So have your snacks ready before you begin!

FM was the directorial debut of the legendary cinematographer John A. Alonzo (Chinatown, Norma Rae, Blue Thunder, Scarface), and I'm reading nothing into the fact that this proved to be his only directorial feature. At the Q-SKY FM radio station in Los Angeles, the night time DJ who calls himself The Prince of Darkness (Blazing Saddles' Cleavon Little) is about to finish his shift and calls station manager and lead DJ Jeff Dugan (Michael Brandon) to remind him that he's due on air as soon as the song he's just put on comes to an end. This presents a small problem for Jeff because he's not long been up and is currently still at home lacing up his shoes. He thus jumps into his sporty Porsche convertible and hurtles across town, catching his morning paper on the fly, giving two motorcycle cops the slip and landing at his mixing desk just as the last song of the night show concludes. On the basis of this sequence alone I felt sure I was going to like this movie.Q-SKY, we soon discover, is on the cusp of becoming the number one radio station in LA, and at the morning staff meeting Jeff reveals that the corporation that owns the station is sending a new sales manager named Regis Lamar (Tom Tarpey) to, as Jeff puts it, "turn our ratings into dollars." Given that the station has repeatedly resisted full-blown commercialization, this does not go down well with either Jeff or the other DJs, but because Lamar carries some corporate clout they are obliged to accommodate him when he arrives.That's the setup in a nutshell – successful independently-minded radio station is threatened by morally suspect commercialization. There is, of course, a little more to it than that, but nut much, indeed it works in the films favor: An amiable, low stakes movie that doesn't seem to get made anymore. This in itself is not a serious issue, given that filmmakers like Robert Altman had by this point ably demonstrated that you can make successful films in which the characters essentially are the story. This seems to be the model from which FM takes its cue, and as Lamar arrives and makes attempts to ingratiate himself with the station staff, we get to learn a little about each of them. Aside from Jeff and Prince, there are three other DJs, each with their own distinct personalities. First up, there's Mother (Eileen Brennan), whose seductively sultry delivery puts her on a par with Adrienne Barbeau's Stevie Wayne in John Carpenter's The Fog, which this film predates by a couple of years. Then there's Eric Swan (the always great Martin Mull), a blonde-haired and moustachioed love guru who still has one foot firmly stuck in the 60s and who misses no opportunity to have his way with awkwardly compliant women, even in the studio during his broadcasts. Finally there's Doc Holiday (former football star, Alex Karras also from Hamburger: The Motion Picture), an older jockey with a country and western vibe whose ratings are steadily falling and who is marked from an early stage as someone who will probably be sacrificed for the station's future prosperity. Working the backroom, meanwhile, is the lab-coated Bobby (Jay Fenichel), who wrestles with the station's wobbly technology and, encouraged by his co-worker girlfriend Shari (Roberta Wallach), creates test idents for the station that he hopes will one day get him a regular spot on the air. Later, when Doc's fortunes start to falter, Jeff's ex-girlfriend and former Q-SKY DJ Laura (Cassie Yates) is persuaded to return and fill in for him.From this, two unrelated and underdeveloped story strands unfold, as Jeff and his team scheme to steal the broadcasting of a Linda Ronstadt concert from under the nose of his rival Michael Carlyle (Terry Jastrow), and Lamar and his boss put pressure on Jeff to accept an advertising deal with Army PR man, Lt. Reach (James Keach, who has never looked more like his brother, Stacey). The former provides some minor pleasures in the execution of the plot to keep Carlyle busy while the Q-SKY team hijack his concert, and there is some lively concert footage of Ronstadt and her band. This is the second such musical highlight in the film, the first being similarly vibrant coverage of Jimmy Buffett performing (The theme from Rancho Deluxe, 1975) at a club that Jeff takes Lamar to in order to loosen him up a bit. Lamar has a good time but the experience only seems to further enflame his vigour to flood the station with commercials. It should be noted: This is before Jimmy Buffett's current "paradise" act - he was once a troubadour for the 70s dope scene.The business with Lt. Reach is different story, in no small part because Reach is such a preposterous cartoon of a character, a uniformed military officer with neck-length hair who openly smokes dope that he claims is from the General's personal stash, dances dreamily to army commercials are dressed up as youth-targeted songs, and cackles like a madman as the drug gets to work. Whatever good the film has done with character creation up to this point is effectively derailed here, as light-hearted and largely low-key drama makes a jarring dive into overplayed satire. Perhaps coincidentally, this is also where any real development of the principal characters grinds to a halt and they start coasting instead almost solely on what little we learned about them in their introductory scenes. Partly as a result, by the time the film hits its belated climax ones interest might wane to the point where I no longer cared much how things worked out for any of them. Again, this shouldn't matter - this is best viewed as 70s nostalgia.FM takes a few hits for its perfunctory third act (music aside). This wasn't an issue with me - I just enjoy the vibes and roll with it.Ending aside, there's nothing offensively unpleasant about FM and a good deal to like, particularly in the performances of the actors playing the station employees, the live concert footage, and a vibrant soundtrack of 70s hits and less well-known songs. A couple of these really work with the visuals to engaging effect, with a montage sequence of preparations for the DJ strike cut to Boz Scaggs' Lido Shuffle being a rare late film highlight. And if you let out a groan at climactic strains of Queen's since overused We Will Rock You, know that this was the first film or TV show on whose soundtrack it featured, though the decision to have the protestors sing along as it is broadcast over external speakers underscored my conviction that they looked ready to burst into song. To some, the soundtrack might carrie the film and that has seen it find favor as a nostalgic cult favorite in some quarters in subsequent years, and it probably says something that the soundtrack album was a far bigger hit than the film that spawned it.Sound and vision:There's something about 35mm film that still leaves digital in the dust for me, something about the warmth of its palette and the texture of the image that even the highest resolution digital camera with the best codec in town just cannot quite replicate, and a strong flavor of that special feel is captured in the very strong 2.35:1 1080p transfer on Arrow's Blu-ray. The color has that blend of naturalism and richness that takes me back to the glory days of my 1970s cinema visits and while the detail is pleasingly crisp, it also somehow benefits from not being digitally sharp enough to cut your eyeballs. The contrast feels spot-on, nailing the black levels without sucking in detail, even in darker scenes, and that fine film grain we expect to see on 35mm transfers is always visible, but never distractingly so. A few minor dust spots remain but on the whole the image is clean and free of damage. Yeah, this is a very nice transfer.Two soundtracks (well, technically three – see the extras) are available in the shape of Linear PCM 2.0 stereo and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround, and as you'd hope for a film in which music plays a prominent part, both are in fine shape. The stereo track is clear, clean of noise and boasts lively reproduction of the various music tracks, peaking in the Jimmy Buffett and Linda Ronstadt concert footage, which has a lovely fullness to it. Everything that goes for the stereo track also goes for DTS surround track, but with some added punch to the bass when the music leads the scene and a slightly richer feel to the sound overall.Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired are on board, as expected.Extra features:No Static at All (25:03):Upbeat leading man Michael Brandon recalls being offered the part at a time when his career could have gone one of two ways, and even suggests that his decision to play Jeff instead of pursue a TV project of his own creation may have contributed to the breakdown of his marriage with Lindsay Wagner of Bionic Woman fame. He goes into some detail about his audition for the part, reveals that the film's early Porsche drive ended in an unseen collision, and tells a long but engaging story about being asked to speak to Linda Ronstadt about getting her permission to shoot footage of her concert for inclusion in the film. Interestingly, he remains unhappy with the final cut of the film – he wanted more story but the producers wanted more music.Radio Chaos (23:22):FM screenwriter Ezra Sacks outlines how he pushed for a job at an FM station run by Marion Elbridge Herrington, aka Captain Mikey, on whom the character of Jeff is partly based, and recalls in some detail the colourful process of trying to convince him that he could do on-air film criticism for the station. He reveals getting the FM screenplay accepted for production was down in part to his friendship with ace editor and by then Universal executive Verna Fields (she cut Jaws, Medium Cool and American Graffiti for heaven's sake), and the Jeff we saw on screen was not as wild as the one he wrote because director John Alonzo assured him that, "the hero of my movie would not run a red light." Sacks believes he would. He has positive things to say about several of the actors, confirms a story I read elsewhere that securing all the music for the film was down to (uncredited) executive producer and former music executive Irving Azoff, and comments on the mixed reception that greeted the film on its release.The Spirit of Radio (22:58):Film critic Glenn Kenny provides a most welcome overview of the era of FM radio and delivers an impressively detailed breakdown of the FM soundtrack, with enlightening information on every song used in the film. He notes that the choice of tracks makes it seem as if punk rock never happened (his relative youth absolves him: Punk, despite revisionist history, was rejected by the American public. Hence the "New Wave" acts the following year. He notes that almost all of the chosen artists are "conspicuously white" and primarily American in origin - again, revisionist history - market forces, not racism. Soul/R&B, Disco were well represented on the FM dial. I would argue that the musical landscape is currently more segregated than ever. He also touches on a personal issue he has with the band Foghat, which he moves on from dismissively with a curt, "screw them." Pretty amusing.Isolated Music & Effects Track:Given the sheer amount of music in the film, this is one time when I could see the benefit of such a track, which sonically is close to the stereo soundtrack detailed above. It's worth noting, however, that the music and effects play at the volume they were mixed for the film, so while you do get the chance to listen to songs without the distraction of dialogue, many of them play at a reduced volume. The concert footage sounds good, but the Ronstadt material plays without interruption anyway in the film itself, so there's no advantage here.Original Trailer (2:51):A well edited sell that also pushes the soundtrack album.Image Galleries:There are three galleries here, each of which can be advanced manually or left to slowly move forward at their own speed. Production Stills contains 59 slides of colour and monochrome photos, including a couple of behind-the-scenes images. Intriguingly, although most look good, none of the colour shots are as crisp and rich as the film itself. Posters, Lobby Cards & Press contains 15 slides of promotional artwork and ads for the film, including one where it was teamed with the crackpot horror The Manitou, which starred Tony Curtis. Anyone else remember that? Finally, Soundtrack Editions has a generous 44 slides of soundtrack album-related material, including LP covers, photos of records, cassettes and even an 8-track cartridge. Cool.Included with the first pressing only is an Illustrated Collector's Booklet featuring new writing on the film by writer and critic Paul Corupe.

A bunch of stars in this one playing either radio personalities or in other roles, great concert footage of Buffett and Ronstadt.A story of an FM radio station in SoCal with a loyal following, who find themselves in the number one position in the Arbitrons for several of their time slots, but the home office in Chicago has other plans for it - to inundate the listener with commercials on a seeming non-stop basis, mostly pushing the US Army, as a recruiting tool. This is of course met with resistance at the station, and in an attempt to keep their on-air presence ‘pure’ with the listeners, the station manager refuses to play along.I’ll let the viewers see what comes next for our intrepid band of DJs, but suffice it to say it’s fun, a little formulaic, but overall a pretty good watch, if for nothing other than the bevy of stars involved and the soundtrack itself.

I have never seen this movie, but it is fabulous turn the clock ⏰ back to 1978. Great cast and an incredible soundtrack. I would definitely recommend it..

After years of only having a DVD, I'd transferred from my VHS copy, it's great to have a good version of it.I even bought a BluRay player in order to see it!I wasn't disappointed!

This movie means more now than it did in the 1970's. Radio has become 10 time more commercial than back then and is in need of a statement of this nature more than ever.If you hate mainstream radio get this film.

Parfait, merci.

Fantastic sound

Classic, this movie was my introduction to the music of Jimmy Buffett and I have been a Parrothead ever since. Linda Ronstadt concert was amazing.