One of the stranger recent made-in-Utah movies is "SLC Punk!" a comedy that played in theaters nationally in 1999.
The audience didn't exactly flock to the picture four years ago, but as with a growing number of underachieving films these days, it has since gained a following on video.
Although it's been out for awhile, the R-rated "SLC Punk!" DVD has been getting a new promotional campaign by Columbia/TriStar Home Video, to capitalize on its popularity with younger audiences.
The film focuses on alienated youth kicking against the Utah culture — and the Reagan presidential years — during the mid-1980s (backed by a punk-rock soundtrack, which has also sold well). Matthew Lillard, who already had 15 films under his belt at the time — including "Scream" — plays Stevo, rebelling against his staid parents, who are former hippies.
These days, Lillard is perhaps best known as Shaggy in the "Scooby-Doo" movie (he will reprise that role in the sequel next year), but according to "SLC Punk!" writer-director James Merendino, Lillard is still often recognized as by fans as Stevo.
Merendino grew up in the Mount Olympus area. His father is a retired knee surgeon who started ski clinics at local resorts, and his brother owns Burt's Tiki Lounge near downtown Salt Lake City. He also has a sister in Florida and a psychologist brother in Colorado.
"We're all over," Merendino said during a telephone interview from Los Angeles. "I left Salt Lake to go to Rome, where my mother was living, and then I came back to live in L.A." where he is a flourishing filmmaker. He has a horror movie nearly ready for release, "Trespassing," with Estella Warren ("it's not a formulaic horror movie, it's not gory but fun-scary, like, you jump a lot, you're always tense, like the first 'Halloween' "), and is now filming "The Swedish Job," a caper comedy with Harvey Keitel, Lena Olin and Billy Bob Thornton.
"SLC Punk!" is not autobiographical, Merendino said, but as an observer of life, he based the film on people he knew. As an example, he cited the band in the film, which was inspired by an experience at the Tiki Lounge. "I don't drink, but when I go to places, it's funny to watch people drink. When you're not drinking and others are, it's a surreal experience watching them get progressively more drunk.
"I was there with my brother one night, and a band comes on — this crazy, yelling goofy punk band — and I asked if they wanted to be in a movie I was making there. I thought they'd think, who're these weird guys in Salt Lake City making a movie? The next thing they knew, they were in the movie.
The band was called Eight Buck Experiment, which Merendino changed for the film to Extreme Corporal Punishment. He said many fans still believe this was a real '80s band.
"SLC Punk!" had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, after which Sony Pictures Classics released it nationally in theaters, and then followed up with a video release, where it was rediscovered by its core audience. "I was surprised when I heard about it — the new push. The resurgence seems to have grown, not happened overnight. Die-hard fans of the movie have just kept getting into it, like punk itself."
Merendino says he has Sony to thank for keeping the film alive. "It's created its own little movement and grown to a point where it's been allowed to become a cult classic, I think. And this is kind of thing couldn't happen without Sony."
E-MAIL: hicks@desnews.com