I’ve mentioned in the past how much I love the old “educational” film from the past that were designed to keep stupid people from doing stupid things, like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute, attempting to steal copper wiring, or driving too fast without a license.
That last issue is the one that is dealt with in the 1976 short film (and time capsule), Joy Ride. In Joy Ride, two teenagers go to a little league game, have an existential crisis, steal a car, talk about the inherent weirdness of names, and play lots and lots of pinball.
It’s easy to make fun of a film like Joy Ride but I have to admit that I’m strangely fascinated by this short film. Between the ennui-soaked conversation of the two protagonists and the frequent use of jump cuts and zooms, it’s hard not to feel that if Jean-Luc Godard ever made a driver’s ed film, it would look something like Joy Ride.
I also have to admit that I enjoyed the use of the “You broke my car so I broke your jaw,” song.
Through the Shattered Lens 
Such an exquisite film, rich in metaphors: note how Val and Tim sit watching the baseball practice from behind the mesh, clearly symbolic of how they are prisoners of their own lack of mobility that comes from not owning an automobile. Also, note well how Randall, the object of Val’s jealous scorn, shares clear physical similarities with Val, thus presenting Randall as a spectre of the man that Val is sadly never destined to become. One might observe, too, the sullen baseball player who walks across the road in front of the stolen motor vehicle, this being a physical manifestation of Val’s guilty conscience, reminding him of the heinous nature of the act that he has committed, and how Randall, too, might be walking home from baseball practice at that very moment. Of course, the grim foreshadowing of the fate that shall befall Val, Tim, Kari and Vicky, as they fool about in the abandoned wreck of a car that they find in the woods, is so profound, it speaks for itself.
In case the name “Douglas Knapp” from the closing credits strikes you as being somehow familiar, as it did with me, he served as the cinematographer on a number of early John Carpenter films, including “Assault on Precinct 13” and “Dark Star”! This short film was also directed by William Crain, perhaps most famous for “Blacula”! This film is also proof of the phrase “you’ve gotta start somewhere”–Tom Schulman (who co-wrote this with the aforementioned William Crain) went on to win the Oscar for writing “Dead Poets Society”! I’m guessing that William and Tom weren’t really trying when they made Val repeat the phrase “hot shot” three times in one scene.
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Any idea who wrote that song? I’ve been looking for it but all I can find is one about a broken heart that sounds nothing like it.
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