Hacker Cinema
Repo Man
1984 · Film · 92 min
Directed by Alex Cox
A down and out young punk gets a job working with a seasoned repo man, but what awaits him in his new career is a series of outlandish adventures revolving around aliens, the CIA, and a most wanted '64 Chevy.
12 positive1 negative16 neutralfrom 29 commenters
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30 comments on Hacker News
a remake of repo man (1984) a great movie
Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too.
J. Frank Parnell (from the movie Repo Man).
>Huh? You talk about your fetishes/turn-ons and sexual experiences with your co-workers, or are you mocking something I'm not online enough to understand?
"Lotta straight guys like watching their buddies fuck. I know I do."[0][1]
More seriously, on at least one occasion, a co-worker was showing a group of co-workers photos of their vacation at a swingers retreat. Let's just say nothing was left to the imagination. I'd add that this was an employee at the corporate headquarters of a Fortune 50 company.
[0] https://www.moviequotedb.com/movies/repo-man/quote_37738.html
[1] https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/50d10668-35f3-40bd-8fd1-c8c1aa6fddfd
Edit: Added detail about NSFW content at work.
> Want a fridge? Good luck in market research.
If paralysed by consumer choice I would lean on Which?[0] magazine which is run by the Consumers' Association charity. Perhaps there is something similar in your geography.
> In my student time. There was a shop where we bought "Beer", "Cognac" or "Vodka", with corresponding simple labels.
This reminds me of the grocery store in the film Repo Man[1] which had a few digs at consumerism. I prefer to know where my alcohol is from & who made it but I pass no judgement.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Which%3F [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repo_Man_(film)
Repo Men is the 2010 film; Repo Man is the 1984 one.
To stay on topic, Repo! The Generic Opera (2008) is another film - a musical, even! - that covers a very similiar topic.
Zydrate comes in a little glass vial...
> For the medical debt angle, the macabre and outrageous 'Repo Man'(2010) is a pitch-dark and fascinating examination of the end-game of medical insurance.
I really hate the twist ending in that movie. Please, screenwriters stop doing that, it ceased to be original like 30 years ago. Aside from the ending, good movie.
I'm Gen X so I think every movie sucks except Repo Man
>There ain't no difference between a flying saucer and a time machine
Maybe Miller from the movie Repo Man was right after all ...
"Batshit" is the measure of insanity. "Bullshit" is a measure of inaccuracy, "chickenshit" is a measure of obscurity, and "holy sheep shit" occurs, as far as I know, only in the film "Repo Man".
This generic packaging appeared in the movie "Repo Man" [1], apparently based on similar grocery store products [2].
[1] https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1002568447140622336
[2] https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/107433/whats-the-story-behind-the-1980s-no-name-brand
I have a question since you mention this movie -- was there an 80s/90s "precursor" for it with a big actor from that time? I know that Repo Man is not it, but maybe it hides under a different name. (Alternatively, it is a false memory.)
Congrats on making and launching this. Both of those things are quite difficult.
As kind of an acid test, I searched for "Repo Man" (in Films). It doesn't seem to be included in your database. 21 other films were displayed instead, none of which seemed particularly relevant.
This isn't a complaint. This aligns with my interests, and I hope you succeed. But the back end needs more work.
Once you get past the major names and into the scroll, the text usually moves from the bottom of the screen upwards. This works naturally with the way we read English. But I've seen at least one movie do it in reverse with the text moving downwards. I thought it was the original 'Repo Man' but the only instance of those end credits I can find on YouTube seems to indicate that's not it.
Whatever movie did it, it makes me wonder if the screen could simply be split in two, with major credits scrolling upwards on the left half and more minor roles scrolling downwards on the right half, perhaps at a different speed. Major stars, directors, producers, etc. would still get their full screen credits before the scrolling started. Deciding who ends up on with side of the screen would of course be another complication.
There's a movie with exactly this plot, Repo Man I think it's called.
If you haven't seen "They Live", I recommend you watch it on a double bill with Alex Cox's 1984 masterpiece "Repo Man"
> Seriously how often do you wonder why you just remembered, said or did something?
This has me thinking of the "plate o' shrimp" scene in the movie Repo Man.
More importantly, Mike Nesmith is the producer of one of the great all time punk movies Repo Man. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0087995/
> 'What we need at this point is people paying off their debt!'
Debt... ('contextless OT') ...shortage... damn! Just for a second i remembered a picture of the historic, ancient egypt, where organs were 'weighted' - and that the last time i had seen it, was in the movie repo men ^^
> [P-:] //wiki/Repo_Man_(film)
> 'What we need at this point is people paying off their debt!'
Debt... ('contextless OT) ...shortage... damn! Just for a second i remembered a picture of the historic, ancient egypt, where organs were 'weighted' - and that the last time i had seen it, was in the movie repo men ^^
> [P-:] //wiki/Repo_Man_(film)
>> unrelated, but REPO MAN (1984) is an excellent film
> Repo Men (2010) is even better
That's not a very widely shared assessment.
Repo Man (1984): 98% on RT, average rating 8/10. Ebert 3/4. IMDB 6.9/10. 75% Metacritic.
Repo Men (2010): 22% RT, average rating 4.2/10. Ebert 2/4. IMDB 6.3/10. 32% Metacritic.
1984 had a lot of science fiction movies: The Terminator, Dune, The Last Starfighter, The Adventurers of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Starman, Repo Man, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock; Night of the Comet, The Philadelphia Experiment, 1984, The Ice Pirates, Supergirl, The Brother from Another Planet, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Dreamscape, Firestarter, Electric Dreams, C.H.U.D, The Return of Godzilla, The Toxic Avenger, and more.
unrelated, but REPO MAN (1984) is an excellent film.
Wow. I've been a fan of Harry Dean Stanton for a very, very long time. His first credit is in the 1950s-- and he has a movie in post right now!
Some notable films you might want to check out (but might not realize are worth it)
Repo Man 1984 -- a major role for him in a cult classic from the punk rock era. Also young emilio estivez
Paris Texas 1984 -- A great film from the german director Wim Wenders, very much like a german David Lynch
Pretty In Pink 1986 -- A John Hughes film, Harry Dean Stanton plays Molly Ringwald's father in a touching performance
Wild at Heart 1990 -- An avant garde film by David Lynch with Nicholas Cage and Laura Dern in their prime. Probably Lynch's best movie, in my opinion.
The Straight Story 1999 -- Also by David Lynch this is actually a G rated film, about a guy who goes to visit his brother. It's kinda spectacularly touching while still being extremely minimalist in story.
Big Love 2006-2010 -- HBO TV Series about a mormon polygamist marriage, where Harry Dean Stanton plays an evil cult leader, super creepy, super effective and a "you love to hate him situation".
That may be a bit too many suggestions, but I pared it down from the 199(!) credits he has. I have seen all of the above and can recommend them all, though several are avant garde or not designed to be happy fun movies.
Also note he has a movie coming out soon-- Lucky -- where he plays the titular character and it looks to basically be an ode to Harry Dean Stanton.
RIP Harry-- you impacted my life and I will miss you.
I'm 0 for Thrillers on this list and only 2 for SciFi. So my word is suspect. But still, I would recommend startup.com for the documentaries.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/
I'd also recommend 2001, Repo Man, Dark Star and They Live on general principles.
White boxes with black letters? Used to great effect in the movie "Repo Man".
One of the best parts of the movie Repo Man (1980s) was this exact thing: http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5583664de4b088692d519822/t/55d8e857e4b07faafaaf06d1/1440278617640/
Also just an all around fantastic movie in general.
Back in the late 1970s, one saw "generic" products in the store--the movie "Repo Man" has some allusions to this. I remember my folks buying "Generic" beer; I took it, from the shape of the bottles, to be Falstaff. But that may have been the case only with the supermarket chain where they shopped.
Reminds me of the movie "Repo Man." Harry Dean Stanton says "let's go get a drink." They go into a quick mart and they find six packs of white cans labeled "Drink" and that's it.
Of course, that becomes just another brand gimmick, right?
It would be interesting to see what would happen if another company started using the same packaging to make a clearly inferior (or even just different) beer.
Last thought: reminds me of repo man (the one from the 80s), a great movie you should probably go watch right now, I mean come on, it's Sunday, relax.
> The Napolean Dynamite Problem
1. It's "Napoleon". Copy, paste would have prevented this error.
2. For some reason, an obvious issue is left out of the article -- and that issue is how much of movie ratings constitutes entropy, meaningless noise from which no pattern can be extracted, and how much constitutes actual data that an algorithm might accurately model and predict.
Those who doubt the role of entropy should try compressing the output of a pseudorandom number generator. If the PNG is any good, the compressed output will be larger than its input, implying high entropy. In fact, compressing the predictions of Netflix customers would be a good starting point in an algorithm design -- see whether there are any patterns available to exploit.
3. Along with Napoleon Dynamite on the list of hard-to-predict movies, Repo Man and Eraserhead should be considered -- they're also very hard to categorize.
> It helps if you dress like a detective, too. Detectives dress kind of square. People think this guy is a cop. They're going to think you're packing something. They don't fuck with you so much.
from Repo Man http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087995/