Wherein I put on two hats for a film that hits close to home.
Professional
A group of Texas filmmakers have put a true Texas story on the screen, and the result is Bomb City, a tale of division and conflict deep in the heart of the Lone Star State.
Retelling the story of Brian Deneke whose death in 1997 generated headlines around the nation, Bomb City excels in technical production while still harnessing the breadth of emotion in this very personal conflict.
While the film is based on the real-life events, liberties have been taken to keep the center of the story authentic while bowing to concerns about narrative and privacy that this type of movie demands.
The story centers around Deneke (Dave Davis) and his murderer, Cody Cates (Luke Shelton), a couple of teenagers in Amarillo, Texas–the city where most of America’s nuclear weapons were made–who end up representing what amount to warring factions in this sleepy, wind-swept city. It’s really the story of two groups that continually find themselves in often violent conflict: the “Punks” (we’re talking Sex Pistols/Black Flag-listening, mohawk and leather-wearing punks) and the “White Hats” (after a late-90s style of baseball cap) a group of preppies and jocks much more in the mainstream of their society.
The film opens with the two groups doing what they do best on a Friday night: a football game for one and a raucous music show for the other. Before long a few members of each end up at the same fast-food joint and blows are almost exchanged. It’s kind Friday Night Lights with less beautiful people and more chaos.
Throughout, the focus is mainly on Deneke and his tribe as they struggle to make ends meet, have fun, and “keep it real.” Run-ins with the police and the White Hats escalate until the film’s inevitable climax plays out in excruciating detail. Cates (a stand in for Dustin Camp, the person on whom Cates is based) is dealt with sympathetically. He’s in now way of leader of this crew, but his degradations explain the suffering on all sides.
What amounts to a gang-style brawl takes place in the parking lot of the local mall, and when Cates shows up on the scene, he takes a decisive action that will affect the lives of everyone involved, all without leaving comforts of his parent’s Cadillac.
The tale is told in flashback from the trail of Cates, where the defense attorney (Dallas’s own Glenn Morshower) makes the case for good vs. evil, with his client being the victim of circumstance against the destructive and anarchic punks. It is injustice writ large, even before the verdict is returned.
The production value of Bomb City is top shelf. It sounds great and looks even better. The crew behind this film has a bright future ahead. There are times where the acting doesn’t live up to the rest, but it never detracts from a story that desperately needs to be told.
Whether they know it or not, the city of Amarillo and the state of Texas are lucky this tragic event got told with this much care. It’s certainly a cautionary tale, but more than that, it’s about people who got caught up in violence and saw hatred destroy everything.
Personal
Bomb City is my city. I was not quite born, but definitely raised, in Amarillo, Texas, the site of this film’s tragedy. Tascosa High School, represented so clearly by red and black letter jackets throughout, was the place I graduated from half a decade before Brian Deneke’s life was taken.
So this story is my story, but if you had asked 1997 me about it, I would have strongly disavowed. I left. I went to college eight hours away. I wanted nothing to do with the white hats, and the punks certainly wanted nothing to do with me.
There are things just beyond the reach of the camera that loom large. The site of the killing, Western Plaza, was “the old mall” the entire time I was growing up. I spent a lot of time there. A LOT. From the video game arcade to school lunch (it was just across the highway from Tascosa) to the time I even played Santa Clause for a day, this is a place baked into my mind.
The “Amarillionaire” behind all the outsider art in the film was courtesy of none other than Stanley Marsh III, he of the Cadillac Ranch and the arty street signs Deneke and his brother worked on. Marsh has since been disgraced as a sexual abuser of Amarillo’s youth. Recently, I discovered that someone I know was one of his victims, and now I can’t think of anything to do with him the same way. God knows what the young men in the movie might have endured. I certainly don’t, but society’s outcasts are usually the most likely victims.
In many ways I was tangential to all of this brouhaha. I went to Wolflin Elementary, situated in the wealthiest part of town. It was partly kids from this social group that would don those white hats a few years later. This is the “old money” neighborhood. However, none of those kids went to my school because of course they their own private school. It was just us regular joes. In the summer before junior high started, right when we were all about to join up at last, I attended a birthday party that had kids from both schools. Their country-club ways confused and confounded me.
By the time high school rolled around, there would be the occasional punk in one of my classes. One guy I remember had such an outrageous mohawk (foot-long spikes composed of airplane glue) that he was deemed in violation of some dress code or safety violation. I would later spend a decade teaching in a public school in Austin and never saw anything like that.
Still, my dumpy, dorky self was never going to be a part of that crew either. Give me some comic books and television and I’m good. To see these groups represented on screen (and yes, seeing our high school stadium, replete with the marching band I was part of, hit me hard) even in an exaggerated way made me think about why I left there all those years ago.
First of all, most of my thoughts about this make me look pretty bad. Seeing someone who loved Black Flag hanging around Amarillo made me want to shout, “Why do you live here? Move!” I also looked at the insular nature of both groups and felt they were piss-poor options. In the years since, I’ve befriended some of those country-club kids and realize they were just following in the path laid out before them. Time changes things.
So what does it say for the hate that exists both in the violent interactions of Bomb City as well as underneath the conservative, Republican infrastructure of that whole place. There was always an ugliness I could never quite put my finger on, but it was always there, lurking. Being isolated in the middle of the country surely created an us-vs-them mentality. It didn’t have to break so bad, but it did.
I never thought I’d see a movie made so close to home, more geographically than emotionally, but it was still a shock to my system. I’ve become much more sympathetic to rebels than I was, even though I’m typing this from my comfortable, suburban home. Bomb City is a hyperbolic and simplistic look at a complex but troubled place. Amarillo’s still a city people say “It’s a great place to raise kids” about, and while I’ve chose not to, I’ll spend the rest of my life thinking about this city in the Panhandle and all the years I called it home. I’m of there and from there, but it’s no longer mine, and never will be again.
