This is something that I think should be studied as a real snapshot of two separate worlds crossing, their shadows falling on one another. In this clip, from the 1985 movie Tuff Turf, James Spader plays a high school senior with an attitude problem. On his first day at a new school in the toughest part of the San Fernando Valley, Spader gets it bad for the local tough's girlfriend, Crimped Hair Girl. Going to see his new friend Robert Downey Jr's band, he sees her and dance-captures her in a big warehouse. It's awesome in its own right, but what strikes me as amazing is the band that Downey plays the drums for: It's the Jim Carroll Band! Jim Carroll! For those who don't know, Jim Carroll was a teenage basketball star at an all-boys Catholic School while turning gay tricks at night to fuel his heroin habit. And he was a writer. At sixteen. His memoir, The Basketball Diaries, was an underground junkie classic until Hollywood made a movie of it starring Leonadro DiCaprio. But in real life, Carroll re-invented himself one more time, and became a minor New Wave rock star with a couple of twitchy dance hits. And this is them, playing themselves. With a surprisingly buff Iron Man on drums. Enjoy! (I always imagine that in some composite universe, Spader and Downey beat up Ralph Macchio's Danny character from The Karate Kid. Eh, same neighborhood.)
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