Tuff Turf - It's Too Late - The Jim Carroll Band

I've been in a Jim Carroll Band mood lately and in particular have been digging on the song "It's Too Late." While watching the video on YouTube recently I noticed that there was a video of the song from the movie Tuff Turf. I didn't really remember a great deal about the movie but the title sounded familiar.



I cannot honestly say whether I ever actually saw the film but it's more than likely that I did. The vast majority of my time in college was spent watching movies with my friends in the frat house (think more dirtbag Animal House than preppy rich kids) which was the only one on campus or even near it. It was our favourite pastime. Plus when you had HBO or any of the other movie channels they constantly played the same movies over and over and occasionally threw you a bone by playing a new one. So more than likely I did see but just don't remmeber it.

Tuff Turf has a familiar 80s movie plot of a new kid moving in to a new town and getting in trouble while trying to find true love. Footloose did it to much more acclaim but it's an idea that never seems to get old. The interesting thing I thought of while watching this video is that it features Jim Carroll playing in a band with some of the high school actors who manage to over do it a bit. What strikes me most is that it plays like an adult director or writer who tries to tell us what it's like to be a kid, whether they're in a band or a gang or just a regular person. For instance in the video you can see kids dancing in the crowd while the band plays but you can clearly see mixed in with real regular kids several professional dancers doing moves that nobody I ever knew would be caught attempting. Of course maybe I'm not the poster child for what was normal back then.

Anyway, for every John Hughes who got it right there's hundreds others who were so far off base it isn't even funny. To be honest I'd have to watch it again before really deciding where it falls. At least it gave James Spader and Robert Downey Jr a place to hone their chops before moving on to bigger and better things latter in life. Plus it actually had some cool songs in it from Jim Carroll and you can never get enought of that in my book.