MovieChat Forums > Over the Edge (1979) Discussion > Why couldn't Johnny talk? And what were ...

Why couldn't Johnny talk? And what were he and Claude watching on TV???


I've probably seen this movie well over 200 times in my life. And I've never understood why Johnny is a mute. It's never addressed other than Matt Dillon briefly commenting that "It's a good thing you couldn't tell that cop how you feel." Beyond that he seems relatively normal.

And what on Earth are Claude and Johnny (in separate scenes) watching on TV? It's some sort of thing with flashing shapes and images - sort of like a weird Atari game. But it's not a game.

Any ideas on any of these things?

Maybe he was poisoned by the stuffed peppers.





Bad movies, cool reviews. (Sometimes)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpCa64qhPa5EO5QpDyjMLMA

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My thoughts on Johnny:

There are mute people among us. Why not show one in a movie without making his condition an important part of the plot?

or

It was added for dramatic effect in the scene where Carl phones Claude/Johnny to ask about Richie.

or

Maybe the actor was mute. He did a few other films, but I haven't seen any of them so I can't tell.

As for the TV, I think this is supposed to emphasize the dullness of New Grenada. There's nothing interesting to do, and even if you just hang out at home and want to watch TV, there's absolutely nothing on (or maybe there's no reception?).

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I need to bust out my dvd and listen to the commentary but I think I remember the implication ny the writer was supposed to be that he had taken a bad acid trip that rendered him mute.

As for the TV, It was a common thing to drop acid and stare at the test patterns on tv overnight... this was before informercials.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7HuQy35XtQ

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Right, the commentary might offer some insights, but I listened to it only once, when I bought the DVD eleven years ago. My God, it's terrifying how the time flies... I still remember eagerly awaiting the release.

As for the TV, It was a common thing to drop acid and stare at the test patterns on tv overnight... this was before informercials.

Err, yeah, right... Sounds like the least exciting thing to watch on acid. And it's certainly not the case in OTE, since it's daytime when Carl and Claude are on the phone and Claude wouldn't drop acid after his bad experience at school.

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I can assure you Tiger Thompson was not mute. I was present for part of the filming and actually talked to him myself. Among his other work was a TV ad for a Denver area bank, he has lines in that one.

The pattern seen on the TV came from an Atari Video Music product. You hooked it up to your TV and stereo to create a light show that was synchronized to the music. I didn't know anybody who actually owned one, but you'd see them on display in stores like Sears.

http://technabob.com/blog/2007/08/24/atari-video-music-forgotten-1970s-tech/


I think Johnny didn't talk because he didn't want to. He was symbolic of the lack of voice felt by the kids.


"You didn't come into this life just to sit around on a dugout bench, did ya?"

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Wow, thanks for your input. The link doesn't work, but I googled Atari Video Music and it really looks like those patterns.

In what capacity were you present? Or just an onlooker? If you have any more facts or stories you'd like to share, I'm sure many fans would love to read them.

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It will work if you cut and paste. Not sure why you can't just click. I'll try to fix it.

I lived in the neighborhood where they shot several scenes, including the party scene which was shot at my friend's house, located three houses down from mine. Production initially wanted to use our house, which had the same design and look, but decided against since we had a privacy fence, making it harder to maneuver equipment. The party house used in the film is located at 1484 S. Vaughn Cr in Aurora, CO. You can find it on any map program. Both my friend and his brother are extras at the party, the brother is one of the kids playing basketball in the driveway. The photos on the Vibe article where he kids are lying on the grass is probably the front yard of that house.

The scene with the Atari video was actually shot in the same house as the party scene, in one of the upper bedrooms. The production shot most of the party stuff, left, then had to come back a week later to reshoot some stuff, including that scene.

My buddy also lost a Ping-Pong table to the OTE production. Apparently he and his family went out to eat during a break in shooting. When they came back, one of the crew apologized, saying the kids had been sitting on the Ping-Pong table and they broke it. He promised they'd be paid for the damage.

When the movie was finally released, they got to see it in the cinema. Boy, were they surprised to see the scene where a car crashes into and destroys (their) ping-ping table. They all yelled "our table!", to the amazement and confusion of the rest of the theater patrons.

There's obviously lots of downtime between actual shooting, so the kid actors mostly just hung out on the street with some of the locals. We got to talk to them, played some Nerf football, that kind of stuff. The girl actresses, including Pamela Ludwig, mostly pretended to be above it all and kept separate, but the guys were pretty cool, including Tiger, the kid who played Claude and Matt Dillon.

I'm familiar with most of the Aurora-area locations, but that's about it. The old claudezachary site was pretty good on those, but it isn't around any longer.

It was and still is a very strange experience. Both my family and my friend moved out of the Denver area less than a year after OTE was shot. I never heard a thing about it for several years, figuring OTE had been released, bombed and disappeared. Coincidentally, both I and my friend moved back to Aurora in the mid-80s. He had a copy of the film and I finally got to see it. Better than I thought it would be, fairly accurate and not as over the top as I expected. Still, hard to judge fairly, mostly I guessed it seemed cool just because of the familiarity factor.

Boy, was I wrong. By the 90s, I'd moved to the Midwest. I'm hanging with some friends and I mention to them that this movie was filmed in my neighborhood. When they hear the title, they go nuts. Seems like every one of them had grown up watching it on cable. OTE had become a cult classic and I had no idea. Obviously, my involvement was very peripheral, but even at that limited degree, it is pretty cool that the film turned out to be as popular as it did.

I saw your question about my comment on the Vice article. After 35 years, memories get fuzzy, including mine, but there are a few items in there that don't jibe with what I remembered or been told. I have a copy of the movie, but haven't watched it in several years, so I could certainly be mistaken about a few things. There's a funny comment in there though from Matt Dillon:

"I had grown up in the suburbs of New York, which were entirely different than the Colorado suburbs. I might as well have stepped onto Mars. Even the juvenile delinquents were different. They all had blond hair. And they were really into drugs."

My buddy, his brother and the four boys in my family...we are all blond. :)


"You didn't come into this life just to sit around on a dugout bench, did ya?"

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Again: Wow, thanks. This is great stuff. I compared the house from the film to the one you pointed out. The basket is missing and there are some trees in the front yard, but you can easily tell it's the same house, you can even see the road bending in the lower left corner in the film.

Looking around on YT and the Internet I realized that many fans are interested in the filming locations and even travel to Greeley/Aurora from far away. I think this is partly due to the fact that OTE was apparently shot entirely on location, while many other movies are mostly shot on sound stages and sets built to suit the requirements of the director and the crew.

So they took the damaged ping-pong table from your friend's house and used it as a prop in the rec center?

By the way, it was hard to tell that the patterns had anything to do with music because there is no music playing in those scenes. That's why I assumed this was supposed to symbolize the dullness of New Granada, because the kids are just numbly staring at the screen.

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