SIFF's "Skateland" : Who said the 70's were easy?

Set in the early 1970's this story follows a boy named Teddy who is confronted by many bad events in an era of freedom, and easy going. The title of the movie refers to a roller rink where Teddy is a manager and has worked all 4 years of high school. unfortunately it goes out of business due to the rise of disco's and the club scene. this is just the beginning of his teenage drama's.

Teddy's closest friends are this brother and sister whom he is very close to their family as well. The sister, Michelle, is his closest girl that is a friend and becomes the apple of his eye throughout the movie. Her brother, Ritchie, is a washed up professional motorcycle rider with the smoothest mustache and most bad ass ride in town well... that's where Kenny comes into the movie. Kenny is a rich, blonde, lake house owning party boy who is like the cool kid with a brand new chevy camaro. It seems these two boys are the cream of the manly crop. Unfortunately his parents are dead, which I learned by talking to the director afterwords, so he has nothing but cash to keep him happy.

Teddy is thrown all sorts of curve balls as he is faced with death, rivals, girl problems, college, and the loss of Skateland. For a teenager fresh out of high school and in between college and the last 19 years of his life he can't decide what to do. to make things harder his choices are bombarded by conflict after conflict.

As Teddy is forced into unemployment his search for a new job just as good as Skateland fails. When he tries to relax and enjoy himself his friend Ritchie is hooking up with girls that belong to his rivals which in turn cause the death Ritchie after an intense chase after a party by the girls boyfriend. teddy survives the accident and is left horrified by the turn of events. Not knowing what to do with himself, whether to stay in town or go away to college, his world falls apart.

He goes for some R and R at a bar and see's his own mom with another man this soon follows the divorce and the falling apart of his family ties. As his little sister tries to make his mind up for him by applying to a bunch of colleges Teddy lashes back at saying he would rather stay instead of pursuing his future.

As Michelle and Teddy become romantically involved, Michelle makes the first move, she then is quickly thrown away from her pathway and goals as the death of her brother Ritchie forces her to rethink her life, so she runs away. It seems his world has fallen apart.

When it seems all Teddy can do is nothing he receives a lovely letter from the University of Houston where he is gratefully accepted along with a nice scholarship. He then goes to Michelle and says "we're going" as the two decide to go to college together following with a romantic closing kissing scene.

The movie covered media influence as MTV was first introduced in that time. So the shift to a teen-happy media induced world was about to come as MTV typically defines "cool." After the movie was over we talked to the director and Anthony Burns most impotently said "I chose this era because ti was when women were the strongest, this was after the civil right movement and I wanted every woman character to influence the audience." and theat every female was to glow and inspire. I gave this movie 4.7/5 stars.

What's the differences between me and you?

When you take a conflict of race its on the background of that person of which they were born into. One disagreeing with the other based on like and dislike referring to ones preferences. This is sparked by the first thing you notice about any one human you come in contact with anywhere in the world. Their race and gender, whether you like it or not its what we do. This necessarily isn't bad in that you may have no bias on either, but many do.

For an example, when someone not related to your race walks in the room in your near direct line of sight your eyes will scan and in less that a second your brain races with anything related like a supercomputer. This doesn't mean that you automatically become a judgmental racial profiling son of a gun. It means you recognize the differences and recall your perception on what you have been through up to that point in time. See this is where racists will skew and channel such thoughts into negative hate. Hate for another person who is not them or, a racist/sexist.

This racial/gender profiling is sadly very common in America and especially America. Our history is short in comparison to many other nations and in that short time there was a long and serious period of slavery of African Americans and only African Americans. The oppression for being born how you were, as well as some bogus findings of racial superiority based on skull structure, are rooted in our American history. I believe its very important we teach every bit of U.S. history from worst to greatest but the fact our history involves genocide of nearly all Native Americans, Slavery and oppression of hundreds of thousands of African Americans, and Internment of U.S. citizen Japanese Americans during WWII all in 233 years, that a lot of hate. Even today we face such discrimination among races as we have entered the Afghanistan and Iraq wars that Middle Easterns are somehow suspected of being terrorists and that Hispanics can legally be racially profiled in Arizona as we protect our boarders.

All that in almost 2 human lifetimes is a lot! This what I believe learning about this may impose or somehow connect in peoples minds that it may be okay to hate, discriminate, and be racist. Our track record as a nation clearly shows an extremely large amount of hate among each other. The social experiment in the store as ABC set up a hairy situation with opposite races. The fact our nation has a history of such discrimination among other races allows one to think that because our history has it that its okay, which its not.

We should be learning from such a rough history. Its like the global warming situation in that we are chocking our planet by spewing emissions thus killing humanities only home, Earth. The same should go for racism in America. Teach that and make it right by teaching that racial profiling is not okay and that we are all equal because we are.

For example imagine an onion and all its layers. Now take a White male and a Black female, stand them next to each other. When you peel off their first and foremost layer, the skin and hair, all racial aspects are gone. Its muscle and muscle. When you peel away another layer you get bones, but you also get genitals which surely separates the sex but without race I'm pretty sure these two would get along. As you get down to just organs its all the same. Its just our identity on the outside. What our skin color is, what we wear, how long our hair is, our "feature" sizes etc.

"We are fully clothed naked."

So really when the question comes up, What are the differences between me and you? Its gotta be the race you were uncontrollably born with and how you accessorize yourself with material goods because underneath your skin we are all the same (minus genitalia) so ask yourself, why can't we all get along? and do something to fix that. That's how to answer the question.