Newly launched CO150 Film Festival will screen Colorado-connected films all across the state

If you were a suburban Denver teenager in the summer of 1978, chances are you spent at least one night chasing the uncommon Hollywood lights around southeast Denver, hoping to catch a glimpse of the movie that would become the cult classic “Over the Edge.”

The filmmakers chose inexpensive Denver to tell their cynical cautionary tale about the sterile, isolating nature of sprawling planned communities and the dire consequences of raising kids in an isolated, alienating environment like, say … Aurora!

The film, directed by Jonathan Kaplan, was a haphazard condemnation of preceding cinematic teen nostalgia like “American Graffiti,” anticipates grittier teen films to come like “The Outsiders,” “Rumblefish” and even the cruelly comedic “Dazed and Confused.”

At the time, I ran with a pack of teens who by day worked for $2.20 an hour picking up bean bags and plastic rings at Elitch Gardens and by night sought any distraction to sate our hormone-infused boredom. We were the real-life Carl, Richie, Cory, Mark and Claude, always seemingly on the run from all the Sergeant Dobermans. Ours was a by-the-book amusement-park honcho named Steve Mast, who frowned on our occasional setting of an Elitch’s trash can on fire.

Things got meta when we tried to follow the filmmakers’ temporary lights to locations like Cherry Creek State Park and the junior high school in Aurora we had been told was doubling for the school where, in the film, the pint-sized hellions trap all the parents inside while they riot, trash police cars and blow up vehicles in the parking lot.

It was only after the film came out that we realized how far off the GPS we were. The school where they filmed those scenes turned out to be John Evans Junior High in Greeley.

“Over the Edge” had no established teen stars – only inexperienced teenagers plucked straight out of New York City public schools. No one had yet heard of Vincent Spano or 14-year-old Matt Dillon. No matter. Everyone wanted to get close to the action. (We … well, never did.)

What’s fascinating about this film in retrospect is watching these novice actors get better and better at acting as the film goes by. It’s also fascinating to look back now at the film as a kind of accidental snapshot of what southeast Aurora looked like just before suburban sprawl swallowed everything. Many of those locations it captured in 1978 are almost unrecognizable now. We Elitch Gardens grunts lost our minds when a taxi pulls up to a house in the fictional “New Granada” subdivision with an Elitch Gardens ad poster running across the top of the cab. 

Ironically, by 1990, I was living in New York City and started playing a regular pickup basketball game that included the nicest guy you could ever meet. His name was Michael Eric Kramer, and he played the lead teen, Carl, in “Over the Edge.” For me, it was like palling around with Tom Cruise.

Kramer would go on to be cast in films like “Return to Horror High” and “Project X,” but he had his sights set on a PhD in clinical psychology. For more than 20 years, Kramer has specialized in treating veterans with combat PTSD at the VA in Brooklyn. He keeps a low profile and doesn’t talk much about the movie that made him a brief star 47 years ago.

But the film is being celebrated anew next month as part of “The Colorado150” (or CO150, for short), a series highlighting notable films with Colorado ties that were set in, shot in or featured Centennial State talent. (Colorado’s 150th birthday is coming up on Aug. 1.)

The series, in partnership between Denver Film and Switchboard Strategies, launched with Monday’s Film on the Rocks screening of “Little Miss Sunshine” (with definitive, Grammy-nominated music by Colorado’s DeVotchKa).

CO150 will offer 150 screenings at 35 historic venues across the state over the next six months. The lineup includes everything from “Misery” to “South Park Bigger Longer Uncut” to “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.” “Over the Edge” will screen at the Sie Film Center four times between Aug. 18-22.

Industry professionals first assembled the ballot of Colorado-connected films. The public then voted to rank them into what organizers are calling the definitive Colorado 150.

Not all of those films are being given their own public screenings, but No. 1 was, natch, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” and it will be shown in Denver, Lamar, Steamboat Springs, Durango, Silverton and Pueblo between July 31 and Oct. 3. The Denver dates are Aug. 4 at the SieFilm Center and Sept. 6 at the MCA Denver’s Holiday Theater. The rest of the top 10:

• 2. “True Grit.”
• 3. “The Shining.”
• 4. “Black KKKlansman.”
• 5. “The Hateful Eight.”
• 6. “City Slickers.”
• 7. “Dumb and Dumber.”
• 8. “Badlands.”
• 9. “Dr. Strangelove.”
• 10. “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead.”

“Over the Edge,” by the way, finished at No. 91.

Wait … “Dr. Strangelove”? According to the organizers: “Stanley Kubrick’s evergreen story of war and madness features exteriors of the Rockies.” Hmm, well … OK. Lists are meant to be fought over.

“The CO150 is a fun, accessible way to combine our love of movies and our state to celebrate 150 years of Colorado history,” said Switchboard CEO Rob DuRay.

To me, the real fun is mining the more unexpected titles at the bottom of the list that you might never know have Colorado roots of any kind. Like, say …

51. “Zodiac” is on the list, they say on the CO150 web site, because director David Fincher lived in Colorado, which is true … till he was all of 2! It does not note that the film’s real Colorado connection here is that the actor playing the presumed serial killer is Regis Jesuit High School grad John Carroll Lynch.

58. “The Muppets” made the list because it features our own Denver Gazette “Colorado 150” pathmakers Amy Adams and Kristin Schaal. 

141. “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” survived because some scenes were filmed in Glenwood Springs.

147. “Return of the Swamp Thing” barely made the cut because it features model Monique Gabrielle, a beauty-queen graduate of Denver Christian High School.

150. I dunno. It’s gotta burn everyone who made “Red Dawn” – the most awful Colorado movie of all time — that every other film on the list came in higher than it did. But it gives me great joy that “Over the Edge” finished 59 slots higher.

Now, if you’ve never even heard of “Over the Edge” till now – you are not alone. The film got completely gaslit by Warner Bros., which never gave it a wide national release for fear of sparking riots. Yes, I said riots. At the time, so it has been said, “the country was gripped by concern over youth violence after films including ‘The Warriors’ and ‘Boulevard Nights.’” Warner Bros. was nervous that “Over the Edge” might inspire copycats. So they did not promote the film, and it ultimately grossed only about $250,000 during its extremely limited test run.

Ironically, HBO later turned it into a cult phenomenon throughout the 1980s. After 1998, just about the only way to see it was to order the physical disc from Netflix, which in those days would mail it to your house.

Today the film — which cost roughly $3 million to make, is remembered as Matt Dillon’s acting debut. But for many of us in Colorado, it remains the seminal coming-of-age film of its time.

“Over the Edge” builds to a mic-drop line by some sleazy Texas developer who delivers this sick parental burn that some of us can still quote verbatim:

“Seems to me like you all were in such a hopped-up hurry to get out of the city that you turned your kids into exactly what you were trying to get away from.”

Nearly a half-century later … he’s still not wrong.

DeVotchKa’s full-circle moment

The CO150 Festival could not have debuted more spectacularly than with about 9,000 people watching the film in the glorious environs of Red Rocks following a mesmerizing live set by DeVotchKa, which was nominated for a 2006 Grammy Award for creating the film’s signature sound.

“We’re celebrating 20 years of this film,” frontman Nick Urata said. “For 20 years, we’ve been using that movie to convince people to come and see us so they can hear the rest of our songs.”

Also in attendance were husband-and-wife directing duo Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who introduced the film, told behind-the-scenes stories and informed the crowd this was the largest gathering ever to see the movie in one screening.

“This is pretty insane,” Dayton said. “So, 20 years ago we were at home listening to the radio, and a song came on, and we knew immediately this band DeVotchKa had to do the score for our movie. So we got their record and it was full of songs that felt like they were just waiting for us.”

Also sharing the stage at one point were Denver Film CEO Kevin Smith and Sundance Film Festival Director Eugene Hernandez making a fairly public show that the two nonprofit entities are committed to partnership rather than competition as the clock ticks down to the first Sundance in Boulder in January.

“The most important thing I want you to know tonight about Sundance is that you’re invited,” said Hernandez, addressing head-on what will surely be the festival’s biggest messaging challenge over the next six months.

Kalyn Rose at Red Rocks

Opening for DeVotchKa on Monday was rap duo Wheelchair Sports Camp making its first-ever Red Rocks appearance. It was a significant moment for Kalyn Rose Heffernan, who just came in at No. 125 on The Denver Gazette’s own “Colorado 150” list – only this one is a countdown of the state’s 150 most impactful cultural pathmakers of the past 150 years. I have described the Denver-based MC, musician and activist as “3½ feet of good trouble.” And after years of seeing her rapping and agitating and dissenting and rocking and rebelling from her wheelchair, it was an utter delight to see her having her Red Rocks moment. With her mom in the audience, she belted signature, necessary lines, like, “They want me dead” and “It’s hard out here for a gimp.”

It was emotional for Heffernan. 

“I already cried,” she said as she began her set. “It’s every music kid’s biggest dream to play this stage. So I feel like this is my Make-a-Wish. But this is the most alive I’ve ever felt.

“I hope I’m not going to die after this.”

John Moore is the Denver Gazette’s Senior Arts Journalist. Email him at [email protected].

CO15/Next screenings

• “True Grit,” 2 p.m. July 18, Impossible Playhouse, Pueblo
• ‘National Lampoon’s A Christmas Vacation,’ 6 p.m. July 25, the Kress Cinema, Greeley; also July 25 at sundown, Frontier Drive-In, Center
• The Shining,’ 7 p.m. July 25, Durango Arts Center
• ‘Dumb and Dumber,’ 3 p.m. July 26, The Lamar, Lamar