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 Adam Ritchie and his band inside the DMZSteve Schmidt and Link Smith skating in DMZ parking lotSteve Schmidt, somewhere between the heights and downtownGrove Circle Punx - Andy Conrad, Utrillo, Bryan Spinas, Matthew Thompson, Jason White, Josh Bentley (92)
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Bangin' in Little Rock on HBO  Alan Short // Pretty sure this came out closer to '93-94, I'm not gonna check Wikipedia, though.
Jason Lee, Jake Jackson, and I once or twice skated with the douchebag, "Kiki," who rolled around to 'The Chronic' thru that one part. I remember he was the only dude I knew who rode a freestyle board - (and a trenchcoat). I thought he could ollie real high. Who knew he would peak w/ 'Bangin...' I remember, also, going with Jake Jackson to check out 'The Wrangler' on a Sunday 'teen nite' -as kind of a social experiment in, about '93. HBO was there filming for this, and tons of people were throwing gang signs to the cameras on the dance floor. We thru Dead Roach signs, but our scene didn't make the movie. Anyway, so, the way I see it is that HBO owes the fine citizens of AR something cool, like public transit. We've given them Gangs and Satanists, merit aside. They shoud fund the Towncraft Movie. 666. // I moved to Memphis from North Little Rock (I say Little Rock as it is the same place pretty much) in 97 and when I said I was from Little Rock the two questions usually were about Clinton and the HBO movie. I have not actually seen the movie, but I had heard a lot about it and some of my friends in Memphis were telling me about it. To this day it still blows my mind how many shootings occured in the Little Rock area. From 2nd to 8th grade I went to Walnut Valley Christian Academy (now Little Rock Christian) and I would always hear about how rough areas like Eastgate were. I remember that someone from Walnut Valley had a birthday party that I was invited to at Kanis Park and we skated the bowl and everything was fine. From several yards back we witnessed a drive-by. Thankfully no one was hurt or anything but it was the most fucked up thing ever. I would say that the tagline in the movie that you mentioned Richard would probably mean that when you have grown up with experiences from a place you have been for so long...once you ... (More) // This debuted after I had already moved to California. I taped it that night. I showed it to Jason Morphew a couple of years later and we became obsessed with it. We watched it all the time. We still quote it to this day. At the time I thought it was some right-wing vehicle to show how terrible the "land of Clinton" was after he was elected. // One of my friends from college recently confessed to me that when we first met in 1994 he was scared of me, and it was all based on his seeing Bangin' in Little Rock. He figured I must have been hard if I'd come from Little Rock! Hilarious. I saw Bangin' for the first time several weeks ago. I had no idea that in 1993 there were something like 26 drive-by shootings in Little Rock by July 4. I remember sitting in the back of Communications class in Central getting the lowdown from a wannabe Blood about gang graffiti, signs, etc. It was from him I learned that kids at school were shouting "blood world" in the hallways instead of "ba-wooo." I remember they stopped letting my gym class do laps around the high school building because they were scared of some kind of violence breaking out. Apparently Central was in a Crip-affiliated area, and a lot of students were bused in from Blood-affiliated areas. It's strange those kind of problems would exist in Arkansas. // I just noticed that the tagline for the movie is "Not everyone who leaves Little Rock leaves it behind". I don't know what that means! // "Bangin' in Little Rock" is still one of the highest rated original one-offs ever to run on HBO. I didn't see movie or its follow-up until a few months ago, but from the number of people around the country that know about it, you'd think that it was played on HBO non-stop for a couple years. I've traveled all over the US and, at least in the 90s, there were exactly 2 things that people in other places knew about Little Rock: 1) Clinton 2) "Bangin in LR", and not necessarily in that order. People would say, "Man, it's really rough down there, right?" and I had no idea what they were talking about.
Little Rock is divided by interstate 630 that runs East and West for the length of the old city. North of 630 lies downtown and the old suburbs that are still mostly white. Even in the 80s and 90s, the legacy of segregation meant that south of 630 lay most of the black communities, many of them poorer. I went to Little Rock Central High, which was surrounded by a pretty sketchy few blocks of boarded up houses, but the drive there and home, was pretty much ... (More) Trouble submitting your story? E-mail towncraft@matsonfilms.com Matson Films reserves the right to edit all responses. Please be courteous to your community. |
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Bangin in Little Rock
Little Rock Central High
