When “Boulevard Nights” opened in early 1979, it was one of several major studio films — along with “The Warriors,” The Wanderers,” and “Over the Edge” — to take on gang violence as its primary subject. After the movies inspired a handful of violent incidents at theaters, Paramount doubled down on the marketing of Walter Hill‘s “The Warriors” and turned it into a box office hit; unfortunately for “Boulevard Nights” director Michael Pressman, Warner Bros. went in the opposite direction and pulled their film from the venues where violence had broken out, essentially abandoning the movie.
“Warner Bros. said, ‘We’re very proud of this movie, don’t get us wrong,’” Pressman told IndieWire, “‘but we’re not about to risk lawsuits.’” Over the years, however, “Boulevard Nights” has found the audience it always deserved via repertory screenings (it’s a perennial favorite at Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles) and home video, and in 2017 it was added to the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
This Saturday night, Warner Bros. is presenting the film on the big screen at the Gardena Cinema in Southern California with a Q&A featuring Pressman, screenwriter Desmond Nakano, and several of the actors; on September 10, “Boulevard Nights” will be released on Blu-ray for the first time.
For Pressman, it’s a gratifying development in the movie’s long and difficult history. “When it came out, I was still too close to it to see what it was. It was a very painful release and a big disappointment,” he said. At the time, Pressman was riding high on the success of the “Bad News Bears” sequel “The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training,” a comedy at the opposite end of the tonal spectrum from the thoughtful, tragic “Boulevard Nights.”
“I don’t know why they thought of me,” Pressman said. “But when I read it, it spoke to me.”
Indeed, ever since Pressman made his feature debut with the rousing Roger Corman action-comedy “The Great Texas Dynamite Chase,” one of the elements that has distinguished his career is his versatility, in some cases from film to film and, in the case of the 1982 Richard Pryor vehicle “Some Kind of Hero,” even within the same film. That movie, in which Pryor plays a Vietnam vet struggling to adjust to civilian life, deftly juggles poignancy, comedy, and a hint of action in a film that deserves to be far better known and regarded than it is — had it not been marketed as a silly Pryor farce, an error that set up false expectations in both the critics and audiences, it would be viewed today as a classic of its era alongside “Who’ll Stop the Rain” and “Cutter’s Way.”
It would be tempting to say that the only thing Pressman’s films have in common is that they have nothing in common, but this isn’t exactly true — from his broadest comedies (like the cult classic “Doctor Detroit,” another Tarantino favorite) to his most contemplative dramas (“Saint Maybe”), Pressman’s sensitive direction of actors and strong sense of anthropological detail in both their behavior and environments is always strongly evident, perhaps never more so than in “Boulevard Nights.”
Pressman freely admits that he was an unlikely choice to direct the drama about East Los Angeles street gangs. “Today, a white Jewish man would never get this job,” he said. “One of my role models was Martin Ritt, who had just directed a film about a Black family in the south, ‘Sounder.’ He immersed himself in the culture, and I tried to take that idea and go all the way with it.” To that end, Pressman set up his production offices in East L.A. and quickly invited the community to be part of the production.
“No one came to see us, except for actors and non-actors who were either in gangs or had gotten out of gangs,” Pressman said. He used both professionals and non-professionals in the movie and put them through an extensive audition process to assemble an ensemble of performers who weren’t just great, but great together. “There were two ways I assessed it. One was if anybody had training and I could see that I could get something from them. And then anybody who had no training that I could also try to get something from. There were four or five kids playing gang members in the movie who really were gang members, so we drew upon very personal stuff for them. And they were terrific.”
In addition to the actors, Pressman credits cinematographer John Bailey and production designer Jackson DeGovia with making “Boulevard Nights” something special. Both filmmakers were early in careers that would become legendary: “Boulevard Nights” was Bailey’s first studio feature right before he broke out with “Ordinary People” and “American Gigolo,” and DeGovia would go on to design “Die Hard,” “Speed,” and other classics. Pressman says they “lived and breathed” the movie together, coming up with a visual strategy in which the story of “Boulevard Nights” was divided into two worlds, the world of the family and the world of the gangs.
Pressman and his collaborators were able to move freely around the neighborhood and call upon the locals for help, largely because they didn’t enter East L.A. as an occupying force. “We didn’t act like outsiders,” Pressman said. “Instead of hiring security through the studio, we hired security from the neighborhood through one of the local car clubs. I wish Warner Bros. had done the same thing when they released the movie … it could have been a real grassroots phenomenon.”
Even though its initial release was truncated, the Library of Congress recognition and the cult that has grown up around “Boulevard Nights” — when it screens at revival houses it’s often accompanied by car club shows and discussions with actors like the one that will take place in Gardena — have made up for Pressman’s initial disappointment.
Not that the movie ever lacked noteworthy fans. “They snuck the film at Filmex [a now-defunct but once major L.A. film festival], and there was guy sitting next to me who left the minute it started, because no one knew what it was,” Pressman said. “I thought, ‘Oh, God, this is the worst.’ The only saving grace was that Robin Williams was in the audience and he was very affected by the movie. So I thought, ‘OK. At least Robin Williams likes the film.’”
“Boulevard Nights” will be released on Blu-ray on Tuesday, September 10.
