Hiss in the signal: revisiting Chris Petit's Radio On
"Driving is a movie inside my head" is one of the Godardian on-screen slogans during Radio On (Remix), the 1998 mini-film from Chris Petit, his spooked-out return to the scene of the crash: to his amazing 1979 existential road movie Radio On . It's a phrase that fits the original film very nicely, as well as the "remix". Another slogan you see in this 24-minute mash-up short is "image virus", which again feels right. Radio On (Remix) is a sort of dubby fever dream version of the original. If you watch it immediately after viewing Radio On, it totally works, not least because of its intricate collage of murky audio - car sounds, arcade videogame bleeps, slowed-down dialogue, snatches of music. Bruce Gilbert ("sound design") evidently put it together; check out the audio here . Which is all to say - convolutedly - that this is a blog about the music in Radio On, probably one of only a handful of films ever to use popular (or semi- popular) mu...
