Director Doug Lyman scored an indie hit last year with the fast-paced, edgy Go, a film that took more than its fair share of plot points from the rave scene. Now writer/director Greg Harrison tries to go one step further with Groove, a fictional look at one night in the lives of a group of twenty-somethings who come together for an underground warehouse party in Harrison's hometown of San Francisco.

The movie again draws extensively on the club and DJ world, including appearances from several Bay Area DJs, as well as the internationally prominent John Digweed, who tears the roof off the fictionalized party with his closing set.

The breakthrough hit of this year's Sundance Festival, Groove is already being hailed as the most realistic portrayal to date of the rave scene. With the hype surrounding the film after its hefty selling price ($1.5 million) coming out of Sundance, Groove is bringing the dance community the mainstream exposure that's been predicted for it since the mid-Nineties.

As with any underground movement, imminent success is both an exhilarating and frightening prospect. Harrison, who spent time in the SF rave culture between '94 and '96, was careful to maintain the sanctity of the scene. "I wanted to craft the film successfully through an authentic portrayal of the scene, because I care about the scene," he says.

It was his respect for the this community that prompted the former LA film editor to take his baby the indie route. He says that the production companies he approached were ready to make a rave film, but not the one he wanted to do. "They were very interested in exploiting that realm," he says. "The common response that crossed everyone was, 'Can you add a gun? Can you add a drug overdose?' They really were more interested in the sensationalized, broad stroke view of raves."

In addition to trying to preserve the integrity of the underground party circuit, Harrison wanted to make sure the SF music scene was portrayed accurately. To that end he turned to Wade Hampton (better known to dance fans as DJ WishFM) to oversee the music. Hampton says now that he's seen how well people are responding to the film, he's glad he signed up. "In hindsight, I am glad we did get involved so we weren't listening to a soundtrack just chock full of pop stars, because it appears that this thing has legs," he says.

Hampton, who presently divides his time between San Francisco and Utah, but established his reputation in the former, says his top priority was to make sure the music reflected the local dance community. "The real criteria that we kept coming back to was it either needed to be the real thing from San Francisco, or something that had heavily influenced San Francisco," says Hampton.

If the film does become a success, Hampton, as an insider of the scene who helped bring Groove into the tightly knit dance world, is ready for whatever backlash could follow and the issues it would bring if Groove were viewed as some kind of "voice of the rave community." "I'm prepared to deal with that responsibility and anything that might come out of it in the form of a response from the underground," he says. "Maybe the wrath will come, if it really gets huge, but I'm also prepared to deal with that."

For his part, Harrison hopes people realize Groove is not intended to be a summation of the entire scene, but a personal statement that covers one aspect of a growing subculture. "It was very difficult to distill the rave scene down to its essence, globally," he says. "For me, this is a film about the San Francisco underground scene, and a particular kind of party that takes place in the Bay Area."

STEVE BALTIN
(June 17, 2000)