Pump Up the Volume is a 1990 American coming-of-age teen comedy-drama film written and directed by Allan Moyle. The film stars Christian Slater, Scott Paulin, Ellen Greene, and Samantha Mathis.
Plot
High school student Mark Hunter, who lives in a sleepy suburb of Phoenix, Arizona, starts an FM pirate radio station that broadcasts from his parents' basement and functions as his sole outlet for his teenage angst and aggression. His pirate station's theme song is "Everybody Knows" by Leonard Cohen and there are glimpses of cassettes by such alternative musicians as The Jesus and Mary Chain, Camper Van Beethoven, Primal Scream, Soundgarden, Ice-T, Bad Brains, Concrete Blonde, Henry Rollins, and Pixies. By day, Mark is a loner who has difficulty socializing with other students. By night, Mark, under the nom de plume Happy Happy Hard-on, sometimes shortened to simply “Hard Harry”, expresses his outsider views about the problems with American society. When he speaks his mind about teen angst and exposes the underhanded actions of the faculty, his audience quickly grows from a handful of loyal listeners to the entire student body.
One night, Malcolm Kaiser, a depressed teenager, sends a letter to Harry seeking advice about following through on committing suicide. Harry reacts flippantly, expressing disbelief that Malcom is sincere, and Malcom quickly hangs up, with Harry closing his show by telling Malcom, “Maybe you’ll feel better tomorrow.” The next day, the students and faculty are informed that Malcom committed suicide.
Fellow student Nora De Niro pieces together that Mark is Hard Harry, and attempts to assuage the guilt he feels over Malcom. The radio show becomes increasingly popular and influential after Harry confronts the suicide head-on, apologizing to Malcom for not explicitly telling him not to follow through, and exhorting his listeners to confront their problems instead of surrendering to them through suicide. At the climax of his impassioned speech, an overachieving student named Paige Woodward (who has been a constant listener) jams her various medals and accolades into a microwave, causing an explosion which injures her face.
Unrest at the school increases as the Harry’s show becomes ever more popular with students sharing bootleg tapes and re-playing the show during school hours. A meeting of faculty and parents concludes that the pirate DJ is responsible for the problems at the school. The local police begin investigating, first cutting off Mark’s access to the P.O. Box he used to receive letters to the show, and then cutting off his phone service when they trace a call to a neighboring house where Mark had surreptitiously hooked up a wireless phone.
Mark continues to go on the air, and the FCC is called in to investigate.
Realizing the jeopardy he is in, Mark decides to do an epic final broadcast. He dismantles his radio station and attaches it to his mother's Jeep, creating a mobile transmitter so the FCC will have difficulty triangulating the radio signal. Pursued by the police and the FCC, Nora drives the Jeep around while Mark broadcasts.
As Harry’s broadcast is heard by the entire school who have gathered at the athletic fields, the school principal, Loretta Cresswood is confronted by one of Mark’s teachers and Mark’s father, Brian Hunter, who is the school board commissioner. They demand to know why Cresswood systematically expelled students with low test scores. Cresswood defiantly insists the students she expelled were “losers” and “troublemakers” and that she did it “for the good of the school.” Brian places Cresswood on immediate suspension.
Meanwhile, the harmonizer Mark uses to disguise his voice breaks, and Mark, unable to fix it, decides to broadcast his final message as himself. They finally drive up to the crowd of students gathered at the school, and Mark tells them that the world belongs to them and that they should make their own future. He encourages them all to “steal the air” and begin their own shows to put their thoughts and feelings out into the world. The police step in and arrest Mark and Nora. As the pair are taken away, students are heard shouting their appreciation to “Harry”. Mark turns to the students a final time and tells them to, “Talk hard!” As the film ends, the voices of other students (and even one of the teachers) speak as intros for their own pirate radio shows, which can be heard broadcasting across the country.