Novelist
Glendon Swarthout sure knew his Americana. He is best known for The Shootist, the source novel for John
Wayne’s final film, but he was also the first to put the Florida Spring Break
tradition foursquare in the pop culture consciousness with his Where the Boys Are (also twice adapted for
film). College kids had been going to Florida for some fun in the sun since at
least the 1940s, but it really got messy and exhibitionist in the late 1980s
and early 1990s. Alison Elwood charts the evolution of the post-midterm ritual
run amok in Spring Broke (trailer here), narrated by Robin
Leach and executed produced by Alex Gibney, which premieres this Friday on
Showtime.
When
Swarthout’s novel released in 1960, Fort Lauderdale was already established as
the college spring getaway spot. It was good business for the town, but their
infrastructure could still more or less cope. Daytona Beach coveted that
action, so they started to lure some of the breakers up the coach. Generally
speaking, they got the rowdier, more cost-conscious partiers. Ostensibly less
desirably customers, they still fit the upstart ethos of the Daytona Beach
Spring Break masterminds.
Allan
Cohen at the Plaza Hotel (the other Plaza) and Hawaiian Tropic founder Ron Rice
had a knack for promotion, which caught the interest of corporate sponsors.
However, MTV took things to a whole new level. While they kept the broadcasts
relatively clean, it is not hard to connect the dots between the behavior
captured and shared in-house by MTV cameras and the “Girls Gone Wild” videos
hawked on late night television. Basically, revelers were invited to act like
lunatics on TV and they obliged. Eventually, it just wasn’t fun anymore,
especially for local residents.
Somehow,
Broke manages to be both nostalgic
for and disgusted by the madness of the MTV salad days, just like most viewers.
Ellwood also has a remarkably keen grasp of local Florida politics as well as
the particulars of hotel-resort management. It turns out the drunken college
student business is far more complicated than you would have realized. Cohen
emerges as sort of the mad genius of it all, while Rice is the intentionally Hefner-esque
spiritual guru. You have to give them credit for their chutzpah and vision, as
well as their willingness to dish for Ellwood. She gets further colorful
commentary from Dave Barry, original MTV VJ Alan Hunter (how’s that for
nostalgia) and her associate producer Ron Hurtibise, a Daytona Beach
journalist.
