Many Gen Xers may have seen the title of the new Green Day video. And if “Corvette Summer” flashes you back to the Mark Hamill movie that came out after Star Wars became a huge phenomenon, you’ll be happy to know it delivers on that promise. While the song’s lyrics have no connection to the movie—they’re more about escaping life’s drudgery through the power of rock—the video is clearly an homage to and loving parody of the film.
Videos by American Songwriter
Blast from the Past
In Corvette Summer, Hamill plays Southern California high school senior Kenny Dantley, who rebuilds and repaints a 1973 Corvette Stingray as a class shop project. Soon after he’s done with the auto resurrection his wheels get stolen, and he goes in pursuit of the thieves. After Kenny learns the car was taken to Las Vegas, he hitchhikes there and gets a ride from a young lady in a van named Vanessa (Young Sheldon’s Annie Potts), who calls herself a “prostitute trainee.” Once in Sin City, the duo get day jobs and try to track down his car. She becomes sympathetic to his story, and they also become lovers.
When he does locate his stolen vehicle, Kenny hatches a crafty yet dangerous plan to get it back from the armed thugs who have it. The movie itself is silly fun and has shown up in subsequent home video releases. It reportedly cost less than $2 million to make and grossed $36 million.
Small-Scale Reboot
The Green Day video pays homage to the movie but with a far lower budget. In the comical clip, a small class at Coma City Junior High in 1978 recount their summer vacations. The three members of Green Day—Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool—portray elementary school kids who show the video of what they did with their summer. They made a home movie. Since it’s 1978, they pop up their VHS tape into a very old and bulky videotape player. And like anybody making home movies back then they had zero budget, so it looks cheap. All of the car racing scenes are done with toy cars and paper mache sets, while the main characters drive in cardboard replicas of real cars. And there’s lot of blatantly low grade rear projection.
The “Corvette Summer” clip plays out like the movie—including its desert car chase sequence involving gun play, a game of chicken on the highway, and a car explosion. Dirnt plays the kid wonder who rebuilds the car, Armstong and Cool steal it from him, and Hamill helps him get it back (replacing Potts’ character), even driving the car during the highway pursuit to recreate the game of chicken. It’s clear he enjoyed revisiting this bit from his cinematic past.
Mutual Admiration
In an Instagram post, Green Day wrote: “The song was named after one of our favorite cult classic movies, so it only made sense to pay homage to it with the music video. We even took things one step further and got @MarkHamill (who starred in the original) to star in our remake alongside us, @hannibalburess, and some others. We blew the entire budget on them so we had to get creative with cardboard boxes, some duct tape and matchbox cars we found in Tre’s basement. Directed by the dynamic duo @ryanbaxley & @breadandwalter. Buckle up, and enjoy the ride!”
On Instagram, Hamill enthused, “This sequel was a… l-o-n-g … time coming. Nice of you to ask me along for the ride, @greenday!”
Younger Green Day fans will likely have no idea what the band’s new video is referencing, although many young people today clearly know who Hamill is thanks to the recent Star Wars sequel trilogy and series. But for the fans who remember him and this silly movie from back in the day, the clip becomes a funny screen pairing of icons from the late ‘70s and mid-1990s.
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