TMS Retro: Revisiting Light of Day

(Tri-Star Pictures)

NOTE: This article was originally written for DGO Magazine in 2020

For whatever reason, sometimes there are movies that do fine on release with audiences and critics, and yet somehow end up stuck in obscurity as time goes on. A lot of the time it’s for copyrights reasons, like with licensing for the use of songs featured on the soundtrack. Or sometimes a disagreement between the filmmaker and the studio causes a film to just be stuck on the shelf. Paul Schrader’s Light of Day (1987) was a modest success when it first came out, mostly because of the A-list cast and the heavily prominent soundtrack which appealed to rock music fans of the time. But now you can’t even find the movie on DVD. Fortunately, as I discovered over the past weekend, if you dig around enough, you can come across the full length film on less sketchy parts of the Internet.

After dissecting the seedy, gritty streets of New York City and Los Angeles in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980) as a scriptwriter, and in Schrader’s own penned and directed Hardcore (1979) and American Gigolo (1980); the filmmaker takes on the lower ends of Cleveland, OH in Light of Day. This film is primarily famous for being rockstar Joan Jett’s first acting experience, and also one of the better movies of co-star Michael J. Fox beyond NBC’s “Family Ties” (1982-89) and Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future (1985).

(Tri-Star Pictures)

The two play an unlikely pair of siblings, with Jett as Patti as a single mom who doesn’t make good decisions; and Fox as responsible Joe, with steady gigs at both an industrial factory and as the guitarist in the popular, local rock band which is also fronted by Patti. Both Joe and their mother, Jeanette (Gena Rowlands), are worried about the upbringing of Patti’s five-year-old son Benji (Billy Sullivan) while she leads her reckless lifestyle.

Jason Miller, Michael McKean and Cherry Jones fill out the rest of the recognizable cast. On the page and with any other movie maker, Light of Day could have very easily been executed like an after-school TV special you would commonly see back in the 1980s, except with a legitimate budget and cast. But because Schrader is intriguing and talented enough as an artist, the story and characters feel a little realer and more nuanced. Though it’s always interesting to see Fox out of his light-hearted comfort zone in a family drama, it’s Jett who is the most impressive part of Light of Day. One of the most successful female musicians of all time, as proven here singing ‘This Means War’ and the title song (the latter even written by Bruce Springsteen), and also surprisingly a pretty good actress. It would have been nice had she explored this side of her career more with the exception of a few TV series appearances. Light of Day isn’t near the masterpiece of Taxi Driver or Raging Bull, but it’s a sold viewing for anyone who is a fan of Schrader, Jett or Fox.