Why the 1978 Movie ‘FM’ Still Feels Like Real Radio, Even When It’s Bad

A question came up on a podcast I was listening to. Shout out to The Flop House. The question was, what movies defined cool for you as a kid? That really intrigued me. What has been a constant in my life? For me, from day one to today, it’s been Radio.

Why Radio Movies Always Hooked Me

Any movie about a radio station or a DJ was an immediate watch for me. I’d watch any episode of a TV show that featured radio. I watched the episode of Quantum Leap where Sam is a DJ in the 50s and saves rock and roll over and over. My dad was in radio when I was a kid, and I’ve been in and around it my whole life. I listened to the radio more than I watch TV, and I watched a lot of TV.

And the radio people, those were the heroes I identified with. Misfit creatives that care about the music and informing the people. 

Seeing how the internet demands content, I thought I’d revisit some of the radio movies that I had on a loop in my youth.

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FM as a Time Capsule of the 1970s

The movie FM came out in 1978, and if you’ve seen it, you wouldn’t need me to tell you that. The late 1970s are oozing out of its pores. While watching, I could smell the High Karate, hair spray, and cigarettes.

Watching FM is a full-on sensory time-travel experience for me. This was the era when I was a little child, first interacting with the world. The people in this movie look just like every adult I knew. The hair, clothes, and cars are seared into my memories. 

This movie is special to me because at that time my dad worked in radio, and I spent much of my youth in a radio station or listening to the radio. The nostalgia is strong with this one, and that’s good because it’s a rough movie.  

The closest analog to FM would be the movie Dazed and Confused. It’s what I would call a hangout movie. There’s a thin plot surrounded by slice-of-life sketches. In Dazed and Confused, we spent time with some fun characters and got a feel for the vibes of the last day of school in 1976. The plot is basically, will the star quarterback decide to keep being the star quarterback, and who will each character end up with at the end of the night? 

FM is about the crew of Q-SKY radio in Los Angeles. Led by the super-70’s cool program director and morning DJ Jeff Dugan (Michael Brandon). The plot centers around the dilemma Dugan faces when his new sales manager wants to play commercials on the number one radio station in LA. Dugan isn’t in it for the money, maaaan. It’s all about the music for him. It was stuff like this that infected my generation (X gonna give it to ya) and gave us moopy rock stars that didn’t want to be famous. Anyways, Dugan refuses to play the commercials and quits. His beloved staff rally the radio station’s listeners, and a big crowd gathers outside the station to demand their favorite morning guy be reinstated. He is, and all is well.

What FM Gets Right About Working in Radio

Two things stand out to me about that movie. They get the radio stuff almost right, and the music totally wrong.

I’ve spent my life in and out of a radio station. I started working in the 90s, at the tail end of the pre-digital era. I learned to cue up vinyl records, thread a reel-to-reel, and use the 8-track looking carts. The set design in FM is chef’s kiss perfect. The studios they show are spot on. Everything is where it would be in a real station. From the turntables to the mics and the shelves of records. I could smell the cardboard, coffe and cigarettes. In the 70s everywhere had a faint tobacco smell. 

They also capture the dorm-room style of decorating that the best radio station had. Years and tears of stickers, posters, jokes, memos, and anything weird are plastered all over every wall. 

I particularly loved how they show the radio people doing their jobs. In the days before computers, there was so much business to be done during the songs. It’s constant movement. You’re putting carts and records you played away while pulling the next ones. There’s meter reading to take, logs to fill out, and phone calls. All while watching the clock and listening to the song playing. In many ways, it was like working in a kitchen during dinner rush, constantly preparing, executing, and doing it again.

As for the radio itself, they get the people right. On the radio, people are traditionally a mix of weirdos and goofballs. They are professional creatives with an overdeveloped sense of importance. The film nails the personalities of the DJs. 

Martin Mull plays the oversexed wannabe TV star midday DJ. I’ve worked with several people like this guy. I may have even styled myself as such a guy. That’s not a brag. We have Cleavon Little, from Blazing Saddles, as the smooth-voiced overnight guy. He comes to work after an evening of parties to spend the night with you. Right before he comes on at midnight, Eileen Brennan’s Mother (that’s her radio name) is on the air. The station’s denizens are rounded out with a wacky engineer and his assistant, a cowboy DJ who gets fired because the rock music audience didn’t like him, I guess. He’s replaced by Cassie Yates as Laura Coe, a radio person who just can’t stay away.

The movie is like the collective fantasies of every radio person I’ve known. Radio folk are stars with real power, the music is important, and the drinks, drugs, and sex flow freely behind the scenes. 

Where FM Completely Loses the Plot

The setting and personalities are right on. But I have to say I don’t know how this station is number one. The radio they make is ridiculous. They’re doing weird new-age patter, reciting bad poetry, and empty talk about nothing. I am willing to concede that the 70s-ness of it all may be going over my head, but if this were a real radio station i would suck.

Along with the radio personalities' performances, the music is equally ridiculous. We are to believe that the station is the most popular station in LA, and they play the most boring, sleepy, yacht rock you could think of. Linda Ronstadt, Steely Dan, and Boz Scaggs don’t sound like the rock and roll rebellion that the movie wants to portray. This takes place in 1978; I would expect a rock station to play at least one Kiss song. Where were Cheap Trick, Van Halen, The Ramones, and Blondie? Playing a Jimmy Buffett concert on the radio doesn’t say ‘forget the system maaaan” the way they think it does. 

I’d say that nearly half the movie’s 104-minute runtime is taken up by concerts from Ronstate and Buffett. I’m talking several full songs. You’d be forgiven if you thought this was just a music video. And they were just nice, polite concerts. None of the crazy rock and roll lifestyle that the rest of the movie tries to create. 

The title track by Steely Dan is really good. But again, it is that insipid 70s mellowness. It’s a song I like to listen to at the end of a long day, not to hype up at the beginning.

Why Radio People Still Love This Movie Anyway

It’s not a good movie. I enjoy it for the nostalgia, but I don’t know how someone not pushing 50 would get anything from it except in an anthropological way. But, except for the actual radio performances and the music, it gets the vibe of a radio in it’s hayday right.