Mark Hunter, a.k.a. Happy Harry Hard-on
Mark Hunter is the main protagonist in the 1990 drama film Pump Up the Volume. He is portrayed by Christian Slater, who also played Will Scarlet in the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Riley Hale in the 1996 film Broken Arrow. He was the voice of Pips in the 1992 animated film FernGully: the Last Rainforest and the voice of Jet Fusion in the 2001 animated TV series Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.
Biography[]
Mark Hunter, a high school student at Hubert Humphery High School in a sleepy suburb of Phoenix, Arizona, starts an FM pirate radio station that broadcasts from the basement of his parents' house. Mark is a loner, an outsider, whose only outlet for his teenage angst and aggression is his unauthorized radio station. 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", "Concrete Blonde", "Henry Rollins", and "The Pixies". By day, Mark is seen as a loner, hardly talking to anyone around him; by night, he expresses his outsider views about what is wrong with American society. When he speaks his mind about what is going on at his school and in the community, more and more of his fellow students tune in to hear his show.
Nobody knows the true identity of "Hard Harry" or "Happy Harry Hard-on," as Mark refers to himself, until Nora Diniro, a fellow student, tracks him down and confronts him the day after a student named Malcolm Kaiser commits suicide after Harry attempts to reason with him. The radio show becomes increasingly popular and influential after Harry confronts the suicide head-on, exhorting his listeners to do something about their problems instead of surrendering to them through suicide—at the crescendo of his yelled speech, an overachieving student named Paige Woodward (who has been a constant listener) jams her various medals and accolades into a microwave and turns it on. She then sits, watching the awards cook until the microwave explodes, injuring her. While this is happening, other students act out in cathartic release.
Eventually, the radio show causes so much trouble in the community that the FCC is called in to investigate. During the fracas, it is revealed by Jan Emerson, one of Mark Hunter's teachers that Loretta Creswood, the school's principal, has been expelling "problem students," namely, students with below-average standardized test scores, in an effort to boost the district's test scores while still keeping their names on the rolls (a criminal offense) in order to retain government funding.
Happy Harry Hard-on reveals his true self.
Realizing he has started something huge, Mark decides it is up to him to end it. He dismantles his radio station and attaches it to his mother's old jeep, creating a mobile transmitter so his position can't be triangulated. Pursued by the police and the FCC, Nora drives the jeep around while Mark broadcasts. The harmonizer he uses to disguise his voice breaks, and with no time left to fix it, Mark decides to broadcast his final message as himself. They finally drive up to the crowd of protesting students, and Mark tells them that the world belongs to them and that they should make their own future. The police step in and arrest Mark and Nora. As they are taken away, Mark reminds the students to "talk hard." Later on, the voices of other students (and even one of the teachers) speak as intros for their own independent stations, which can be heard broadcasting across the country.