Indulging our obsessions in ‘Parking Lot’

In 1985, Jeff Krulik and John Heyn ventured into the asphalt wilds of a Largo, Md., parking lot armed only with a camera, a microphone and a handful of open-ended questions for the horde of mullet-haired kids waiting for the Judas Priest concert to start. Fueled by beer, Southern Comfort, LSD and apparent head trauma, the fans gushed enthusiastically, if spectacularly inarticulately, on camera about their favorite bands (Priest), their geopolitical beliefs (“I say kill ‘em all”) and their preferred intoxicants. The resulting snapshot of an American subculture was called “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” and it became a classic.

Nearly 20 years later, Heyn and Krulik have created “Parking Lot,” a limited series for the Trio network that premieres Sunday and is followed by the original film’s television debut. The series visits lots, sidewalks, backstage areas, lawns and pretty much any flat surface in America on which people gather in large numbers to flaunt their compulsions, share their obsessions or just worship at the 20,000-seat, corporate-sponsored altar of, say, Cher. Each half-hour episode consists of three radically different excursions into a subculture based on a common interest, be it Dolly Parton, cats or tattoos.

The first episode takes us, as though for old times’ sake, to the parking lot outside a Motorhead concert in Asbury Park, N.J., and my, how things have changed. The metal-heads in attendance are a good 10 years older than the original Judas Priest fans and infinitely more sober -- even when they are not, exactly. Mostly they lack that cluelessly nihilistic edge, talking instead about how the band provides them with a healthy outlet for their anger. This may be a reflection of our newly health- and safety-conscious culture, or it could mean that today’s self-destructive kids don’t listen to Motorhead.

But the devotees display a kind of enlightened, Dr. Phil-inspired self-awareness that seems as characteristic of the present day as hair feathered into a vertical peak was of 1986. Explained one Motorhead fan, interviewed next to his wife with his toddler perched on his shoulders, sounding like an anti-bad-music PSA, “It started off as music to [irritate] your parents.” And ended in Dockers, apparently.

“Parking Lot” takes an anthropological approach to fandom, granting equal time and attention to Cher fans, Dixie Chicks fans (and haters), White Stripes fans, Dolly Parton fans, Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake fans and Fleetwood Mac fans. It also widens its scope to include sci-fi and tattoo conventions and cat show attendees, soap opera fans crowding the red carpet at the Daytime Emmy Awards and a surfers gathering in San Diego.

The cumulative effect of watching all these disparate groups endeavoring to express their ethos is interesting. Listening to music fans recounting their idols’ complicated love lives, sci-fi writers complaining about the current state of the genre, or tattoo lovers expressing their familial values, it all starts to sound like gospel. In its most extreme form, fandom takes on the quality of organized religion.

If the answers are the same, the paths to salvation are various: Admiration, gratitude, empathy (“We’ve come a long way, me and Stevie Nicks, in terms of cocaine and barbiturates,” one fan says), or even by that feeling of special separateness that, as one very twee White Stripes fan explains sadly, erodes in proportion to the number of people who share it.

“You look at most of these people, and most of them are morons. And then, if they all like the same [stuff] you like, you’re like, well, why do morons like the same [stuff] I like? If the world at large digs the same things you do, you almost think there might be something wrong with it. Even if there isn’t.”

This is perhaps “Parking Lot’s” biggest revelation. No matter what the White Stripes fan would like to believe, subcultures no longer exist in opposition to the mainstream. In fact, there may really be no such thing as a mainstream at all, but a series of parallel streams fed by the same big source. Formerly transgressive acts become things people do on the weekends. After a while, it starts to look more like a universal desire for conformity than an expression of individuality.

But then, as one San Diego surfer says, “At least we have an identity.”

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‘Parking Lot’

Where: Trio

When: Premieres 6-6:30 p.m. Sunday, repeating at 9 p.m. Subsequent episodes air 6 and 9 p.m. Monday through Friday.

What else: “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” airs 6:30-7 p.m. and 9:30-10 p.m. Sunday.

Creators, producers Jeff Krulik and John Heyn.