The camera captures the social buzz of the place — including the entirety of a guitar-playing busker’s performance — while suggesting just a little of its seediness. As day turns to night, the sunny naturalism transforms into noirish neon-lit paranoia.
Throughout, we have vintage clips of bodybuilding films mixed with Abe’s not-so-deep thoughts (“Life is one of the hardest modes of being”) and insights about the “blissful solitude” of body sculpting, which he compares to building your own video game character.
In the end, Muscle Beach offers no big surprises. The functional plot involving Jay’s absence, sociopathic developers and tainted drugs could serve as a script for a vintage Baywatch or Law & Order episode.
But the subject touches on the real-world state of Venice, once the domain of painters, musicians and Beat Generation artists, now a community characterized by high-priced real estate, stagnant development, and chronic homelessness.
The film’s deeper appeal is about the afterglow of a faded popular subculture (think of Ron Mann’s documentaries on free jazz, comic books and van painting). The name “Muscle Beach” is probably best known from the 1964 musical comedy Muscle Beach Party, the second in the seven Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello beach movies, about a group of weightlifters attempting to take over a gang’s primo Malibu surfing area.
There’s also a famous 1948 lyrical short, Muscle Beach, co-directed by future Oscar winner Joseph Strick. That film focused on the original Muscle Beach near the Santa Monica Pier, a New Deal work project which provided gymnastic equipment for the public’s use and which helped launch the global fitness movement.
