One of the best indie films from a time when indie truly meant “independent” is the 1988 comedy-drama “Patti Rocks.” The film is about a married blue-collar f–k-up named Billy (played by co-writer Chris Mulkey) who is in a jam when he finds out he has impregnated a girlfriend he has on the side named Patti (played by co-writer … and Mulkey’s wife in real life … Karen Landry). Billy enlists the help of good friend and former employer Eddie (played by co-writer John Jenkins) … with whom there is bad blood … to travel hundreds of miles to meet with Patti and help Billy through his crisis.
During the journey to see Patti (which takes up more than half the film), Billy talks a lot of s–t, not only about Patti, but about pretty much any subject you can think of. Billy is obviously an idiot, but despite the X-rated dialogue and s–t talking, he has the maturity of an 11-year old. Eddie is not too far behind Billy, but is definitely the “adult” of the two. Of course, when we finally meet Patti, she is not how Billy has described her and is far more aware of the dynamics between the two of them than Billy is. The result is a sad and poignant tale of a pathologically dumb man-child who sadly, doesn’t have the sense and maturity to grow up.
“Patti Rocks” was extremely controversial when it was released, because the dialogue was too raw for an “R” rating and went out unrated instead. Though, arguably, had it been a major studio release, the film probably would’ve gotten an “R.” In any case, “Patti Rocks” is a profanely funny and cringe-inducing comedy about male sexuality.
When I finally saw it, it was in college during a sponsored event by the campus Women’s Center. I must say, given the politically correct tenor of the times (late 1980s) and the content of the film, it was a ballsy choice on their part and a nice reminder that sometimes a sense of humor prevails among organizations that stereotypically don’t seem to carry such traits.
Some of the X-rated language and humor the film is controversial for is featured in the attached clip. It is not safe for work or kids.
The film is a sequel of sorts to a mid-1970s film called “Loose Ends” (featuring Billy and Eddie) which I’ve never been able to track down. If you can direct me to this film, I will be eternally grateful.
One of the best satirical films of the last 25 years, Mary Harron’s and Guinevere Turner’s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s notorious novel “American Psycho” is an excellent mix of comedy, horror, and social satire.
Originally written in 1991, Ellis’s novel was so controversial that the original publisher, Simon and Schuster, decided to let Ellis keep his $300,000 advance for writing the novel and shelved it. The rights were eventually picked up by Vintage (Random House’s highbrow quality paperback division) who published it in paperback. Unfortunately, many of the book’s early critics focused solely on the graphic murder scenes, which … while they are indeed disturbing … only comprise a small percentage of the actual book. A New York Times critic called it “a how-to manual on the torture and dismemberment of women.” Yes, it’s true that the lead character Patrick Bateman hates women. He also hates homeless people, homosexuals, Jews, African-Americans, prostitutes, his fellow privileged white friends, bartenders, waitresses, his fiance, his mistress, dogs, rats, dry cleaners, live concerts, etc. Just because a book’s lead character is a misanthropic, misogynist a–hole serial killer, doesn’t mean the story, let alone the author, supports that viewp… ah, what’s the use in even explaining this? Look, many people don’t like Ellis’s book for a variety of reasons, but the hysterical overreaction (and sole focus on Bateman’s misogyny, which again, is just one component of his overall misanthropy) was completely misguided and a product of the ultra-politically correct early 1990s. The fact that “Psycho” is now considered a literary classic bears this out.
Interestingly, Ellis later admitted Bateman WAS based on him, but only because like Bateman, he was obsessed with buying and consuming things, which made him miserable instead of happy. From an interview Ellis gave to “The California Chronicle” in 2010 “[Bateman] was crazy the same way [I was]. He did not come out of me sitting down and wanting to write a grand sweeping indictment of yuppie culture. It initiated because of my own isolation and alienation at a point in my life. I was living like Patrick Bateman. I was slipping into a consumerist kind of void that was supposed to give me confidence and make me feel good about myself but just made me feel worse and worse and worse about myself. That is where the tension of ‘American Psycho’ came from. It wasn’t that I was going to make up this serial killer on Wall Street. High Concept. Fantastic. It came from a much more personal place, and that’s something that I’ve only been admitting in the last year or so. I was so on the defensive because of the reaction to that book that I wasn’t able to talk about it on that level.”
Bateman is someone who knows he’s not normal … knows that he is, in effect, a psycho. So he overcompensates by aggressively trying to fit in. Like an alien studying what it’s like to be human, he obsesses over all of the material possessions in his life and others: clothing, cars, food, restaurants, business cards, workout machines, audio-video equipment, pornography, etc. He reads obsessively and expresses all the so-called popular viewpoints in public (anti-nuclear weapons, anti-racism). Yet inside he hates everything and everyone around him, including himself. As Bateman explains, “…there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.”
Christian Bale delivers, in my opinion, his all-time best performance as Bateman. Leonardo di Caprio and Johnny Depp were once slated to play Bateman. And while I think they would have done a good job, Bale is the perfect choice. Not only is he a terrific actor, Bale is British playing an American with an American accent. While Bale’s accent is impeccable, there’s still something slightly off about it. Since Bateman is a monster pretending to be a human being, Bale’s characterization is frighteningly perfect. Bale said that a large part of his characterization was based on watching Tom Cruise being interviewed on talk shows. According to Harron, Bale told her he was struck by Cruise’s “very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy.”
The idea of having a female director and screenwriter behind the film version of “American Psycho” may seem like a cynical ploy to keep feminist critics at bay. But Harron has always been a terrific director (“I Shot Andy Warhol,” “The Notorious Bettie Page”) and Turner struck the correct balance between the novel’s humor and horror. Overall, the two created a classic and a film, while it got some respectful notices when released, remains severely underrated to this day.
The attached 20-minute plus summary of clips contains many spoilers and also very disturbing violence, sexuality, and language. It is not safe for work or children. But if you have a strong stomach and a highly evolved sense of humor, “American Psycho” is one hell of a movie. It is one of those films that you will not have an indifferent reaction to.
David Bowie’s 1971 homage to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, from the classic (and eclectic) “Hunky Dory” album. One of Bowie’s best balls-to-wall rock songs and one that never fails to have me bouncing around the room. Brilliantly used on the trailer for Jason Reitman’s painful and acidic 2011 comedy “Young Adult.”
I’ve been on a J.D. Salinger kick recently based on my total absorption into the new 12-pound David Sheilds / Shane Salerno Salinger bio that came out last week. At some point, I may give some thoughts on this book and Salinger, but in the meantime, here’s a terrific critique on Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” delivered by one of the characters from the film adaptation of John Guare’s “Six Degrees of Separation.” Will Smith plays the character giving the analysis and it’s a nice reminder that Smith is a very good actor when he’s not playing some variation of the Tom Cruise-inspired cocky jacka– that sadly makes up many of his more, um, renowned roles. Playing the other roles here are Stockard Channing, Donald Sutherland, and Ian McKellan. A damn fine and sadly ignored film if I do say so.
Veteran character actor Harry Dean Stanton delivered what was perhaps the best performance of his career as the burned-out, but principled automobile repo man Bud in Alex Cox’s nihilistic punk comedy masterpiece “Repo Man.”
Key line: “Ordinary f–king people … I hate ’em.”
Other key line (not in this clip): “What are you, a f–kin’ Commie? Huh? … I don’t want no Commies in my car. No Christians either.”
One of my favorite psychedelic hard-rock soul songs from the 1960s, here’s the Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today.” One of the most brilliant uses of rock music in film was when Hal Ashby used this song to underscore a long and intense scene in his 1978 Vietnam drama “Coming Home,” the one where Bruce Dern confronts Jon Voight over Voight’s affair with Dern’s wife, played by Jane Fonda.
As a bonus, I’ve also included the Ramones’ kick-ass punk-metal cover from 1983’s “Subterranean Jungle”:
From the 1990 album “Goo,” this is Sonic Youth’s non-ironic tribute to Karen Carpenter. I can’t say for sure whether this was inspired by Todd Haynes’ legendary underground short “Superstar,” but the spirit is the same. Both “Superstar” and “Tunic” may seem snarky considering that the artists involved came from the underground, but the sentiment is anything but. Which is why the song still packs a punch nearly 25 years later.
Hands down, my favorite Python bit of all time, this is the Python’s infamous take on Little Red Riding Hood from their concert film “Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl.” The “wolf” … and the wolf’s “handler” … are comic genius … like Ed Wood on shrooms.
Back in the 1970s, prior to the success of TV shows like “Saturday Night Live,” there were movies that featured various comedy sketches instead of a feature-length plot. These movies tended to have a lot of raunchy, satirical, countercultural humor and were extremely popular as cult and midnight movies. The most popular of which were “The Groove Tube” (1974) and “Kentucky Fried Movie” (1977).
In the mid-1980s, “Kentucky Fried Movie” director John Landis tried to replicate one of those classic sketch comedy films with “Amazon Women on the Moon.” The concept was that you were watching a really low-rent UHF station late at night and saw a wide variety of cheesy programming. Like “The Groove Tube” and “Kentucky Fried Movie” (as well as a typical episode of “Saturday Night Live”), many of the sketches were hit or miss in “Amazon Women on the Moon.”
However, “Son of the Invisible Man” (starring Ed Begley, Jr.) was always my favorite sketch. The concept is beyond stupid, but hilarious. I won’t reveal what happens in this 3-minute clip, but I laugh harder each time I see it. Due to some brief (but non-offensive) nudity, it’s not safe for work. But I promise you, this is really really funny stuff.
One of the best … and saddest … true-crime films ever made, “The Onion Field” is a docudrama about a real-life case in 1963 where two plainclothes police officers Karl Hettinger and Ian Campbell (played by John Savage and Ted Danson) were taken hostage by two petty criminals Greg Powell and Jimmy Smith (played by James Woods and Franklyn Seales). When Powell pulls a gun on Campbell, Hettinger reluctantly gives up his gun. Powell, misunderstanding California’s “Little Lindbergh law,” believed that the mere kidnapping of a police officer was punishable by death, so he shot and killed Campbell. In truth, kidnapping under the Little Lindberg Law was only a capital crime if the subject is harmed. Hettinger manages to escape. But the real nightmare is ahead …
Hettinger is scorned by his fellow officers for being “cowardly” and his experience is used in a training film on what not to do when stopping and approaching a vehicle. The overwhelming guilt causes Hettinger enormous emotional pain, at one point being forced to resign due to a shoplifting incident while working a security detail in a department store. At his lowest moment, Hettinger strikes his infant child when the child won’t stop crying, easily one of the most shocking and depressing scenes in any major motion picture.
Powell, on the other hand, became a master manipulator of the legal system. Initially sentenced to death, Powell was able to push forward multiple appeals, eventually getting a second trial and getting his sentence commuted to life.
“The Onion Field” contains some excellent performances, especially by Wood and Savage. Wood’s performance is so good, I would almost say it’s his best, if it weren’t for his performance in 1986’s “Salvador.” However, Savage’s performance is truly heartbreaking. Not only a career best, Savage not only should have been nominated for an Oscar, but walked away with it as well. It’s unforgettable.
Based on Joseph Wambaugh’s superior non-fiction book of the same name, “The Onion Field” is one of those awesomely complex films of the 1970s that’s rarely discussed these days. Director Harold Becker takes his time getting to the actual crime, but the details we get on all of the protagonists’ lives are extremely rich. His depiction of Powell and Smith’s pathetic criminal life prior to the kidnapping is one of the best depictions of low-level petty crime ever filmed. It’s high time “The Onion Field” gets rediscovered and celebrated. While the DVD is out of print, if you have Amazon Prime, it’s currently available for free viewing.
The attached scene is the depiction of the actual shooting. While it’s tastefully directed and edited, it’s still a pretty upsetting scene to watch.
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