Something Like a Rock’n’Roll Tour

MAD DOGS AND ENGLISHMEN (An A&M film in association with Creative Film Associates; Produced by Pierre Adidge, Harry Marks and .Robert Abel; Directed by Pierre Adidge).

You would figure, wouldn’t you, that a two-hour color film, packed full of such modern-day wonders as split-screen vistas and 4-track stereo sound, and focusing on Joe Cocker and his famous thrown-together Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour of last spring (which featured such ultra-heavies as Leon Russell and Rita Coolidge and Carl Radle and Jim Price and all the rest of the LA/Delaney & Bonnie clique) just couldn’t miss, wouldn’t you? You would expect to see some fantastic rock ‘n’ roll footage, for, no matter what your opinionsof Mad Dogs & Englishmen as a musical entity, it nonetheless is the spastic gasfitter with the throat of a lion in front of it all. And you would be ready to hear reproduced all the punch and power that turned audiences across the country irito hand-clapping, head-rattling dervishes.' With all those photographers shooting away virtually non-stop for 24 hours of every day of the tour, you would expect to get an insight into what happens when 42 people and a dog are thrown together into a living situation fraught with the legendary rigors of life on the road, about which we hear so much but regally know so little. And you would think that you would leave the theater with some understanding of the musical, technical and interpersonal dynamics that go into something like a rock ‘n’ roll tour.

Forget it.

All you get is. an exploitative film that exists (and will, no doubt, be boffo at the old box office) mainly by virtue of the fact that there is a big name to headline and an unconscious class of long-haired consumers who will be lured like rats to the Piper’s tune — “Four-track stereo, split screen*JOE COCKER*LEON RUSSELL* Heavy heavy HEAVY!” Apparently unable to decide whether to giye us a straight rock ‘n’ roll film, or a cinema-verite look at the personalities involved, or an exploration of what it is like to be a rock musician, or a behind-the-scenes examination of life on the tour, director Adidge has thrown in a bit of everything, to the detriment of all and to the advantage of none. Sacrificed are tit© depth that would involve the viewer and the clean flow of energy that makes for rock ‘n’ roll excitement. Organization and development toward a climax are not the absolute cinematic virtues that some would make them, but in the absence of a compensating force, e.g. a powerful central personality (cf. Don’t Look Back), something of the kind would sure help. Might even keep us awake.

As far as the actual rock ‘n’ roll sequences go, it’s hard to tell whether they actually take up as much time as they seem to (probably not) or whether it just seems that way because they are so statically photographed and edited (most likely). For one thing, that touted split-screen is utilized in the most uninspired fashion: Full-face close-up of a wailing Cocker on one side, long shot of the entire barid and chorus on the other; then the more obvious variations on that theme, with assorted middle and long shots alternating with the close-ups. There is none of the glorious stylization of Woodstock, none of the raw power of Monterey Pop. The problem is compounded by that good old four-track stereo, which falls flat on its face without ever throwing a punch.

In fairness, it should be noted that the failure oVMad Dogs & Englishmen to capture the musical dynamic of the group, that interplay and interaction which makes music worth listening to, cannot be attributed entirely to Addige; the band itself has a lot to do with it. It might make for great press and be very colorful and spontaneous and all that to put together a band just like that and take off on a freewheeling whirlwind tour, but, let’s face it, the music you make just isn’t going to be the greatest. The members of MD & E are proficient, well-drilled, basically studio musicians who can learn and play arrangements like nobody’s business.^ Unfortunately, the whole thing is under the direction of Leon Russell (whose overbearing, evil presence tarnishes the silver screen every time the camera lingers on him), and the result is bland, homogeneous, Delaney & Bonnie gospel-rock stuff that, rather than suiting itself to Cocker’s style, ends up forcing him into its context, much to his disadvantage.

So, the way1 things turn out, the musical segments actually become annoying interruptions of those parts of the film that really are interesting, namely the various vignettes of thes day-to-day life on the road: a conversation With an intense Cocker in a crowded motel room; a middle-aged drunk sermonizing in a hotel lobby; Smitty the road manager trying to talk a dour hotel chef into whipping up 40 or so quick meals (including two vegetable plates); Bobby Keys driving Cocker through a misty rain past the Kennedy assassination site; various backstage , encounters with fans; some good old boys in Texas feeling their hopSs as they cavort about a motel pool, inspired by the lithe Hollywood rock ‘ri’ roll bodies that are sashaying all over thp place; etc. and etc. Therein lies the film’s humanity, and it is Adidge’s failure to explore and develop this aspect that is the movie’s major flaw. It is sacrificed to the superficial and the supposedly glamorous, for that is what will make the film a hit. It doesn’t make it very interesting to sit through.

If you do happen to end up in a theater Where Mad Dogs & Englishmen is playing, there is one thing that you can latch onto that might make your sojourn bearable: Woven throughout the film is the material for a minor study of the nature of today’s rock audience and its relation to the performers. -From the herds being rounded up and directed through the doors of Fillmore East to Miss Butter Queen, a wonderfully grotesque bucktoothed Texas groupie, from the comically affected sophisticates who have the rare privilege of an audience with the star to the ecstatic, grooving dancers (who determinedly continue to clap and to shake it all over regardless of the current tempo of the music), it speaks poorly for the idea of rock ‘n’ roll music as communication, of give and take between perforjner and audeince, of that magical interaction that used to get artist and listener alike so very high. Instead, \ye have to cringe to the sound of ego clashing against ego, have to watch everybody flying off on little trips that may or may not coincide (which is why that one kid is such a gas, that fat Minnesota schoolboy who joins Cocker as the star takes a morning stroll. I' mean this guy still thinks that Joe’s group is the Grease Band, for Christ’s sake, but you know, it doesn't really matter; because, despite /an understandable' measure of self-consciousness, he seems to be able to talk to Joe as an actual person, about such wonderfully trite subjects as where Joe went to school and the likd. I like to think that Mr. Cocker, appreciated it). ,

At the bottom of the failure of MD & E to excite, inspire, or otherwise justify its existence, is the basic premise of the film, i.e. that people will want to watch the carryings-on of this troupe of young rock musicians and assorted hangers-on. This premise fails to take into account the fact that virtually all of these people are devoid of the charisma, the magic, the compelling presence that would make a similar undertaking revolving around someone like the Stones or the Beatles or Dylan worthy (in one way or another) of attention. (Cocker himself shines through as genuinely warm and human, a weary victim of the legalisms that necessitated the tour in the first place). At their worst, the members of the troupe come across as starstruck dillettantes fluttering about in the spotlight; at best they are like you and me and most people we know, ^wfsonable long-haired folks who like tosmoke dope and have fun and get some kind of work done. I don*t think people should be made to pay three bucks to watch, the decidedly unspectacular days and nights of a life-style that is completely familiar to them in the first place. In one sense people do want to see themselves up there on the screen, but they want to see themselves elevated and transformed to bigger than life — that is the function of the star, to absorb the fantasies and imagination of the viewers and give them life on the giant screen; people want to participate, on an unreachable, mythic scale; not on a homemovie level. It is that familiarity and the consequent pointlessness of the whole endeavor that make MD 4 E so dispensible. Let’s' see some imagination at work, Mr. Filmmaker; give us something that hasn’t already died of exposure. A filmed account of a Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians tour would be, I think, an unqualified knockout.

Richard Cromelin

Waterloo: Napoleon Bounced

Napoleon lost. And you don’t find out why he kefeps that hand in his jacket. But he’s still My Champ.

Honest Bob Singer

FILM CLIPS

Features

Passed this in Variety and it just seemed to good to leave out:

FILM-GREENING OF HOLLY WOODLAWN

Holly Woodlawn, transvestite co-star of Andy Warhol’s Trash continues a career as a femme with her signing last week to topline in The Sliding Pond . . . Pic will tell of the misadventures of a lass from Ohio who comes to the big city. Hank Alpert and Robert J. Kaplan are producing, and Kaplan will direct. No distrib deal has been made.

Since Trash, Miss Woodlawn has made Women In Revolt, satire of the women’s liberation movement, also for Warhol. Title might be changed to P.I.G. (Politically Involved Girls).

Johnny Rivers is starting a film company to “emphasize the positive (values of Aquarian Age youth.” The first film the company” will produce is entitled The Awakening. It deals with pop stars traversing the world, wherever positive forces for good are operating. Not included are scenes of Mick Jagger at Altamont. ,

Constantine Costa-Gavras (Z) landed in the middle oLthe Chilean municipal elections in March, due to his latest film, The Confession. The film deals with the Stalinist brutality experienced by Communist Party members during the early 1950s.

The script was taken from Artur London’s autobiographical book — he himself faced a death sentence in the trials in Czechoslovakia in 1952-54. Right wing elements in Chile decided to turn the repudiation of Stalin into a repudiation of all left-wing elements and capitalized heavily on the fact that Costa-Garvas himself had asked that the film be withheld froih Chilean screenings until .after the elections. Much to their surprise, Costa-Gavras was in Chile all along and he stepped forward at the height of their campaign.,

Costa-Gavras strongly objected to the use that had been made of both film and book and initiated a suit on behalf of London and the Chilean publishers against right wing newspapers that had been serializing the book.

Costa-Gavras "laughed when accused of being a dupe of the Communist party; the French Party has disavowed the film and he is not a member of the party, anyway. Finally, after four days of personal attacks, the Christian Democrats ad campaign simply petered out. Attempts at doing a radio soap opera based on The Confession also were failures, due To the fact that radio performers refused to participate.