In most cases, it�s what�s up front that counts, but what�s between the frames of Klute reveals a more important story. Perhaps the majority of its audiences see no more than the reviews promise: �A great performance by Jane Fonda,� or �A sharp, slick thriller.� It certainly is thrilling but the excitement — for me, anyway — comes at different level than most.

After the screening, we walked out )f the theatre and into a discussion that jxposed the differences between the vay people see this film.

Charley, the film maker/photogapher, said he thought the climax ailed. (An appropriate criticism, conidering the source.) David and I agreed ut added that it didn�t matter. You now half way through �who dunit.� Also typical comments.)

Then Charley said, �It was about tree Daniels.�

David countered, KIt was about omen.�

I said, �It was about men and omen.�

David said, �It was about sexism.�

That dialogue says a lot about the ovie and the way it functions, at veral levels, all adequately, some more ecisely than others.

At one level this film does function as a thriller, with the addition, of course, of the underlying love story. But as a thriller it is a failure. Granted, you might bite your nails a bit, but only because you wonder how, not who. It doesn�t follow the form of its genre. However, from this perspective, the discrepancies seem intentional, rather than careless.

A call girl, questioned by a private

investigator, is the key to a missing person/murder mystery. Bree Daniels, call girl-actress-model, is superbly played by Jane Fonda. Donald Sutherland is John Klute, the private investigator, in his best performance since Hal, the computer in 2001.

Since the film isn�t really a Sherlock Holmes classic, the audience and critics are allowed to lean on the Klute/Bree romance. But even here, it�s fairy tale: Mr. Unlikely gets Miss Naughty and melts her. Since in her eyes, he�s the cube, the thaw takes considerably longer .than normal: the duration of the movie. The real key!

The supposed highlight is not Jane Fonda�s heralded acting. Although she does a beautiful job, she doesn�t steal the. show. Klute isn�t about Bree Daniels, Janr Fonda, or even women — as call girls, psychiatrists or psychopaths. It�s not. about John Klute, Sutherland, pimps, rapists.or men. Or junkies. It�s about all of those things, their relation to each other and their social significance.

With a plot so trite, the romance so predictable, the whole so melodramatic, the audience is lead to question the purpose. Unlike Carnal Knowledge, which deals heavy-handedly with the same theme, Klute is effective because it uses subtlety to deliver its message. Its like the difference between a painting and a tapestry; the weaving of ideas in Klute, the way in which they counterbalance each other, strengthens its impact. The search for a missing person, for example, is applicable to both themes: the murder mystery and Bree Daniels� search for herself.

It�s unlikely that Pakula, the producer/director, or the two stars would have bothered with mundane material. Fonda commented, in a recent interview, �I�ll do good movies, intelligent movies. I have made enough of these movies which are the glorification of money, success and the sexual image.� Nor would the continuous psychiatrist/ Bree sessions be inserted (and in such significant places) if this were merely a murder mystery.

Sometimes, the message screams out, grabs your genitals and shakes the very foundations of our conditioned behavior — those attitudes we all take for granted.

Some of Bree�s visits to the psychiatrist were taped and overdubbed in appropriate parts of the film. Tapes of her voice are also used in Klute�s wire-tapping and the sadist-murderer/ call girl sessions. An effective technique that clues the audience in on the authenticity of Bree�s struggle.

One of the shrink sessions — Bree talking of the problems of attempting to give up the manipulation of males (necessary when you want to control a life that�s always in another�s hands) — is a particularly moving moment.

Of course, she�s saved (in both respects) by Klute, �the liberated man.� Unconcerned with the roles of virility and masculinity, and unhampered by any �detective image,� his sensitivity breaks the wall Bree has built in order

to cope with conflicting values. He accepts her, even when she�s mean, ugly and whory.

And finally, the confrontation between murderer and Bree. The mystery�s already unfolded but there�s still a lot of impact in the confrontation of the audience and T.H.E. pervert. Who would suspect the stable president of a corporation, or anyone�s father/husband, needed this kind of pacifier? �Your kind of women prey on men�s weaknesses. You make us feel we�re accepted. I�m a respectable man and have a reputation to keep,� he says, as he attacks his umpteenth victim.

Those kind of scenes, coupled with the sex crime theme, and numerous other indications (Bree�s inability to accept'a housewife�s life, Klute, who�s hardly a �john,� etc.) even the film�s weakness as a murder movie more than

Six Days on the Road

I flew east with all this camera equipment to shoot this cross country movie and 1 had a copy of CREEM (with the article on the Frut) with me, and I read it on the plane and it was really fine. So 1 decided that if we got anywhere near Detroit we would bop in on you and say like, �o.k., you guys, if you�ve really got it together you�ll come up with an unscratched single of heatwave within one hour, �cause that�s all the time we can stay before we hit the road again because we have to make this movie�, and take pictures of you and everything. But the car was a wreck,

adequately suggest the deeper problem involved.

Klute can serve to reveal, reinforce and/or entertain, depending on the viewers� attitudes. To provide all three, the audience must agree with this interpretation. Perhaps that�s the actual weakness of the film: due to its extreme subtlety, the issue isn�t obvious enough to be recognized. Even the receptive viewer may dismiss Klute�s purpose as a �morality play,� staging sexism as the real sin. If even the �alternative culture� hasn�t seriously dealt with the issue as a political problem ingrained in the system�s institutions (that both men and women must struggle to change) how can that system be expected to even acknowledge the issue�s existence?

Robbie Cruger

of course, and somewhere in southern Michigan the heater quit working (we had had one flat already and no spare, but we got the spare fixed and it went flat in the trunk so when we had a blowout at 70 passing a truck in S. Dakota some days later we had to wait around on the side of the highway for hours until we could buy a new firestone supertire for $38. so then we had three bald tires, a flat spare and a $38 firestone supertire, but in any case the heater quit and we noticed that the engine temp meter was pinning at the high end, so we took apart the pipe that goes into the top of the radiator to check it out and it broke in our hands 'and it was 5:30 in the morning, no gas stations open, so we trucked around little back roads there in Michigan and found a Plymouth dealer and bought a new pipe, and the water didn�t leak anymore. But the heater still wasn�t working and it was really cold and the engine was still running as hot as it could get without knocking the meter clear off the top end of the scale. SO ... we figured it was maybe that the water pump wasn�t working (�cause we pulled off the hoses that run hot water to the heater and no water came out). So now we were sort of halfway between Ann Arbor and Detroit, and were thinking what to do when a cop stopped us because we didn�t have any plates. We had this little red sticker which said it was cool to ride in California for 60 days, and a little white sticker which said it was cool to ride in New York for '30 days (which was illegal anyway because we lied about having insurance, which you need to get the little white sticker), and the cop said he would have to check us out. So he went back to his car to call the station and it started to snow, and there was this big hole which we had copped in the roof of the car so John could stand up and look through the camera lens and the snow started to come in through the hole and we were really cold, and the cop�s radio wasn�t working and he kept calling in and they couldn�t hear him, so finally he invited us to come and wait it out in his warm cop car, which we did, and it was really fine to be warm. He was pretty friendly in all,, and after a while (the cop station still hadn�t called back to say we were cool) he lei us go. So now the question was what to do: go to Detroit and run the heatwave (!) number or burn north for the nearest water pump town. We burned north, scored a water pump in some little blue town near a big lake with the mackinaw bridge nearby, and in the middle of a blinding snowstorm pulled out the old water pump (which was busted sure enough) and stuck in the new one, fingers frozed and drinking shitty coffee from our thermos, an hour and a half of this shit and it was all together and we turned it on and the heater worked. It was beautiful — a rush of hot stinky air beat into the car and rushed out through the hole in the roof and we drove across the bridge and on west. Which is why we didn�t stop in. Then we got here and started editing the film (and I got a copy of heatwave from the local motown cat - 1 had the Ip but I want the single for the soundtrack because the single cooks so much better) and greil mentioned that dave was gonna be in town and I said, wow, I hope he does �cause I want to tell him how come we didn�t stop by, but then I got hung up sticking little pieces of film

together and was hardly leaving the editing room except to sleep a little, and then ed ward told me you had been here and gone, so I guess that�s where the karma is right now. In any case, we have a shot of a sign in the movie which says: Toronto/Detroit, and it�s in the middle of heatwave, and it�s a shot for creem. I�ll see ya one of these days. If you want, you can print this (or some of it) for a movie review or a movie report or

something. The name of the movie is H ighway / He a twave and its in cinemascope and color, just like a hollywood movie. Except it isn�t a Hollywood movie. Nobody knows quite what to make of it except me and Richard Hyatt (who made it with me), but we dig the shit out of it.