Feminism West Of The Pecos

Feminism West Of The Pecos

movies

THE MAN WHO LOVED

CAT DANCING

Richard Sarafian

(M-G-M)

All I knew of Marilyn Durham’s bestseller, “The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing,” was that it had been tagged a women’s-lib western. With some qualifications, that pat critique could apply to the film as well. For sure it’s a western: it’s got cowboys and Indians and a posse and a school-marmish lady and it even opens with a train robbery. The feminist label is a bit tougher to earn.

The story unfolds in typical John Ford fashion. A retired army sergeant, teamed with an Indian and two outlaws, robs a train and in the getaway gets entangled with the traditional cantankerous female. Each step beyond that would reveal bits of the plot better left for your own discovery, but they’re all classically western. Not to say they’re cliches or even guessable, but that they fit the mythical image of the West based largely on dubious masculine ethics. Burt Reynolds is the man who loved Cat Dancing (the name of his Indian wife) and he’s the exemplar of the cowboy ideal: rugged, reliable, and rough, though not to the point of mistreating a woman. And there are two types of women in the West, the whore with the heart of gold and the sophisticate who can’t tolerate or understand the ways of males.

Sarah Miles, as Catherine Crocker, is the latter, a bride escaping her rich bastard husband, George Hamilton (remember him!). The ensuing hunt and her involvement with Reynolds fills all the requirements of a cowboy movie, while building a peculiar peripheral interest. There are questions raised about machismo and the like, but since, like a true western, the film relies on the hero being the toughest dude around, you have to wonder how many of the questions will even reach most audiences. If-1 hadn’t known the book’s reputation and that Eleanor Perry (of Diary of a Mad Housewife) had written the screenplay, they might have, been over my head, too. Still, along with Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing provides the marvelous pleasure of an action-packed western with marginal bits of intellectual spice available. The philosophical problems aren’t resolved as satisfactorily as the story is, but I’m content with the glimmers of progressive attitudes, and wasn’t realistically expecting the one western that would negate four decades of John Wayne.

Two/ reservations: There were particular moments when I kept imagining how Peckinpah would have handled the scene — with a lot more lascivious intent, I think, and much more realistic tension. And Sarah Miles is excellent, but it has yet to be revealed whether Burt Reynolds can act, his two best films (Deliverance and this) /finding him as strong, silent types,1 roles for which his face and physique are enough to provide ready characterizations. But Richard Sarafian directs competently and Reynolds does look fine up there, even standing around. Greg Popek

PINK FLAMINGOS John Waters ■/'"

(A Saliva Film)

New Line Distributors

It’s not Mary Poppins.

It’s not The Poseidon Adventure. It’s not Last Tango. It’s not Deep Throat or Deep Thrust. It’s not Son of Flubber. It’s not Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, though there’s a generic connection somewhere. It’s not - Mad Dogs and Englishmen It’s not Patton. It’s not Cabaret. It is disgusting.

It’s Pink Flamingos.

Pink Flamingos has been playing six nights a week at midnight at New York’s Elgin Theatre for months, and has become some kind of cult classic. A self-described “exercise in poor taste,” produced, directed, written and filmed by a former juvenile delinquent from Baltimore named John Waters, it’s one of the few bits of life or art that can truly be considered sick. It’s great.

The star of Pink Flamingos is Divine, a 350 lb. drag queen who looks sort of like a cross between Clatabelle and Mama Cass. The plot consists of a good deal more than Divine’s random ramblings, though that would certainly be interesting enough.

Midnight, one of America’s great sleaze-tabloids, declared Divine “the filthiest person alive” in a cover story in late 1971. To avoid the discomforts of the publicity generated by the article, Diviqe assumed the name of Babs Johnson, and moved with her loyal clan to a trailer in the woods outside Baltimore.

The other members of her entourage are her mother, Edy, who weighs 400 lbs. and sits semi-naked in a baby , crib eating eggs all day. She is somewhat mentally retarded. Cracker (Danny Mills) is Divine’s teenage son, who beheads a chicken between his body and

that of a girl he’s balling. Cotton (Mary Vivian Pearce) is a pretty blonde who gets her rocks off watching Cracker’s chicken-lust.

Unfortunately, Divine’s retirement as “the filthiest person alive” is threatened by competition from the Marbles, who jealously claim the title. They make a good case for themselves, Raymond and Connie Marble (Daivd \Lochery and Mike Stole) kidnap female hitchhikers, impregnate them, and sell the babies to lesbian couples. With their profits, they invest in “blue chip businesses,” like selling heroin to a syndicate of 12-yearold pushers in the city schools.

The film is rife with memorable scenes. Divine decides to go downtown: “I’m all dressed up and ready to fall in love,” she crows. In a downtown Baltimore butcher shop, she scores a choice hunk of meat, lifts her skirt and slaps the meat tight up her crotch. She then bops down Main Street, crowded mostly with black shoppers, while Little Richard sings “The Girl Can’t Help It” on the soundtrack.

What makes Pink Flamingos immortal in the minds and guts of retch lovers is the fast-paced final fifteen minutes. Divine and Cracjcer capture the Marbles, and have a quick trial in front of reporters for Midnight, the Enquirer, and Tattler. “You stand convicted of assholism,” says Divine, as she slowly blows their heads off. “Does blood turn you on?” one of the reporters asks.

“It doesn’t just turn me on, it makes me come. Especially the taste,” says Divine. But blood isn’t all that enters Divine’s mouth at the end of this movie.

There’s a poodle on the screen, jumping around nervously while the soundtrack sings “How Much Is that Doggie in the Window.” With a few minutes of film left in the cameras, the production crew gave the dog an enema. The dog leaves a decent sized pile of turd, which Divine eats on camera. She rolls it around in her mouth. You can see it on her tongue.

Divine’s7 comment, off camera: “I know now that I am insane.”

Obviously, John Waters goes a bit further than any *other filmmaker around in bringing us to the void of guiltlessness, where any action is possible. In Pink Flamingos, there is cannabalism, rape, masturbation, incest, murder, voyeurism, castration, defecation, a magnificent foot fetish sequence with the Marbles, and a party entertainer who has a dancing asshole. There’s lots more, of course, and most of it is very funny.

Waters, the product of a Catholic high school education in Baltimore, returns to his hometown to make his films. His first movie was The Roman Candles (1965), which starred Divine and most of the cast of Flamingos. His other films include Eat Your Makeup, the highly acclaimed Mondo Trasho (1969) which ends with Divine crawling through pig shit, and Multiple Maniacs, “a celluloid atrocity.”

I mean, how long are we supposed to go on without John Waters Film Festivals in every city of this country? These are good people, the Waters repertory company. Divine, for example, is a compulsive shoplifter who was once really arrested for murder. (Didn’t do it, though). To get the chicken-beheading right, Danny Mills had to .kill thirteen chickens, and he ate them all. He refused to do it simply “for some warped entertainment value.”

Wayne Robins