Just What The World Needs? Yeah!

MOVIES

Just What The World Needs? Yeah!

JIMI HENDRIX li Joe Boyd, John Head, Gary Weis , (Warner Bros.)

Not a bad one at all. It’s good. Cinematic biography of Jimi and there isn’t one goddam stupid voice-over in the whole thing, just people who used to know him talkin about how he thised and thated when he was still alive. Little Richard say in that of course Jimi was always a star but stars gotta be put into the dipper and, poured back onto the planet (better talkin Richard than in Let the Good Times Roll). Couple of dudes from Jimi’s Harlem days talkin about the time he bought a copy of the Panther paper just to impress em and how maybe he died cause he was high and said to himself “Hey I’m Jimi Hendrix and I wonder if I can die. ” His ex-broad Fayne talkin about the time he spent his last 5 bucks on a Bob Dylan (?) album and he wouldn’t even let her go to the bathroom while it was playin cause she hadda hear it all. Some maior in the airforce type guy talkin about how he used to hock his guitar cause he knew they hadda get it outa hock for him. Somebody named Linda Keith talkin about the actual time she actually made the actual contact with Chas Chandler for him when he was stuck playin dives cause he was too good for everybody. A dumber than ever Peter Townshend talkin about the time he was walkin in this place and Jeff Beck was walkin out and Jeff told him “There is a cat in there stealin all your riffs” and then he went in there and yes indeedy this cat was* sure as hell stealing his riffs but he also was “adding something of his own to them.” And about how he went on to receive his first ever phone call from Clapton cause yes he too was also afraid of this newcomer to the hallowed U.K. scene and how the Townshend-Clapton friendship lasted only until Jimi left for the U.S.A.

And speaking of over there they got this great footage in the film of him and his band playing one of those top of the pops type things prior to the English release of “Purple Haze” which they proceed to do and this guy’s saying stuff like “It’s psychedelic!” Plus all the usual Monterey stuff and the Berkeley cpncert and Woodstock and the Isle of Wight where he does a real good version of “Red House” and that was like his last performance ever or something and he was real mellow then without being bland or unspectacular or not worth your money or anything like that. He musta covered a billion times more ground as a blues guitarist in such a short time than any other famed singin pickers ever did in whole decades and centuries and the picture documents it all real good. Playin and talkin about it and playin and talkin about it and it all really works okay.

Including the inclusion of people who should not have been. Like Lou Reed, \yhat the humpin mother of pearl was he doin in the movie? If he was ever within 5 miles of Jimi it musta been on account of traffic but they got him commenting on how Jim was not allowed to do his own thing because of etc. Germaine Greer on the sociology of black males, that was pretty ripe too. Jagger about how he and Marianne were just knocked out when they first saw him, sounding like Jerry Lewis being brought to t^ars by Paul Anka at the latest telethon. Some french tomato on the space-time continuum. Alan Douglas on how he always tested the dope first that he was giving Jimi like he must also have done for Lenny Bruce. All sorts of peripheral nobodies being no more than peripheral even this time around.

Plus: 1. Some footage of him on acoustic 12-string being as Delta with-it as it ever gets. 2. Him passing a joint in the back of a limo and laughing (had a good time once in a while). 3. Words from the actual blond person he was with while puking and OD’ing. 4; He was shy (good to know). 5. His pop was a nice guy, you’d like hint plenty if he was your own. 6. Even at the age of 27 Jimi had pimples (also good to know). 7. Robert Young sitting next to him on the Dick Cavett Show.

But: 1. At least half of the performance stuff is other people’s material (“Like a Rolling Stone,” “Johnny B. Goode,” etc.) which certainly wasn’t the proportion during his career or even during any single gig like in the Berkeley movie or Rainbow Bridge. 2. Speaking of Rainbow Bridge that showed a facet of things that this one kinda missed, Jimi versus hippiedippieism. Conceptually versus it or maybe just how far he was outdistancing it cause in the former picture there Were 2 hours of astrologyyoga-numerology-dope-reincarnation-etc. purveyed by a buncha surfed out dodos and then Jimi comes along with his bottle of Gallo rose and knocks em all on their buttocks in ways they couldn’t even deal with. They coulda bought a couple of crucial minutes outa that one for this one, it seemed like a kinda cheap one with all the interviews and all and they coulda spent a few pennies on fleshing it out here and there. But otherwise it was okay.

R. Meltzer

SAVE THE CHILDREN (Paramount)

And I thought Wattstax was bad. This documentary of Chicago’s 1972 PUSH Expo is little more than a string of stage acts held together by some appallingly sloppy montages of the Expo exhibition area and occasional forays into black Chicago. Where Wattstax gave us an overload of talk, Save the Children records nothing that was not said on stage, often in high oratory, aside from a somewhat overstated voiceover introduction to the event. No backstage moments, only very consciously center-stage personalities. True, the performers are so good you find yourself resenting every cut-away, every mood montage, every weak transition and wishing the filmmakers had been unpretentious enough to simply make another TAMI show which is pretty much what they’ve ended up with anyhow. But clearly, they’d hoped for more and so did I./

Yet I’d hardly discourage anyone from going just to see the concert footage: three beautiful songs from Marvin Gaye and excellent segments from Bill Withers, Jerry Butler, Roberta Flack, Nancy Wilson, Curtis Mayfield, Gladys Knight, Mavis Staples and the Jackson 5 among others. I could watch an hour-long film of Jermaine eating Cheerios so I’m not exactly a cool observer when it comes to the Jackson 5 and their performance seemed particularly mishandled in the film. The screen was split to show footage of dancers from what appeared to be a dance contest at the Expo hall as well as some frantic audience reaction. The audience stuff was fine — I wish there’d been more and better throughout the film — but the dance footage was terrible — arty and atmospheric, giving you the impression of dancing rather than letting you see the dancing for yourself.

Though producer Matt Robinson and director Stan Lathan are both tv men, they still have a Tot to learn from the straightforward style Don Cornelius uses on Soul Train. Not unexpectedly, the gospel music recorded here provides several of the. film’s best moments and the stunning spiritual seizures of women in the PUSH Mass Choir injects some drama '"into an otherwise undramatic film. But if any one performer makes it all worthwhile, it’s Marvin Gaye who most of us haven’t seen in years, as warm and smooth as ever but twice as affecting. Save the Children would’ve made a great tv special, but as a film — something’s missing.

Vince Aletti