You think Ziggy really cares about his role as an android visitor from some planet where there isn't any water? No. All he cares about is who the hell took his copy of TV Guide.

The Man Who Fell to Earth

Directed by Nicholas Roeg, Starring: David Bowie, Rip Torn, Candy Clark, Buck Henry . . .

“Seen the new Bowie movie?”

“Yeah, it was okay. Whadya think?” It’s late Monday night, summertime. Three or four college students are hanging out, and during a sag in conversation, the Lit major in a blue blazer mentions the latest Nicholas Roeg venture into finer (Art) filmmaking, The Man Who Fell to Earth, a.k.a. The New Bowie Movie.

“Allegorically, it was ingenious—”

“Oh. Well, my impression—from all the hype—was that the flick was mostly just that: hype. Kinda harmlessly artsyfartsy. But allegorically? ...” the sneakered Foli-sci student puzzled.

“Wha? You couldn’t figure out what that whole movie was an allegory for, from the strange smooth denuded way the people on the dying alien planet looked; the very necessity of Newton leaving, his world, but not wanting to go to earth—to the scene where Bowie—Thomas J. Newton, I mean—shows the good guy doctor where he comes from by pointing back at the earth, where he crashed—not the sky. Doesn’t that give you any clues?”

“Lost me,” replied the Foli-sci Bowiephile.

“Simple: it’s an allegory for birth. Return to the womb, not wanting to be born, not being able to turn back once it happens . . . !!”

“Yeah, maybe; but ya have ta also consider the minor themes. Corruption especially—which I guess fits right in with the birth allegory. Corruption in regards to booze, money and powerlust, organized crime, the government. I mean, lookit the way liquor made Tom Newton less than a baby; a delirious trembling addict, a vegetoid loser!”

“Exactly,” said the blue blazered Lit major. “So many dead giveaways in the movie, so many intricacies and nuances—fantastic film!”

The besneakered Polyscientist smirked. “Yeah, granted—but can you say you were genuinely entertained throughout? Looked to me like the editing was off in most places—like a gibbering cokefreak shot it and was let loose in the cutting room. And the soundtrack? Jesus! Too damn loud and distorted in parts for suspense and emphasis. My ears ached. And that sex scene near the beginning—Doctor Brice making it with that gorgeous coed who was snapping pictures with that camera Thomas Newton’s Worldwide Enterprises came out with. That sex scene had nothing to do with the movie’s plot! Probably just inserted for extra box-office appeal...”

“Okay, so a lot of stuff in that movie didn’t exactly make lots of sense. Hear it’s different in the book. ”

“Didja read it?”

“No.”

“I didn’t either,” said Poli-sci. “Still, I’m not sure whether I liked it or not; whether Bowie’s role was wooden, his acting wooden, or both. The ending dragged on interminably! You remember all that boring fluff after the climax, when Mary Lou comes into the room after Tommy changes back into his natural self; yellow cat’s eyes, everything in slow motion, really scary buildup with the doorknob turning real gradual—”

The Lit major waxed thoughtful. “Yeah, yeah. Know whatcha mean about Roeg using certain superfluous segments. Like, what was that rich black gangster doing by the pool in Beverly Hills with his white girlfriend? And yeah, Bowie’s acting wasn’t hot shit—but wasn’t he setting himself up for that role all along, with “Space Oddity” and the whole Ziggy-Starman trip?”

Earth's polluted atmosphere is very painful for the spaceman's eyeballs. Bowie has to pluck his cornea twice a day.

The two collegiate Bowiephiles would’ve critiqued hard into the night, long after the Joe Franklin (legendary blandout N.Y. talkshow host) and The Late Late Show (missing out on the provocative Tom Snyder and his guests—that night’s show featuring a woman with a multiple personality problem, plus a vexatious lady psychic who insisted the earth’d be getting otherworldly visitors before this year’s up, mark her words). But just then, an impartial third party named Henry spoke up:

“My favorite scene was where Bowie’s freakin’ out, watchin’ all those TVs all at once, then the movie flashes forward twenty years—catch all that timeshuttling, past, present and future—and he’s lying on the bed where they kidnapped him for being an alien and somebody calls Newton ‘Harry’ by mistake because that’s the guy’s name in this Thirties gangster flick on the big TV screen in the corner . . . That’s it. Language of Social Control, through media—”

Suddenly, the other two cineastes felt sheepishly unperceptive, vowing to not judge the new Bowie/Roeg The Man Who Fell to Earth as either haute cinema success or sci-fi thriller flop until they’d seen it a second time, at least.

For $3.50 a shot, first-run, they could wait.

Trixie A. Balm

Baseball '76: Go Sit On A Face Mask

by Rick Johnson

Brushbacks, beanballs and brawling are enjoying more popularity than ever here in our rootie-tootie Bicentennial Year, and major league baseball, along with the rest of the country, is rapidly becoming an iceless hockey game. This could finally be the season that “kill the ump” becomes a fear rather than a jeer.

It all started with the player-owner ' “negotiations” that straight-off put the entire season in doubt, then right away we get the N. Y.-Boston brouhaha (finally got to use that word) and the Chicago-S.F. punch-out which somehow resulted in Rick Monday rescuing the stars-and-stripes and thus becoming a National Hero.

So, as Slade once said, “THE WHOLE WORLD’S GOIN’ CRAZEE,” and baseball is certainly no exception. You’re gonna see more bizarre no-hitters, sudden slugfests, weird scores and who knows what else, but here goes:

CREEM Puts Its Money On The Table

NATIONAL LEAGUE EAST

1. Pittsburgh — So big deal, they got off to a slow start. With all those cleatbenders, they can’t help but pull it off.

2. Philadelphia — Most “predictors” will say that picking the Phils second is an upset, but CREEM does not step back, Jack. They got some hitters and pitchers, but can they hold? Wait ’til next year, as they say in the Sports World.

3. New York — What with Kingman and Seaver they’ll do OK, but at this point in time, they’ve become totally irrelevant.

4. St. Louis — Speaking of irrelevancy, meet the Cards. Their only reason for existence is as continual contenders.

5. Chicago — Even with Monday, Madlock and Wrigley Field, face reality. The Cubbies are inoperative, but they got class.

6. Montreal — Canada, the Liechtenstein of the Northern Hemisphere. Class dismissed.

NATIONAL LEAGUE WEST

1. Cincinnati — Just because this writer’s been a Reds fan ever since second grade because his girlfriend’s favorite color was red has nothing^o do with it. This is the most perfectly constructed team in baseball. Could be their last year of supremacy, though.

Illustration by

2. Los Angeles — After that ridiculous start and cowboy recovery, the Dodgers are shot. Last year’s twenty GB’s is still a psyche disgrace. Really, how long can you continue living on the memory of Sandy Koufax?

3. San Diego — Tough one here, but with Randy Jones, who will soon make the world forget Koufax, they might pull through. Who cares about third place anyway.

4. Houston — Could move up in a couple of years, but after a game at the Astrodome was rained out, forget it.

5. Atlanta — Despite the hotshot management and the purchase of Andy Messersmith, the South ain’t gonna rise again. You weenies down there think yer tuff, but yer siss, and us Yanks’ll take ya on anytime.

6. San Francisco — This franchise should be sold to the Panama Canal Zone.

AMERICAN LEAGUE EAST

1. Boston — Disregarding the slow start and local craziness, with Yaz, Lynn and Petrocelli you have some big boys to deal with. Only weak point is in the all-important Belligerence And Revenge Dept., which cost ’em the series last year.

2. New York — Soon to return to superiority, possibly next season. Maybe the Yanks can upset this year, but despite CREEM’s Managing Editor’s personal favoritism and the presence of stars, don’t bet your mitt on ’em.

3. Baltimore — It’d be a miracle if they even make it this high. As they once said, “Even Brooks Robinson is human. ” Kiss these guys goodbye.

4. Cleveland — The Injuns are up and coming this decade, so keep a TV eye on ’em, but not this year.

5. Milwaukee — Laverne and Shirley could make this team; in fact, they already have. George Scott. Hank Aaron. Uh huh.

6. Detroit — As much as we’d like to root for CREEM’s home team and the ever heart-warming memory of A1 Kaline, all I can say is yuk yuk yuk.

AMERICAN LEAGUE WEST

1. Kansas City — With temperatures consistently in the lower 200s, this is no area to do anything but watch snail races. But somehow, with Brett and Otis and the rest, these guys should get heated up and take it.

2. Texas — Considering the oil money and the stars, the Rangers are the potential Arabs of the division. Just might pull it off in the end.

3. Oakland — With all the legal and personality crises going down here, what can you expect? This whole division's a toss-up, not unlike the world. Presence of Chuck Finley a probable doom factor.

4. Chicago — As a Chitown SouthSider, it’d be nice to see the Sox pull it off, but even with Veeck (as in wreck), the “Go-Go” Sox done gone and went. Look to the future.

5. California — This team could be traded to the Indianapolis Clowns for a cracked bat. Tanana yes, Ryan maybe. Johnny Carson has been heard cackling at their hitting.

6. Minnesota — Isn’t this an old Zappa song? With the ghost of , Harmon Killebrew and Carew on the apparent decline —and worse yet — regionally located to Detroit, girls’ softball anyone?

Part of tho troupe: they've got p lot to say, but they say It too fast while standing still.

Robert Altman: History Can’t Recall

BUFFALO BILL & THE INDIANS OR SITTING BULL’S HISTORY LESSON

A Film By Robert Altman (United Artists)

Altman’s latest, based loosely on the play Indians by Arthur Kopit, plays even more loosely with the ideas that history is fiction and that celebrityhood, politics and showbiz are intimately interconnected. Since these are very appealing ideas to me, I found this a very appealing movie. I suspect, however, that I may be among a very few in this respect; certainly he hasn’t pulled off another blockbuster like Nashville, but I don’t really care for blockbusters all that much and actually like Buffalo Bill better, although as I said before, my reasons are idiosyncratic and don’t necessarily have anything to do with the film’s actual quality.

Perhaps a better way of approaching this would be to list the reasons why most of the other people, including critics and the sparse opening night audience in my home town (they didn’t promote it too heavily, and several people walked out) as well as producer Dino de Laurentiis (who unceremoniously—humiliatingly— pulled Altman off Ragtime on the basis of a viewing of Buffalo Bill), don’t or won’t like this movie very much at all.

To begin with there is almost no plot. Like many flicks adapted from plays, it’s stagy and talky, and the talkiness offers us a new twist on the celebrated Altman simultaneous-dialogue technique. In most of his films we get to bathe in babble through the miracle of 16-track stereophonic miking and related technology, so at its worst it can be like sitting in a train station where a bunch of old ladies on their way to Miami Beach for a community services convention are all talking at once. It’s strictly a matter of the individual viewer’s (or, in this case, auditor’s) taste, since Altman has been criticized on the basis that in “real life” we have selective hearing anyway and tune out Fred when we want to listen to what Mike is saying, thus rendering Bob’s whole elaborate setup a device in danger of becoming mere gimmick. I like it, because I perceive it a different way, coming in the back door—I think of it as like collective improvisatory “free” jazz, where you can have dozens of lines going at once and swim through the music, breathing it, as was once written of Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz LP, like air. This device was particularly effective in conveying the nervous, airless fantasy world of the gambling addict in California Split, whereas Nashville came off as facile and elaborate yet hollow, a Chartres made from seashells.

Buffalo Bill, on the other hand, just sits there, and for once Altman can’t be accused of merely making phenomenon movies, because he gets a really good character study out of Paul Newman, even though Newman never stops being Newman (although it’s Altman’s and co-scripter Alan Rudolph’s conceit that that’s precisely the point). Meanwhile, Joel Grey, Harvey Keitel who can do no wrong, Geraldine Chaplin, Burt Lancaster, Kevin McCarthy and a whole troupe of others move in and out of the camera’s attention and our own, sometimes all talking at the same time but more often hitting you with rapid-fire aphorisms so thick and fast you are literally unable to absorb the last Heavy (genuinely thought-provoking) one-liner before the next one is upon you. The result, not surprisingly, is an audience on the one hand perplexed and on the other bored, because of the static quality of the film in general. Again, I didn’t mind any of this—perhaps I have become inured to boring movies, as I have become inured to boring music—because (the graininess of Altman’s cinematography aids this considerably) I felt the whole Buffalo Bill experience was like taking one long, soothing bath in warm oatmeal. And I don’t mean that as a pejorative—oatmeal is good for you, there are some brilliant lines being thrown away by the handful in here (my favorite is Lancaster as Ned Buntline to Newman: “Yep, you’re really something, Bill—I’m glad I invented you.’), and at the risk of schmaltz I’m going to have to say that I just found this movie enormously likeable, amiable, funny and filled with good ideas that never quite coalesce. There is a curious still emotionlessness at the core that undercuts some potentially powerful scenes—the connection between Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull, for instance, is never developed or really explained—and I still maintain that Altman is basically a kind of bemused voyeur, never allowing himself inside his characters so that you too can feel the ache in their guts or even why it’s there. But on the other hand, all movies by name directors now are self-indulgent and self-absorbed, way too long and usually saved by the acting (Keitel most notably here), besides which for my money this bomb beats The Missouri Breaks by a country mile. But he may never make you care like you did about McCabe and Mrs. Miller again.

Lester Bangs

Schlep On Zep

LED ZEP: The Led Zeppelin Biography

By Ritchie Yorke (Methuen/Two Continents)

It’s been a long, long, lonely time for all you Led Zep fans, huh? Unless you were lucky enough to be at that L.A. Forum Bad Company gig where Jimmy and Robert jumped onstage and jammed their little hearts out. Or unless you really dig Presence. (In which case, you’d better question whether you are a serious Zep fan, and go console yourself with the latest Aerosmith.) But the rest of us will snarf up this slender volume as soon as it arrives on the shelves of the local bookery. And with good reason; it’ll keep you close to home for an evening and just think, it costs only $3.95 more than the latest issue of Circus (which doesn’t have a Led Zep feature) and will thrill you with LZ’s life stories, individually and collectively; old Yardbirds pictures of Jimmy (who even looks evil while he’s looking young-boyish), and a discography going as far as Physical Graffiti (which is all we want anyway).

You'll have to come up with a better book than this, Jimmy.

Trouble is, the author (Ritchie Yorke) is this guy shown on the back of the book just about to bite into a huge submarine—he looks like the shiteating grin type and you can understand why if you explore the insides of the book. Unfortunately, Yorke seems to have gotten himself into the enviable position of having Access to the Stars. It started with his creditable prediction that Zeppelin would be “the next super group in the U.S." in the Toronto Globe and Mail. But once inside the magic circle, he seems to have suspended his critical faculties. There is a lot of copy to this book, a lot of facts strung together, but it never seems to satisfy. This book does not tell you how Page got interested in Aleister Crowley, mysticism and all that action. It spews forth a lot of names and dates, to the point where you’ll want to skip pages, gaze at the pictures and look out for the good parts, just like a cheap dirty novel. Only not as interesting.

This could have been a good book— any piece of humanity sitting with the band with a tape recorder on as often and as extensively as this journalist did is bound to record something. But you’re going to have to dig. And wait for the definitive Zep book.

Susan Whitall