CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

A Bottle Of Red Rum To Room 237, Please

THE SHINING

Produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick (Warner Bros.)

by Mark J. Norton

Stanley Kubrick is one of America’s outstanding filmmakers. Quirkier than Coppola, as graphic as Peckinpah and subtle as Altman, Kubrick could be comparted to the artist Monet. Enough of this artsy crap...Kubrick’s scored again, in the form of the The Shining.

The Shining is Kubrick’s brilliant follow-up to Barry Lyndon, which flopped unmercifully at the box office despite the rantings and ravings of many important critics. He’s managed once again to split the audience and the critics down the middle as he did with 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon, by presenting images without a helluva lot of explanation. People can’t accept film as what it essentially is—a combination of sequenced sights and sounds that generally have a plot. Good filmmakers know that sometimes it’s better to leave certain things to the audience’s imagination rather than spell out everything. If you’re the type of person who needs an explanation for every occurence in a film, avoid The Shining. If you don’t, run down to your local theater and catch this baby immediately.

What you’ll get from this flick is a combination of the ordinary and the odd. The conversations of the film are simple enough, but the images presented are bound to jolt even the most hard-core horror-film buffs. ,

The Shining begins with Jack Torrence (acted unbelievably by Jack Nicholson) applying for the job as the winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel in Colorado. The hotel is sequestered in a remote region of the Rocky Mountains, and is only open to the public during the summer months because during the winter, it’s snowbound. At thisjjoint, Jack is an urbane ex-schoolteacher-cum-writer looking for a retreat for his family, so he can pursue his writing career without distraction. His wife Wendy (played by the bug-eyed Shelley Duvall, who just may be the perfect horror-film wife, due to her natural ability to look like a rotting corpse) and his son Danny (Danny Lloyd) are anxiously awaiting Jack’s call to ascertain whether or not he got the job. It’s here we observe Danny’s ability for precognition.

Danny is brushing his teeth and talking to his imaginary friend Tony—Danny’s “friend who lives in his mouth and tells him things” when he loses consciousness from the shock of seeing an elevator door opening and gallons of blood pouring out. Something’s definitely askew, and it’s not a burnt Kraft dinner.

This isn’t typical horror-movie fare. Usually we are subjected to demonic twistoid rug rats who delight in chundering chartreuse technicolor yawns (The Exorcist) or cause their parents to fall off balconies (The Omen). Instead we’re treated to a sweet angel of a child who can see the future—and it doesn’t bear any resemblance to Jon Landau’s vision.

Jack gets the job and the Torrence family moves into the Overlook (my God—what a creepy name—voyeuristic?) (dotel. They’re shown around the opulent palace, and are introduced to the cook, Dick Halloran (Scatman Crothers). Danny and Dick are left alone in the kitchen and discuss the veritable merits of having “the shine.” Dick warns Danny to stay away from Room 237, so what do we expect the kid’s gonna do? Curiosity did kill the cat...

After a month of living in the Overlook, the strain starts to show on Jack. He wanders aimlessly around the hotel, unshaven, writing his novel and bitching at Wendy to stay out of his way. Danny is amused with the place, driving around the hotel on a Big Wheel, checking out the joint. Wendy smokes cigarettes, cooks and tends to Danny. The build-up takes quite a while, then all hell breaks loose.

Danny’s curiosity finally peaks and he’s almost strangled to death by the (a) apparition (b) poltergeist (c) his imagination in room 237. Wendy immediately accuses Jack of the deed, and from this point on, Jack develops into an insane, blood-thirsty creature. He chases Wendy and Danny around the hotel with an axe, completely crazed. Nicholson surpasses every role he’s played to date, and this flick will undoubtedly cause Nicholson mania again a la Cuckoo’s Nest.

There’s no point in giving away the ending, or the classic lines. The suspense alone’ll drive you up the wall, and if it doesn’t, Shelley Duvall will. Personally, 1 was rooting for Jack to hack Shelley Duvall to pieces, but this sort of thing shouldn’t be discussed in this fine publication. Go see The Shihing, then get drunk. You’ll need to.

P.S. Does Jack Nicholson’s performance in The Shining render Hunter S. Thompson’s antics obsolete?

Gonzo Goes Celluloid

WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM

Produced and directed by Art Linson (Universal)

If you haven’t read any of Hunter S. Thompson’s books, Where The Buffalo Roam won’t make much sense to you. If you have read HunterS. Thompson and enjoyed his drug-inspired witticisms, you’ll be severely disappointed.

How do you transmit the insanity that was Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas and Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail onto film? Is the American public ready to swallow a movie about a hard-drinking journalist who eats drugs like a hell-bent hippie and hoses down a planeload of journalists and Richard Nixoi^hen he gets bounced off that very plane? No, the American public won’t, for the same reason the movie can’t get a single quote for its ad campaign.

The ever-lovable Bill Murray portrays Dr. HunterS. Thompson. In the course of this flick, Murray constantly drinks, pops pills, smokes marijuana and hashish, sniffs cocaine and rambles incoherently on whatever topic he is covering. Where The Buffalo Roam is one very good reason why drugs are not the answer.

In one sequence, Thompson’s aging hippie lawyer (played by Peter Boyle) is defending some young clients on drug possession charges. Thompson is seated in the spectator section of the courtroom drinking bloody marys and interrupting the procedures by being noisy and obnoxious. When one hippie is sentenced five years-to life for possession of a pound of marijuana, Thompson jumps up and shouts, “Why don’t you just cut his feet off!?!” Since this is Hollywood, Thompson didn’t receive a contempt of court charge. The producers of this dismal flop should be happy that the audience can’t sue them for contempt of intelligence.

There are some excellent sequences in Where The Buffalo Roam, however. The scene in the beginning where Thompson’s on deadline and shoots the teletype machine is classic. We can empathize with Thompson, as our deadlines are like a remake of Apocalypse Now—the publisher portrays Brando, the writers as Sheen—but the scene would have been much funnier if there’d been a second person in the room reacting to the gunfire, diving for cover, scared shitless. A straight man to balance Thompson’s antics. Throughout the entire movie, there are midget bellhops, jive spades, doped-up hippies, swinging student nurses, Mexican gun-runners, presidential campaign journalists, a geek hitch-hiker, Richard Nixon, .357 magnums, Dobermans, dangerous narcotics, the Superbowl—but where are the Reallncredible People? Probably at home watching Saturday Night Live, where it’s safe from theselunatics.

Other heart-warming scenes include Thompson’s Doberman biting an effigy of Richard Nixon in the crotch after the good doctor’s simple command: “Nixon!” The funniest scene takes place at the office of Blast magazine (read Rolling Stone). Thompson enters the editor’s office and the pudgy, wimpy-voiced boss (who is he?) is reduced to praying for Thompson’s lawyer in trade for the manuscript. This is nothing like real life, but to witness the humbling of a big-shot is, uh, inspiring.

The plot in Where The Buffalo Roam is confusing. Thompson goes from covering his attorney def ending hippies to covering the ’72 Superbowl to running off with said attorney to witness a gun-running operation to covering the ’72 presidential campaign to lecturing (?) at a campus for no single apparent reason. The only tie-in to all these scenarios is Thompson’s attorney: he shows up at the worst possible moment, each time with a new scam or cause, like the gun-running incident, or his plan to buy desert land to build utopia. Understand? Neither did anyone else, probably including everyone who worked on thisflick.

This movie does serve a purpose despite its flaws. It neatly sums up and puts to restthe mentality of the 60’s—“Hey maaaan, let’s smoke dope, eat LSD, have a sit-in, be-in, burn our draft cards blah blah blah.” For this, Where The Buffalo Roam is to be commended.

The soundtrack was donated by Neil Young, the high point being his solo guitar instrumental of the theme, “Home On The Range.” This, along with several select songs of that twisted era complementthe movie, for better of for worse. Ralph Steadman’s titles will send a rush up the spines of Thompson fans, who remember the days when gonzo was gonzo, not Hollywood.

Where The Buffalo Roam is Bill Murray’s first major strike-out, even though it’s not really his fault. You can’t blame Bill for an anemic script and plot. He did his best at portraying a journalist who is obviously crackers, but like a pitcher whose team can’t score runs when batting, he loses. The lesson learned from Where The Buffalo Roam is Straight-forward—some books should never be made into movies.

Mark J. Norton

P.S. Does this movie render Hawaiian shirts obsolete?

Stall In the Saddle

URBAN COWBOY

Directed by James Bridges (Paramount)

Body language. The way John Travolta puts on his hat after sleeping with an oilman’s daughter. The way Debra Winger pops open Scott Glenn’s western shirt (“This is my favorite thing,” she says.). A dueling-torsos slowdance to “Stand By Me.” Long open-mouthed kisses. How a mechanical bull is ridden (more on that later). Urban Cowboy is about nothing but these gestures, kinds of style. Like Saturday Night Fever, it begins as a sizzling combination of atmosphere and attitude. Like Saturday Night Fever, its energy peters out and it becomes a tiresome, contrived disappointment.

Urban Cowboy can be seen as the ultimate shedding of Texas’s 60’s Oswald-LBJ anti-hip rep; the last layer—after the enshrinement of the football Cowboys, Dallas, John (son of Tex) Ritter and Farrah Fawcett, “Outlaw” country music and (one hopes) Joe "King” Carrasco—peeled off the reactionary/uncool Lone Star State to reveal a new cultural mainstream. When Travolta as small-town Bud strides into super-honky-tonk Gilley’s (just outside of Houston) for the first time, it’s like he’s entering beer joint heaven. Forget the Mudd and Madame Wong’s: if cowgirls like Debra Winger in tummy-tied and thigh-hugging denim are doing the two-step around Gilley’s dance floor, who Wouldn’t trade in their skinny ties for bandanas?

Winger is a honey-voiced vision (I wouldn’t mind owning a tape loop of her slinky slow ride on that bucking bull to liven up dull nights), but Urban Cowboy’s plot is as thin as a strap on one of her tank tops. One could fade away at any number of points during its 2¼ hour running (make that “plodding”) time. It all revolves around the domestic (macho-feminist) crises of the Travolta-Winger marriage; a rich bitch who goes after Bud the way Sue Ellen’s sister hits on J.R.; a convict with sinewy tattooed muscles and an eye for Winger; and that damned bull, which does a shitload of story-progressing and metaphorical service. It’s the kind of movie in which as soon as dear old Uncle Bob gives Bud a country-wise view-of-life speech, you figure some tragic fate will befall him (it does: he fries in a lightning storm seconds later). The writing, by journalist Aaron Latham and director James Bridges (of that inflated melo-tract The China Syndrome), is so schematic and shallow that Bridges covers up with a lot of rudimentary cross-cutting between the feuding couple and their new partners.

The movie has outlandish chutzpah to stretch its skimpy premise over its length, but Urban Cowboy isn’t much of a movie at all, except at its most sexily physical moments. It’s a vehicle for Travolta’s baby blues (he’s okay in this, rebounding nicely from his encounter with Lily Tomlin in the great 70’s zombie movie Moment By Moment), and for a soundtrack album. Some of the music, like Mickey Gilley’s (he comes off well in this commercial for his three-acre singles bar) and Johnny Lee’s, is genuinely cool, but there’s far too much of Charlie Daniels, that Meat Loaf of the Mesa, and of mediocre ersatz country.

Twice, Travolta has starred in movies that had a real rocklife theme: the working class kid who goes to where the music is to break out and cut loose. Twice, the filmmakers didn’t trust the subject or Travolta’s magnetic prole appeal. Both movies slobbered it up and dribbled away. Urban Cowboy, at least, delivers on the romance that SNF held back; its ending is as abrupt and anti climatic, but not nearly as stupid, and Cowboy has the added kick of Debra Winger in clingy duds. You go into Urban Cowboy hoping for a lean, rowdy, sentimental entertainment with some snappy songs and sex appeal: a summer breeze. What you get is mostly high humidity.

Mitchell Cohen