CREEMDIA

CREEMDIA

Thru Joan's Past, Cheaply

John Ned Mendelssohn

In the first five minutes of Alan Sacks’ Rock 'N’ Roll Movie, Ray Sharkey (as filmmaker duBeat-e-o) looks at a likeness of Joan Jett and reverently intones. “You’re the toughest. You cut a road through the rock ’n’ roll forest that Blondie, Benatar, and Chrissie Hynde walk on.”

One wonders if screenwriter Marc Sheffler has ever heard of Brenda Lee, Honey of the Honeycombs, Janis Joplin, SuZy Quatro, or any of several hundred other trailblazing rock ’n’ roll women in the same breath with whom La Jett won!t deserve to be mentioned on the best day of her life.

Rest assured, though, that producer/director Sacks, heretofore best known as he who transformed a Gabe Kaplan comedy routine into Welcome Back, Kotter “doesn’t have that feeling [about Jett] at all. But I do think that she’s a real artist, and I’d love for her to think, ‘Boy, they really did wonders with that stuff,’ when she sees our movie.”

The stuff in question is about 60 minutes of Monkees/Hard Day’s Night type footage two partners in Sacks’ TV production company shot ;of La Jett and The Runaways three years ago—and soon thereafter abandoned as a tax write-off when everyone from prospective buyers to Her Gratingness herself concurred that it sucked. “But then about a.year ago,” Sacks chuckles, “when ‘I Love Rock And Roll’ was such a big hit, they decided they might have something after all, and asked if I could do anything with it.”

He decided he could, the warnings of one of his most trusted advisors notwithstanding. “Even my daughter, who’s 14 and well on her way to being hardcore, told me to forget it. I had to agree that it was real...in an unreal sort of way and thus square. But I thought that I could make it cool.”

He hopes to do so both with lots of very fast cutting and postproduction optical tricks—“to try to make the Jett footage something that kids who are used to videos will relate to”—and by grafting on a sort of superplot, wherein the Sharkey character must either finish the Joan Jett film he’s been working on or incur the ire of the gangster who bankrolled it.

Sacks first met his male lead, heretofore best known for his portrayals of the title character in The Idolmaker and Willie And Phil, while casting the Kotter pilot. Indeed, Travolta, as Barbarino. When it came time to cast the endlessly arrogant and tyrannical deBeat-e-o, who on paper, at least, threatens to be the least sympathetic protagonist in the history of American film, “I just called Ray up and said, ‘Hey, I’m producing this low budget feature, and I need someone to play me.’ He just said, ‘I’m your man.’ ”

The rest of the cast includes several luminaries of the Hollywood post-after hours scene, about which Sacks, as perhaps its most indefatigable observer, was recently invited to teach a UCLA extension course. They include Chuck E. (“...’s in Love”) Weiss, former Fear star Derf Scratch, various female employees of the ultrahip Club Lingerie, and Texas Linda Jones of Tex & the Horseheds. “I think she’s the hottest thing around and ready to really explode,” says the man who helped discover John Travolta.

As though to signify his faith, Sacks has had the name duBeat-eo tattooed on the underside of his right forearm, just beneath the likeness of John Lennon. Rock TV’ Roll Movie mustn’t fail. Wg}

The New TV Guide: What Else Matters?

TV GUIDE (Triangle Publications)

TV Guide is my favorite magazine. Not Dental Week. Not Easyriders. NotCREEM. Not even VIDIOT. It’s TV Guide. Always has been. Always will be.

Just for starters, my 1-u-v encompasses: 1) the format, which is tighter than the security at the USN’s recent top-secret urine stream intensity tests; 2) the Movie Guide, which I’ve been practically memorizing since I broke dowtt and got a new VCR. Or just broke down period—I can’t remember; 3) the program listings that I use as my own personal astrological guide; and 4) the price! A mere 50.C for all this vital info!

Historical poop: TVG was chiefly the brain-spill of Walter Annenberg, prez of Triangle Publications. Observing the success of several local newspaper guides, he bought out most of them, borrowed the name of the New York guide and put out his own regular national/regioriai magazine. After TVG’s debut on April 3, 1953, the circulation actually slipped steadily until the initial Fall Preview Issue (Sept. 11, ’53) put them over the top. Circulation has since passed the 20 million mark.

While the publishers have not been afraid to revise and define TVG’s successful formula, the biggest changes have taken place in the last several months. Cable TV is the sheep that broke the dike. Perhaps it was the news that Time/Life is bringing out a competing, cableheavy program guide. Maybe it was just “time.” Then again, maybe it was telepathic commands from outer space aliens cruelly intent on conquering Earth.

The “new” TV Guide feels as good as an over-inflated boat cushion, with 40-plus more pages than it had a year ago. The biggest single addition is The Charts. Each day of the week now has a big box that sprawls across two pages, covering all local and cable channels six p.m. through midnight with everything listed except the Grey Poupon ads. This development alone has improved my life almost as much as my new rating system that grades bowel movement satisfaction on audibility.

The other big change is The Insider, described in recent commercials as “spicy and outspoken.” If this thing is outspoken, then I’m the guy who cured Ballpark Freeze. TVG has never exactly gone for the throat when it comes to criticizing the television industry and the new eight-page section is no exception.

Who cares? Not me! Everything else in the mag is great! What’s wrong with The Insider is it sucks the obstructed view seat real bad. It kicks off lame with Grapevine, two pages of news which violate the warranty of my sleeping pills. Next up is Primetime, three more pages of the above doze flowers, only this time limited to yourknow-when. Recent highlights include George Segal’s admission he sneaked a pizza into his health clinic and chubbette pest Linda Ronstadt’s famous analysis of bootlegging: “It’s a good thing they can’t do that with movies. Oops, wait a minute...they can, can’t they?”

The rest of the section is devoted to soaps, sports, news updates and Cheers ’N’ Jeers, a painfully unfunny list of dubious achievements. It’s almost as useless as TV Jibes, those stupid cartoons with the fun-level of a children’s seance they use to kill a couple pages once in a while.

When it comes to features, I usually “forget” to read them. They may not be icky-licky enough to be labeled puff pieces, but they’re definitely soft. Don’t have a recent issue handy right now, but check out some of these great titles from the past: “Meet Roger (Ouch!) Smith”; “Raymond Burr: Alone On A Treadmill”; or how about “He’s Merv Griffin— PERIOD!” And if you think the titles are dull, you should see the articles.

That about covers the new stuff. You fellow tube fools are already aware of the real art form here, the program listings. The plot summaries border on found literature. Mork receives word from immigration authorities to register as an “alien.” Jon and Ponch take part in a department biorhythm study, and hoods try to muscle a female trucker. Marjory the Trash Heap gives Wembley a love potion and he falls in love with a Fraggle named Lou. Cases include the death of a dog.

Hea-vee. You practically need a Traveler’s Advisory to contemplate this stuff! But you don’t have to contemplate anything in TV Guide. This is one magazine that’s absolute class on a stick. Rick Johnson