CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

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Cruising For Dollars

EDDIE AND THE CRUISERS Directed by Martin Davidson (Embassy Pictures)

Bill Holdship

Along with John Eskow’s Smokestack Lightning, P.F. Kluge’s Eddie And The Cruisers was one of the best rock novels I’ve ever read. If the film had captured some of the book’s melancholy mood and spirit, it could have been great. Unfortunately, it doesn’t and it isn’t.

The film, like the book, is the story of Eddie Wilson (played by newcomer Michael Pare), the leader of one of America’s hottest rock bands in 1963. Shortly before the release of the Cruisers’ second LP—a “years - ahead - of - its - time” masterpiece entitled Season In Hell—Eddie drives his car off a bridge, and his body is never found. Twenty years later, there is a huge Eddie and the Cruisers revival when the group’s records hit the charts again. A TV news reporter senses a story in the mystery behind Eddie’s “death,” and sets out to interview the survivin'g bandmembers. Along the way, two questions arise: did Eddie fake his death, and what happened to the missing tapes of Season In Hell? (NOTE: The LP was titled Leaves Of Grass, and Eddie was a Walt Whitman fan in the book. In the film, he’s an Arthur Rimbaud (?!?) fan— remember this is supposedly the era Of Dion and Del Shannon— reinforcing the Jim Morrison similarities, and making Eddie really look years ahead of his time by beating out Dylan and Patti Smith, the latter who practically canonized Rimbaud on Horses.)

As a matter of fact, Eddie and the Cruisers are so far ahead of their time that they sound just like Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band! (Well, maybe a poor man’s Springsteen; Eddie looks like John Cougar onstage and sounds like D.L. Byron, although the glockenspiel, grandiose piano, saxophone, Spectorish sound and gravel vocals are all there.) This probably has something to do with the fact that the Cruisers hail from Asbury Park in the film, and that Southside Johnny Lyon acted as a technical advisor (along with Joseph “You Light Up My Life” Brooks?!?). Still, it’s pretty hard imagining a band sounding this sophisticated in ’63, a year before the British Invasion hit American shores. We’re also supposed to believe that one of the Cruisers composed Bobby Freeman’s “Betty Lou’s Got A New Pair Of Shoes.” (Betcha the filmmakers didn’t anticipate Neil Young reviving the tune on his latest LP.) Worst of all, when we finally hear the title cut from Season In Hell (the final record was a superstar R&B jam session, featuring artists ranging from Buddy Holly to Sam Cooke, in the book), it turns out to be an ’80s style hard rock tune in the vein of, say, Pat Benatar or Bryan Adams. Some of the music —composed and performed by John Cafferty, and produced by Jay & the Americans co-founder, Kenny Vance—is actually enjoyable, but suffice it to say that Eddie And The Cruisers requires a large suspension of disbelief from a musical standpoint.

Michael Pare is being hyped as the “new James Dean,” which he isn’t. His performance is fine, although his lip-synching leaves something to be desired. In fact, most of the performances here (including Helen Schneider from Schneider With A Kick making her film debut) are above average. The problem is the actors had substandard material to work with. Most of the dialogue is banal. The story’s potential love triangle is never developed. By changing the ending, the film totally does away with the book’s sole villain. In other words, there is no real dramatic tension in Eddie And The Cruisers. Most disheartening is that the film never comes close to capturing the book’s romantic eeriness and wistful nostalgia. Eddie And The Cruisers isn’t a terrible motion picture. It’s just mindless, and no competition for films like American Hot Wax which so lovingly captured the early rock era. Perhaps it was the allergy pill I took before the screening, but I had a hard time staying awake.

Eddie And The Cruisers—the novel—was a good story about rock’s loss of innocence. Eddie And The Cruisers—the film—has no point Other than cashing in on a lot of rock ’n’ roll cliches. You have a singer who looks like Cougar and sounds like Springsteen. You have a Jim Morrison-like disappearance. You even have a heroin overdose and Rimbaud allusions for the decadent crew. Above all, you have a star with loads of teen sex appeal in the vein of Matt Dillon, not to mention a soundtrack LP that could make the charts. Eddie And The Cruisers may be a huge hit.

Touch That Dial

Richard C. Walls

Having lived in the suburbs for over four months now, I am becoming convinced of the basic truth of John Chancellor’s dictum (apropos some recent unpleasantness or other), to the effect that most Americans don’t care if a Nazi war criminal lives next door to them as long as he keeps his lawn mowed. Really, the amount of time people spend out here hacking their grass and bushes into shape is disgusting. I know that if I just reach over and turn this blaring record player down I’ll hear at least one power mower buzzing psychotically in the distance...just a second...yep. Fortunately you and me have better things to do. So let’s get on with it. ☆ ☆ ☆

GOT DEAD IF YOU WANT IT: I have a great idea for a syndicatedtype TV quiz show: Name The Dead Celebrity. And no, this is not just another loutish attempt at Lampoonist) irreverence, I actually got the idea from a fairly respectable source—the local news. Specifically, from the lead-ins they do a few commercials before the actual show starts, the part where they tell you wnat the big story of the day is and then give you a lot of other little teasers like “Don Gurney will take a long, hard look at belly dancing” or “We’ll have a special News-4 report on teenage drinking: ‘Why Johnny Pukes Blood,’ ” things like that. I’ve noticed that an oft-used teaser is that every time a famous entertainment figure dies they’ll blind-item it just to prick your interest enough so you’ll stay tuned (and play along), something like “one of TV and movies’ best-loved personalities died this morning, we’ll have that story and more...” or something terser like “Legendary screen goddess found dead in L.A., plus the Yankees bite the big one in Detroit...” Since this is being written during the weekend that saw the deaths of David Niven, Lynn Fontanne, Raymond Massey, and Luis Bunqel, and watching as much news as I do, I must have seen this name-the-stiff ploy a half dozen times. And a basic law of television is that they don’t do something over and over again unless it’s very popular.

It could be a weekly show, usually enough (three would suffice) famous people buy it during the course of a week...obviously, the concept needs work but a lot of TV shows have gotten off the ground (and apparently on the air) with leaner premises than this...

GOD’S ANGRY BOZO: Ace books has recently re-issued Harlan Ellison’s collected TV criticisms The Class Teat and The Other Class Teat, columns that were originally published in the L.A. Free Press (an “underground” paper, you may recall) during ’68-’71. Ellison, best known for his spikey SF and fantasy stories, saw TV as a malevolent dispenser of untruths, the willing tool of a corrupt and malignant status quo, a cultural insult to the senses. Reading this, it’s depressing to realize how little commercial TV has changed in the past decade plus. However, styles in vituperative attacks have changed noticeably, and Ellison’s late-’60s rancor seems quaint. His story about how “Dick and Spiro and all their ghoul errandboys” put the pressure on to have his book removed from bookstores and newsstands across the country is hard to swallow, not because the Nixon regime wasn’t repressive, but because it’s hard to imagine anyone with any real power taking the time to bother with this gnat pecking at their heels. Ellison’s sense of himself as one of America’s most important agent provocateurs is so off the mark that it undermines the effect of much of his justifiable rage—makes him seem a little ridiculous. But that’s what makes these books so entertaining ’cause aside from making sure (again and again) that we know that he’s a gutsy guy who upsets a lot of people (he especially delights in telling how much he offends the famous little old blue-haired ladies in sneakers) Ellison doesn’t seem to give a tinker’s fuck what anybody thinks of him. Anyone who calls Art Linkletter “the sorriest creature ever to flash across the land in phosphordot reality” obviously doesn’t mete out his venom too judiciously (I mean, is Linkletter really sorrier than Richard Nixon? Spiro Agnew? Kenny Rogers?), and this one-draft-only spleen venting has a cumulatively exhilarating effect—Ellison’s egotism may render him occasionally absurd, but it’s still gratifying to hear him attack, unabashedly, the general wretchedness of television. Younger readers will probably find all this breastbeating amusing—the more historically minded among them should find the depiction of TV during wartime (Viet Nam, you may recall) enlightening—while oldtimers might feel a bit nostalgic for a period when reams of unironic outrage could be churned out with the belief that it might actually change someone’s opinion.

Well, well, I see we have a little extra space this month, so why don’t we just take a look and see what some of you scamps out in magazineland are up to...

From Uncle Ricky’s Mailbag: Dear Dr. FT:

I was watching this movie very late the other night called Murder Is My Business and it starred Hugh “Bend over, June” Beaumont. Far Out! The flick was crappy, but it was really weird to see Ward Cleaver trying to act like hardboiled shamus Michael Shayne—he even got to drink hard liquor and flirt with some trampy broad. Wally woulda shit! The Beaver would split! (get it?)

Did Beaumont make any other fillums? Whatza deal?

Also, is Wayne Newton a fag?

Lost In Time

Riverdale, CA

The mighty Beaumont (who was born in Lawrence, Kansas, the same city where they filmed Carnival Of Souls—fact!) actually made quite a few films during the ’40s and ’50s, most of them pretty awful (would you believe Bury Me Dead [’47]?) tho’ I realize that one’s fondness for Ward Cleaver gives any Beaumont screen appearance a certain added resonance. And two of his films (where he played second leads, natch) are recommended without apologies: The Seventh Victim (’43), an eerie Val Lewton mood piece about devil worshippers in (then) contemporary NYC and The Mole People (’56), prime ’50s comic book sci-fi with Beaumont trading quips with that ace icon of blandness, John Agar.

Funny, 1 get this Wayne Newton question a lot and I don’t know why (why ask me, that is)...also I don’t approve of the “fag” tag ’cause it sounds too medieval homophobic... the question should be, is Wayne Newton gay? Unless, of course, the intent is to be pejorative, as in “Jerry Falwell is a fag.” Try to remember that. Next question.

Dear Sirs:

Have you ever seen that commercial where the woman opens her oven door and a little dough man pops out and says “Ed McDowell, you must kill your next door neighbors and their dog. They are evil”? Just wondered.

humbly,

Ed McDowell

Plainsville, IA

Sounds like a good one, Ed, but a lot of these commercials are regional and that might explain why I’ve never seen it. Have a nice day.

Dear Asshole:

Is it true that most of the people you hear on laugh tracks are dead (the tracks having been recorded years ago)? They sure sound like it. The other night I tried to watch Buffalo Bill ’cause it had gotten some good reviews, but the laugh track was so spastic I couldn’t concentrate on the plot. Not only did they have these inappropriate bursts of laughter at the end of straight lines but also at some points it would sound like about a million people laughing hysterically and then blammo! dead silence. I really don’t think I can take this kind of shit much longer.

Also, is Wayne Newton a Rosicrucian?

Up yours,

Craig Splat

(not my real name, but who gives a rat’s turd?)

Gee, such hostility. Didja know (I read this somewhere) that people who watch a lot of TV are invariably hostile and paranoid top? While people who don’t watch much TV (too busy moving their lawns, no doubt? are just as invariably easygoing chuckleheads with a ready smile and a hearty “howdy!” for the passing stranger. There’s a lesson there for all of us. As far as laugh tracks are concerned, I couldn’t say, except that I know for a fact that you’re not supposed to hear laugh tracks—they’re supposed to register subliminally, where some of their more illogical nuances then go undetected. Obviously there’s something wrong with you.

Newton is a fig.

And that’s it. Next month, detailed descriptions of all the new Fall shows, plus hilarious jokes about how terrible they all are. Should be fun!