CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

GRINDING IN THE RAIN

PURPLE RAIN

(Warner Bros.)

David Keeps

Let’s put things in proper perspective, shall we? I mean, let’s get relentlessly real. Prince IS Purple Rain, and there’s absolutely no other reason to see this rather over-the-top celluloid fantasy than to witness his riveting moves and a New Age sex-and-gender crossover superstar. Goddard it ain’t, but the performance sequences — which fortunately dominate the proceedings—are the best videos he’s ever made. On a purely cinematic level, Purple Rain is pedestrian, a backstage boy meets/loses/wins back girl saga, with lots of flashy costuming and madefor-MTV editing to provide enough diversion from the fact that the scenes and dialogue reprise themselves endlessly throughout the narrative.

Why, then, did this glorified concert film make back its seven million budget in the first weekend it went into release? Perhaps we should ask. Michael Jackson. Comparisons must seem horribly unfair, but in this case, the pendulum and the public’s infatuations also seem to swing both ways. Michael represents sweetness, innocence, and even a paranoia about sexual entanglements (see “Billy Jean”); Prince bawdlerizes and exults the horizontal bop, strutting his stuff like a predatory feline. Michael’s cinematic turn in “Thriller” casts him as a victimized monster who merely wants to boogie; as The Kid, Prince confronts real-life demons in parents, peers, potential sweeties and employers.

Purple Rain is really a tale of emotional exorcism through music, and bravo to Prince for tackling a character that is so obviously fuckedup. It’s far too easy to glamorize oneself in a “major motion picture debut,” but then Prince has never shirked risk-taking, even though he’s hedged his bets as an actor here by speaking through his music, body and doe-like eyes instead of his whispery speaking voice. Autobiography or not, there’s absolutely no denying the gutwrenching impact of domestic violence and sexism that fuels the Kid’s eventual catharsis. When the camera focuses on him, he smolders, pouts and even smiles, but always remains an enigma.

By contrast, co-stars Apollonia and Morris Pay, as his best girl and worst rival are vivacious characters who know who they are and what they want, counterpoints to the Kid’s implosively tortured artist. Morris is prime comic relief, breathing fresh jiveass life into that old “Who’s on first?” routine with equally dapper Jerome Benton. Shot on location in Prince’s own Minneapolis, Purple Rain boasts some startling and moody cinematography by Donald Thorin and propulsive editing— particularly in the adrenalinated title sequence of “Let’s Go Crazy”—by director Albert Magnoli. Amid the flurry and the flubs are moments of passion and even elegance, but without Prince, Purple Rain would just be another rock ’n’ roll fairy tale like the dreadful Streets of Fire.

Despite what anyone else might tell you, rock ’n’ roll and film are rarely a match made in heaven. Purple Rain may well be an updated noirish Elvis Presley pic, but why should Prince lose any sleep? The tickets are selling, the critics are buying, and even I have to admit that the prettiest diamonds always have flaws.

SWEET SOUL MUSIC

Nowhere To Run:

The Story off Soul Music by Gerri Hirshey (Times Books)

From the sweaty excitement of James Brown to the high-gloss precision of the Temptations, soul singers bossed the American pop charts in the late 1960s. Taken together, the hitmakers from Motown, Memphis, Muscle Shoals and the East were rivaled only by the Beatles as both an influence and a phenomenon.

But although the music’s fans ranged from Southern white fraternity brothers to Northern, Vietnambound black teenagers, from Mick Jagger to Bruce Springsteen to Boy George, the greats of soul have never been given their due in print. The singers are known primarily by the titles of their greatest hits: “In The Midnight Hour.” “Dancing In The Streets.” “Chain Of Fools.” “I Heard It Through The Grapevine.” “When A Man Loves A Woman.”

One possible reason for the music’s neglect by rock writers is that its roots are so tangled. Soul at its purest is a blend of the driving rhythms of urban blues and the righteous vocals of country gospel—a marriage of Saturday night and Sunday morning. Plotting its history is no easy task. As one record exec asked author Gerri Hirshey: “How are you going to map an atomic chain reaction?”

Nowhere To Run clears this obstacle by bagging the idea of a precise chronology altogether. Instead, the book is a collection of portraits of nearly everyone (save Motown czar Berry Gordy, who wouldn’t talk) who helped shape the soul movement. And just as their big, expressive voices leapt out of tinny transistor radios long ago, their voices leap off the pages of Hirshey’s book, turning the singers into flesh-andblood people rather than mere names on old record labels.

As fast-paced as a Motown dance tune, the book strings together anecdotes and memories. There’s an amusing account of the disastrous first meeting of the Supremes and the Fab Four. There’s Smokey Robinson’s memory of the Miracles’ first gig at the Apollo, with Ray Charles popping up from nowhere to save the teenage singers from humiliation by the house band. There’s Aretha Franklin’s recollection of a dismal night at an early ’60s Columbia Records convention in Puerto Rico, when she watched from her hotel window as the label’s other new discovery, Bob Dylan, restlessly paced the beach.

Because so few of these stories have ever been brought to light, they give the book a certain freshness. They also create a soul mythology. There’s the King, the late Sam Cooke, the first gospel singer of his generation to defect to pop—and maybe just a little too charming, handsome and smart for his own good. In one depressing episode, singer Solomon Burke recalls how he and Cooke were forced to perform in the nude for Louisiana cops as punishment for attempting to order food at a segregated diner.

There’s Cooke’s heir apparent, the late Otis Redding, with a heart as big as all outdoors and a knack for roughing up even the most innocuous pop songs. And most of all, there’s the Godfather, James Brown, more than 30 years on the road and still the Hardest Working Man In Show Business, with the scarred knees to prove it.

And then there’s the Little Prince, Michael Jackson—more like the Boy in the Plastic Bubble than Peter Pan. Diana Ross oozes motherly concern when she frets that Michael spends too much time alone; at age 26, the idol of trillions allows that he leads his private life “just like a hemophiliac who can’t afford to be scratched in any way.” So much for life in the fast lane.

Other heroes and villains emerge. Hirshey catches up with Motown rebels Mary Wells and Martha Reeves, both braving endless onenighter tours with ill-rehearsed white pick-up bands playing to trendy, indifferent new wave audiences. In sharp contrast, there’s Diana Ross, singing to a quarter-million raindrenched mugging victims in Central Park. Lady Di won’t enjoy reading about how she literally shoved fellow Supreme Mary Wilson out of the spotlight at last year’s Motown 25 taping, but that’s life in the big city.

Motown President Berry Gordy also might squirm a bit over the sad saga of Florence Ballard. Her firing by Gordy from the Supremes in 1967 began a long slide into poverty, illness and oblivion that ended when Ballard died, alone, at age 32. Papa Gordy has a few other things to answer for in Nowhere to Run— the handling of his artists’ royalties, for example—but he is conspicuous in his absence.

The author is also absent, in the best possible way. Hirshey sits in the back of the bus with the other fans, and lets the singers do the driving. In the process, the music’s greatest creators become its greatest historians. It’s this approach that lets Nowhere to Run give its road-weary subjects all they’ve ever asked for: respect. Just a little bit.

Heather Joslyn

A CONDO FOR PEDRO

Richard C. Walls

BLAH: Summer again. Seems like we just had one last year. What’s the point? TV-wise, the Olympics and pre-election politics are the two big current mini-series. As I write, the Olympics haven’t quite got under way, but early signs point to a dismal feast of symbolism with little features appearing on all the news shows about how carrying the torch across the country has stirred the populace to new swellings of patriotism. Accompanied by shots of humble folks with plastic flags, tearful with pride, the in-depth interviews say it all— Reporter: “Why have you come out here at 6 A.M. to watch this torch pass for 30 seconds?” Humble Patriot: “I dunno...’cause I’m an American.” Yup, the rank and file are “feeling good about America again,” which means that if Reagan wants to make Nicaragua safe for the United Fruit Company (or whatever), he should make his move while the time is, excuse the pun, ripe. Meanwhile, the media covers these happenings with the detached curiosity of anthropologists eager not to disturb the delicate culture of the natives while simultaneously giving the impression that we the viewers are expected to take heart from all this inarticulate pride and from the fact that all the old symbols and cliches have emerged unscathed from the years of Vietnam, Watergate and uppity minorities. But for those of us whose love for our country (or its potential, at any rate) is undiminished while our ability to find solace in traditional symbolism has long ago worn thin, the whole spectacle is rather depressing.

Well, one takes solace where one can, and for me the Democratic convention almost made mainstream politics acceptable. The network’s decision to limit the coverage to three hours or so of prime time paid off with a minimum of internecine baloney and a high density yield of rhetorical climaxes. Even though I’m not a true believer, agreeing with Gore Vidal’s assessment that the main difference between Hart and Mondale and Reagan is that Reagan is a radical conservative while H & M are moderate conservatives, still, the speeches were impressive, down to and including that of G. Hart, whom ex-ballerina and first son Ron Reagan, Jr., covering the convention for Playboy (hmmm...), described as “looking like a lizard on a rock” (the kid’s got a bitchy temperament, as well as this thing about reptiles—he once described Jimmy Carter as having “the morals of a snake”). Even Fritz Mondale reached a dramatic peak with his anti-nuk.e reference to “those godawful weapons.”

The Dems also managed to pay lip service to both liberal and conservative sentimentality, and though the attempt to co-opt the Republicans’ promise to protect the fortress of the family against the pagan hoards was an embarrassing failure of nerve, the anti-Reagan delineations of truth, justice, and the American way were (particularly from Mario Cuomo, who dazzled the delegates with a charismatic call for fairness, which made him the matinee idol of the convention and led San Francisco columnist Herb Caen to label his more ardent followers “Cuomosexuals”) the most intelligently nuanced slabs of idealism I’ve heard from mainstream politicos in some time. And though it’s only late July, I’ll go out on a rather sturdy limb and make this prediction—you won’t hear any great speeches at the Republican convention simply because great speeches come from passionate longing and the gut, not from fearful greed and a tight sphincter.

☆ ☆ ☆

CABLEDEATH: On a more serious note, and speaking of assholes, whoever devised the programming that all major cable outlets follow may turn out to be one of history’s major ones, ‘cause the word now is that the cable boom is faltering—we’re talking cancellations by the scores. People are tired of recent movies endlessly repeated, a stupid strategy on cable’s part especially since the number of pre’65 movies on commercial TV has dwindled so during the past decade. I mean, where’s the Samuel Fuller retrospective, the foreign films, the Wyott Ordung festival (see Fangoria #38 for enlightenment)? If they were to cut back recent movie repeats by half and fill in the time with some kind of knowledgeable film programming drawing from 80 years of world cinema, the cancellation trend would be reversed. But don’t hold your breath. Expect instead more smarmy made-for-cable movies (Jogging With Destiny, A Condo For Pedro), inane specials (Tony Orlando In New Brunswick) and 33 showings of Foxfire per month no matter who ends up in the White House.