CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

YEE-HAH!

TRUE STORIES

(Warner Bros.)

Edouard Dauphin

by

The Dauph generally does his supermarket shopping in the dead of night. Sure, there’s only one checkout counter open, the clerk has a bone through his nose and the line of stupefied customers stretches all the way to the dumpster out back, but it’s the perfect time to peruse the tabloids and find out what the real world is up to. So there I was the other 4 a.m., at the Grawdi Union on Bleecker Street, greedily paging through The Enquirer, $he Examiner, etc. and, as usual, savoring those headlines' f Eating Stones Can Improve Your Love Life,” “Sneaky Iranians Send Fake Cripples To Wheelchair Olympics,” “Talking Head Found In Texas.”

That last one caught The Dauph’s bloodshot eye and! sure enough, the headline didn’t lie. David Byrne was in Texas, making a movie calk ed True Stones. What’s more, he had gotten the idea for the film—his directorial debuts from reading the very rags The . Dauph was paging through. Talk about art imitating life. Next they’ll be saying truth isn’t stranger than fiction.

Well, maybe after seeing this' movie, they won’t. Byrne’s mythical town of Virgil, Texas (somewhere near Dallas, so I kept expecting Cynthia Rose to turn up) ^ is peopled with eccentrics like The Laziest Woman In The World, The Lying Worhan and a good ole boy so desperate for love that he advertises for a wife via a sign on his front lawn. Not bad, but hardly in the class of such recent tabloid goodies as “Sex Change Nun Is Now TV Wrestler” and “Mom Trades Toddler For six Gerbils.” Maybe Byrne is just reading the wrong newspapers.

True Stories is being marketed as some kind of Yjfultra-eoor comedy, but when you come right down to it, the film is about as “cool” as a slumber party-at Rev. Gene Scott’s house. But then, for years,? Byrne has been hoodwinking critics and the public alike into considering him as a sly, ironical observer of Western decline. Why, even back in the mid70s, the Talking Heads tried to come off as a punk band, fer GhfiSsakes, not that anyone with a true bent for punk sensibility was buying. With True Stories, Byrne finally drops his pants to expose the vacancy of the postmodern art movement that, up to now, only Laurie Anderf son has been able to rethread into a pop music or film pattern.

Lovingly photographed by Ed Lachman, True Stories looks like one of those ultrapostcards tourists like to load up on when they visit Greenwich Village or Soho, hoping for a taste of what is artistically au courant. Byrne’s own appearance in the film as its deadpan, Stetson-topped narrator tries to reinforce this detached, super-hfp^ imagery "but only succeeds In confirming a sort of earnest foolishness that wears thin after 10 minutes. His supporting cast, comprised of genuine actors like Swoozie Kurtz, John . Goodman and Spalding Gray, seernsluric&riftDrtablSt? with material that veers between Byrne’s skewered aloofness; and a bizarre naturalism, probably the contribution of co-screenwriters Beth Henley and Stephen Tobolowsky. Are the denizens of Virgil being mocked? You can bet your buns they are, but in a straight-faced semi-realistic way that would. have you believe that they are being fondly observed with all their foibles hanging out endearingly . It makes for a languidly schizophrenic evening that you wish would “stop making sense” long before it’s over.

STANDING IN THE M SHADOWS... J

DREAMGIRL: MY LIFE AS A SUPREME

by Mary Wilson

(St. Martin's Press)

Jim Feldman

by

Long before there was our Mary at WJM in Minneapolis, there was our Mary—Mary Wilson— ‘ ’ooh-baby-baby ’ ’ -ing her heart out in the Supremes. And while Berry Gordy, Jr., and his Motown assembly line masterminded the phenomenon that swept Wilson, Florence Ballard, and Diana Ross to the top of the pop heap, it is equally true theft the Supremes—the "girls” themselves, the hits, the imaged the crossover appeal—ultimately made Motown. Without them, Gordy would have had anjncredible roster of artists, musicians, producers, and writers—and pits galore—but he would have lacked the gleaming foundation upon which to build his empire. Thus, the history of the Supremes—“a real-life Cinderella story and a tragedy deeper than ahytone ever knew,” as Wilson puts it in the preface to her book—is also the essential j Motown story. I.§111

And who better to tell the tale than Mary Wilson who, wanting only to keep the ‡ I Supremes together, had the_ I clearest picture of the drama played out between Diana I Ross, Florence Ballard, and Berry Gordy? Of course, j Wilson herself suffered as a Result of both Ross’s and Gordy’s over-inflated egos, unquenchable ambitions, land insensitivity, feut Wilson t wasn’t as fragile a person as I Florence Ballard was. And - it’s become obvious -that Ballard, as the original nucleus of the group, was a much greater threat to Ross than Wifson was. And so, seemingly devoid of any human feeing at all, Diana Ross destroyed Florence Ballard on her way to superstardom, with the absolute complicity of Berry Gordy.

Detailing Ballard’s downfall, Wilson is wise enough to point out that, by not fighting back and by giving in to drinking and weight problems, Ballard* (perhaps deliberately even} played right into Ross’s and Gordy’s hands. But Ballard didn’t have any of the emotional strength standing up to Diana Ross and Berry Gordy required. Wilson cites a high school rape as one of the major reasons Ballard was unable to survive the constantstorm.

Dreamgiri—the title comes from the Broadway musical based on the Supremes’ story, but with a dishonest happy ending—briefly fills us in on Mary Wilson’s childhood and on some of her later, extracurricular affairs (most notably withTom' Jones). But it concentrates on the rise and demise of the; group. (Therefore, unfortunately, it doesn’t detail^ Wilson's years in the Rossless Supremes.) Admittedly, Wilson'sovert determination to be objective occasionally smacks of disingenuous-!! ness. It’s awfully hard to accept Wilson’s assertions in the ^prologue that, despite everything, she still loves and is proud of Ross and will always^ have the highest esteem for Gordy. Because, given ou* hindsight, the nari fjrative takes on all the aspects of a Mommy Dearest horror story, without the coat hangers, but with a much more tragic ending: Ballard’s asofry, early death.' And Wilson herself contributes some of the ominous organ! Sines.. (It is" telling that throughout the book* she * . refers to her erstwhile partner I as Diane.) the tone is firmly set. early on, when, first discussing Ross^ Wilson notes that "Diane’s birth Sigh, Aries,*is the symbol of the ram, an animat often! depicted butting its way tqthe top of the mountain.”

i From their earliest in> Induction in the book, both ^ RoSs and Gordy come Kbpsh.'.' as two of the all-time ‘ j^redt*” : cruds. (The details of4Wilson’s contracts with Motown are appalling.) Some of the stories are familiar, others are new, and generally, Wilson offers valuable insights. Nobody ifl this story is blameless, even Wilson, she herself agrees. But the history of the Supremes in captured in one moment: At" -Ballard’s 1976flineral, when Ross stepped out of her limousine, “The crowd booed herl.” Sad to say, Diana Ross has besmirched our memories of the Supremes. But, as Ross will never! understand, the Supremes were so much more than her alone. There were all those brilliant hits. There was Mary Wilson, who never gave up. And there was, Florence Ballard, who didn’t stand a chance. ‘