Sunday, May 17, 2009

Where's the Blue Neon?

Payday (1973)
directed by Daryl Duke
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

In his autobiography, Waylon Jennings recounts a scene from Payday where Rip Torn fires a handgun from the window of his Nashville limousine. Waylon supposes that it was based on an anecdote about his own wild days, which included cocaine-fueled pinball frenzies and different women on every floor of the local hotel. To hear Waylon tell it, there was a lot of bad behavior, but to see Rip play it - in a performance he's famous for that nonetheless amounts to his best impression of Bill Paxton's signature grimace - it was never any fun. That's the problem with Payday, a movie about country music that gets some regional and historical details right - the nightly repetition of time spent on the road, the unassuming tyranny of rural DJs - but can't help but condescend to the appeal and the attraction of the industry, its participants, and their fans. Maybe I'd be kinder if I hadn't just read Waylon, but a good time is a big umbrella.