Honky Tonk Freeway.

Review #2565: Honky Tonk Freeway.

Cast: 

Beau Bridges (Duane Hansen), Beverly D'Angelo (Carmen Odessa Shelby), William Devane (Mayor Kirby T. Calo), Hume Cronyn (Sherm), Jessica Tandy (Carol), Teri Garr (Ericka Kramer), George Dzundza (Eugene), Joe Grifasi (Osvaldo), Geraldine Page (Sister Mary Clarise), Howard Hesseman (Snapper Kramer), Paul Jabara (T.J. Tupus), Jenn Thompson (Delia Kramer), Peter Billingsley (Billy Kramer), Daniel Stern (Hitchhiker), Celia Weston (Grace), Deborah Rush (Sister Mary Magdalene), Frances Lee McCain (Claire Calo), with Jerry Hardin (Governor), and John Ashton (Otto Kemper) Directed by John Schlesinger (#1431 - Midnight Cowboy)

Review: 

"I see HONKY TONK FREEWAY as a comedy about characters, so it needs extremely fine care and acting. This is what appealed to me, because I’m mainly intrigued with the people in my films rather than with the plot. This is a comedy about people living on the brink, and that’s the way most people actually live, I think. "

To be honest, I had this film on my radar for a couple of months because of its unusual allure. You've got an Academy Award winning director (12 years, but sure), a couple of name actors...and a movie that was a noted financial failure (with Thorn EMI Screen Entertainment in particular taking the hit in a time where they also took part in productions of The Jazz Singer and Can't Stop the Music). Apparently, the first step in the making of the film came with producer Don Boyd, who was travelling around locations when working near Boston that gave him an idea to then take to playwright and aspiring screenwriter Edward Clinton. As it happened, John Schlesinger wanted to make a big comedy movie after finishing work on Yanks (1979). When Schlesinger came into the production (who once stated that some of the charm that attracted him came from the "naivete" and "fresh [writing]" of Clinton), a handful of drafts were crafted with the collaboration of Clinton (which namely involved the characters in town and development). With a movie production he called at the time his "most complicated" (owning to a production that ballooned to over $23 million with filming in Florida [Mount Dora, Sarasota, mostly] to go along with orphans and various animals) before more money was spent on promotion before distribution by Universal Pictures that, to put it mildly, did not find any type of audience. At any rate, Schlesinger did keep directing, with such movies as The Falcon and the Snowman (1985) and Pacific Heights (1990) while Boyd* produced a few films every now and then, most notably with Aria (1987) while Clinton never wrote another film. 

Evidently, certain folks thought the movie was "anti-American". What exactly is un-American about disciplined chaos? People love a good scalawag, particularly when they see themselves in the person getting, shall we say, screwed over. There's a wide variety of ridiculous people all covered with this movie (one with quite the time capsule: a person at one point is shown wearing an ERA yes button*) that happens to be funny (in shorter terms, it's the type of folks who don't care if you use the word "virago"* in a sentence). Is it a great "satire" or one with useful "irony"? Look, let me level with you on something that seems straight enough to ward off a conman: you are either going to have fun with a comedy because you laughed enough times to have it win you over or you did not have fun. I had fun with these oddballs, ones who don't have that much shame to go around. In their eyes, being subtle isn't worth a damn if it doesn't aid in chasing "the dream". Sure, the dream could be as simple as playing hardball to get an off-ramp (what's a little bribery in the name of community), believing that a carnivorous pony is the book ticket, or trying to make it to Florida of all places to settle down*. Some of the episodic elements are hit and miss, mainly because you can only go so far over the place with getting folks to a small Florida town. Devane is probably the best part of the movie because there is something so entertaining about his desperation as both mayor and preacher in a town that goes for whatever he wants in the simple art of the deal: even weird publicity is still publicity (beyond the attempt to make a safari park attraction, anyway*). Dzundza and Grifasi make for fair enough goofball robbers while you get some worthy religious (and inevitable) hypocrisy from the pair of Page and Rush. Others end up mostly fine in characterization but likable enough if you happen to appreciate the presence of say, Bridges (duh) or D'Angelo (sure) or Tandy (take it or leave it). My only quibble is the ending, because it doesn't really know how to end besides, I'm not kidding, a motor collision involving a character nobody cares about (Jabara, playing a wannabee singer in a movie that already loves its title song a bit too much) and a rhino. Sure, it can be construed as following along the lines of other madcap movies such as say, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), but you would hope for something a little better for a movie that already could be thought of as (wrongfully) a poor man's Nashville (1975). As a whole, it comes and goes for 108 minutes of useful enough entertainment that has its ebbs and flows with humor coming in all sides of the oddballs of America that may be up your alley on the curiosity freeway.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

Yes, you heard that right, Acknowledged in August Again. I had enough fun with it back in 2024, so let's do it all over again with some movies that didn't get proper recognition back in its day and see if they deserved better. 

Next up...Fraser. Buscemi. Sandler. AIRHEADS!

*Special credit goes to this article I stumbled onto when googling the movie that I think delivers a bit of insight into the movie on their own terms: Box office failure: "Honky Tonk Freeway" and the risks of embarrassing the United States by Julia Prewitt Brown

*Boyd is a busy guy, as evidenced by stuff such as this: The University of Exeter - Honorary Graduates - Saturday 17 January 2009 morning ceremony

*The thing about not being religious is if you don't believe, then Phyllis Schlafly may just be dead rather than in Hell, or, worse yet, Heaven.

*Okay, I read that word in a tweet once.

*I knew someone who lived in Florida. They're dead to me now, but I hope they enjoyed that state because I'll be damned if I spend time there.

*Incidentally, Devane landed his most noted regular role as a politician-turned-businessman in the soap opera Knots Landing two years after this movie. Nice.

Midnight Cowboy.

Review #1431: Midnight Cowboy.

Cast: 
Jon Voight (Joe Buck), Dustin Hoffman (Enrico Salvatore "Ratso" Rizzo), Sylvia Miles (Cass), John McGiver (Mr. O'Daniel), Brenda Vaccaro (Shirley), Barnard Hughes (Towny), Ruth White (Sally Buck), Jennifer Salt (Annie), and Gilman Rankin (Woodsy Niles) Directed by John Schlesinger.

Review: 
"I like making films that have question marks in them and are not all tied up beautifully with a pink ribbon, even though that's what the audience seems to want, and if you give it to them there's more assurance of commercial success, perhaps. But that's never the way I've seen life or reflected life in what I want to put on the screen."

If there was ever a time for a film to come out with a sense of grimy honesty and capable performances to make a tale of New York City from its lower edges come alive, Midnight Cowboy is definitely the film to do it. The changing of the times in what content could be touched upon or shown in films led at last to an film rating system by the Motion Picture Association of America in 1968, which had found initial ratings in G (General), M (Mature), R (Restricted), and X (no admissions under 16, adults-only). This film is known as the first and only X-rated film to have won an Academy Award for Best Picture, although it should be noted that it was later reclassified under the R-rating with no edits done. With that said, it should be no surprise to see such a provocative film come from British actor-turned-director (both feature and short films) John Schlesinger, who made his mark with urban dramas such as A Kind of Loving (1962), Billy Liar (1963), and Darling (1965). Accompanying him is Jon Voight, who had just two film credits before taking on this film and the effort to play a Texan (with the native New Yorker studying tapes of Texans incessantly) and Dustin Hoffman, a method actor that became part of a new generation of actors with versatile performances of varying vulnerability (he convinced the filmmakers to do the film by going out in a dirty coat and blending in with the surroundings). This was an adaptation of the 1965 novel of the same name from James Leo Herlihy. Responsible for the adaptation to film was Waldo Salt, who found a way to shift focus from the first half to the second half of the novel through flash-present sequences that would show the past of the main character through the eyes of a present scene as memories (shown either in color or in black-in-white). Despite anxiety over what people would think of it before release, Schlesinger ultimately felt that he made a film that while it couldn't be made today, captured a "mixture of desperation and humor which I found all along Forty-Second Street." Accordingly, both Salt and Schlesinger would win Academy Awards for their work on this film.

It is clear to see how one made such an interesting film that lurks in the cesspool with such tremendous acting from its main stars with a lasting power of sorts in detailing the underbelly of a city with misfits that make try to forge their way in the big city. There is a tender story worth viewing with Voight and Hoffman that reaches out to the loner in us, the person who yearns for more than what we see in the mirror or what we see in our soul. Hoffman achieves a grand scuzzy quality to his role, one that seeps into the underside without seeming comprised of any frills or distractions to make us believe anything other that we hear and see of him. He is the man perpetually on the outside of even marginal living, selling a character that you might bat an eye at if he was just "walkin' here". Voight matches in line with a curiosity and dandy nature as a would-be hustler that makes for a stirring performance in his pursuit to find somewhere (or someone) to belong with, and the scenes with Hoffman are the most dynamically compelling in interest, particularly when the film starts rolling down to the end of its 113 minute run-time. They may snipe at each other and they may both have plenty of trouble with a city like no other, but there is still a level of warmth beneath all the cold, which is still something to look back upon. A group of eccentrics make for an interesting supporting cast, each of whom get their own little scene with Voight, for which McGiver does the quirkiest and most interesting one as a gay religious fanatic. The film clicks more often than not as a gritty piece of work that breaks innocence of a dream into several little pieces to dissect. It is a tender and somber film to its fateful end, hustling about with no compromises but hard-life choices to make that leave its viewer with something to think about as a key piece of its time and a highlight for its stars that make it a daring and welcome film for those are mature enough for it.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.