Summer of Nicolas Cage Movie #16: Rumble Fish

1983 movie made by Nic's Uncle Francis

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Rusty James is the younger brother of legendary gang leader [The] Motorcycle Boy, a 20-something who is on sabbatical in California. Upon The Motorcycle Boy's return, Rusty James is trying his best to keep the gang and its various activities going. Meanwhile, he's balancing love and hedonism and knife fights with a rival gang. But time's are changing, his older brother just doesn't seem into it all anymore, and it might be time for Rusty James to grow up. Rusty James!

I wonder if the name "Rusty James" is said more in this than "Man" is said in The Big Lebowski. I'm surprised I liked this one as much as I did. It's got dimensions, one of those you can enjoy on a lot of different levels. There's style to spare--black 'n' white and smoke machines and greasy shadows in dank settings and time-lapsed cloud drift and fish color splashes and shots straight out of German Expressionism. It's enough style to take this out of realistic territory and place its goings-on firmly in this imaginary movie land. I suppose that could distract, but I dug it as a sort of experimental film for teeny-boppers. I really should have seen this movie in high school. The largely rhythmic soundtrack by Stewart Copeland (apparently, a policeman) perfectly compliments the experimental tone and this streetwise otherwordliness. I could play it for you, and you'd guess it was from an 80's movie, but it didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth like so many other soundtracks from that era. In fact, I think I'm going to illegally download it! I enjoyed the leads, Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke, the latter just exuding coolness, although I don't think I'd go as far as saying either of their performances was really good. I don't know; maybe I would. You've got a nice collective of performers playing the periphery characters as well. Dennis Hopper is really good in a small role as the boys' dad. Sofia Coppola is also in this briefly, making it a real family affair. Chris Penn, Laurence Fishburne (playing a character named Midget), our hero Nicolas Cage play Hollywood thugs. Even author S.E. Hinton's got a cameo as a whore. Of course, the real treat for me is seeing Tom Waits and Nicolas Cage on the screen at the same time. Waits plays, naturally, the owner of a pool hall, growling at the teens who don't use his furniture appropriately and getting a nifty monologue about time that sits near the heart of this movie. Speaking of time, there sure are a lot of clocks in this movie. I think there's a shot of a clock in every single scene which makes perfect sense (along with those clouds I mentioned before) since this has so much to do thematically with time and how it passes us by. Rumble Fish is a treat for the eyes and ears, and although Coppola takes a lot of chances with the way he shares the story, he doesn't sacrifice its heart or central message. Cool flick!

Note: I'm currently reading The Outsiders for teaching purposes. Tom Waits is also in Coppola's version of that Hinton book, but Nicolas Cage is not.

Correction: Stewart Copeland was a member of a band called The Police. He was not an actual policeman.

The Source

1999 documentary

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A history of the Beat from when Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs met at Columbia University in the mid-40s, through their rise to pop culture icon status, to their deaths.

This works fine as an introduction to the Beats and their literature, but in covering fifty years in about ninety minutes, it's a huge shallow pool of a documentary rather than anything a fan of the writers can really sink their teeth into. I know that recordings exist of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs reading pieces of On the Road, Howl, and Naked Lunch respectively, but the makers of this documentary wanted that star power and grabbed Depp, Turturro, and Hopper to do the readings. Not sure how I feel about that, but I have to admit it was pretty cool to see a couple of them really get into the reading. I don't want to mention which two for fear that the other one will stumble upon my blog and have his feelings hurt. Good seeing a really mean and bitter Gregory Corso (my personal favorite Beat poet), Herbert Huncke, the Fugs' Ed Sanders, Ken Kesey, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Laurence Ferlinghetti, Timothy Leary, and Amiri Baraka. It was especially cool seeing a lot of footage of Beat muse Neil Cassady. Along with the insight from the authors, this is stuffed with a lot of pop culture snippets, an attempt to show the Beats' influence on movies, television, and music as well as art and literature. There was a Lord Buckley spotting (just on a poster), a clip of Groucho, a Tom Waits song, and a little bit of Bob. If nothing else, this movie did make me say, "Hmm. It's been a while since I've read On the Road; maybe I should pull that out," and then later, "I'm going to dig out my Ginsberg discs to hear him read Howl," and then, "Where is my copy of Naked Lunch anyway?"

The Book of Eli

2010 post-apocalyptic Bible lesson

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Eli's got a special book and a gun and a sword thing. He's been traveling a post-apocalyptic wasteland for a long time, goin' out west where the wind blows tall and Tony Franciosa used to date Tom Waits' mother. In fact, he's been heading west for thirty years, fighting off people who are trying to either steal his book or eat him or a little of both. A man named Carnegie, not played by David Carradine, witnesses Eli beating down some suckas and tries to get him to join his posse. He even sends the daughter of the blind girl he's currently banging to seduce him and convince him to stay. Eli ain't having none of that and stays focused on his mission to get his special book into the proper hands.

Denzel's never been cooler, and Gary Oldman's never been slimier. I like post-apocalypse movies anyway, this one a modernized take on the Mad Maxes if you replace gasoline with ideas. This one delivers some nifty, if not too reminiscent of other computer-aided action sequences from contemporary ultra-stylish action flicks, punch-'em-out scenes and shoot-'em-ups. One at a farmhouse, a house that like everything else in the movie is surrounded by enough shades of gray to make this almost a black and white movie, features a long shot where the camera drifts back and forth between the opponents. It's very stylish, very cool, and almost poetic. This also delivers visually. Things are digitally altered enough to make this more Sin City than the aforementioned Mad Max, but it's a look that gives the movie a uniqueness and creates some memorable set pieces. It's the kind of thing where you know the characters are probably spending a lot of time in front of a screen, but you don't really care because it all looks so cool. The story's so simple that there might as well not even be one, but it almost works like a tricky little fable about knowledge and the powers and evils that it can bring. And Tom Waits has a role, a character he nails like he always does, making you wish that he was in there a little bit more. Cool little flick, likely destined for the cult classic shelf more than anything. I do wonder how Christians could misinterpret this one though. After a single viewing, I'm not sure I'm confident in my own interpretation.

Tom Waits note: I read on a mailing list about Jackie "The Jokeman" Martling telling Howard Stern that he was taking acting classes with Tom Waits. I'm not sure if that means Waits was teaching a class or a fellow student of Martling. If it was just The Jokeman's idea of a joke.