In the midst of a freebase freakout, famed comedian Jo Jo (Richard Pryor) blows up his living room, as you typically do. Somehow, he’s taken to the hospital where, as he lays dying, his astral form steps out of his dying body and he wanders naked through the parking lot; good thing a limo is there to pick him up and, I suppose, clothe him.
Over the next 90 minutes, we’re taken through Jo Jo’s (nonfictional) life, starting as a child growing up in a whorehouse, to a teenager leaving home to work in a comedy club. By this point, it’s easy to see that Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling is semi-autobiographical, as then we’re treated to the drink, the drugs and the women plaguing and, ultimately, destroying Jo Jo’s (and Pryor’s) life.
While this would be a disastrous hour-and-a-half funeral dirge for many, Pryor makes sure there are just as many laughs as there are tears — a real feat, especially given the sensitive subject matter. Towing the dreamlike line between real life and real fantasy, Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling was a remarkably entertaining way for Pryor to tell his tale of comedic woe, especially in the wake of his self-immolation.
The lone film directed by Pryor, from a screenplay co-written with comedian Paul Mooney, it’s a lost cult classic that will probably never receive the timely due it truly deserves; as a matter of fact, I had to pick up Time-Life’s Ultimate Richard Pryor Collection to find a good copy of it. To be fair, I was going to get that anyway. —Louis Fowler
Crime Wave is a crackerjack noir that packs a wallop and assembles an impressive array of ’50s-era character actors. While it might fall a little short of the promise of its kick-ass title, this B picture starring Sterling Hayden and directed by André De Toth is nevertheless a gem of criminal goodness.
Trouble begins when three prison escapees from San Quentin rob a Glendale, California, gas station, but not before one shoots a police officer who has the misfortune of showing up at the wrong time. Shortly after, they reach out for help from Steve Lacey (Gene Nelson), a former fellow inmate. Steve, now married and determined to remain on the straight and narrow, declines their request.
Enter Hayden as the imposing police Lt. Sims. Hot on the trail of the escapees, Sims’ gut tells him that Steve can lead him to the bad guys. There is no room for rehabilitation in Sims’ cynical mind; once a crook, he reasons, always a crook. When Sims has another officer phone the Lacey household and no one picks up, the intrepid lawman concludes that the unanswered ringing “doesn’t look good” for Steve.
Sims doesn’t know how right he is. One of the escapees, Gat Morgan (Nedrick Young), hoofs it to Lacey’s apartment after being seriously injured in the gas station robbery; Gat shows up just in time to die in Steve’s easy chair. Sims, suspecting Steve knows more than he lets on, jails the ex-con for several days before grudgingly letting the man return to wife Ellen (Phyllis Kirk). The timing is unfortunate. The two surviving escapees, Doc Penny (Ted de Corsia) and the brutish Ben Hastings (Charles Bronson, then still going by Charles Buchinsky), track down Steve and force him into their scheme to knock off a bank before fleeing the country. Steve reluctantly goes along to keep Ellen from harm’s way.
Perhaps it’s unsurprising that Nelson is miscast in the central role. Primarily a dancer who later turned to directing TV and movies (including two Elvis Presley flicks), Nelson is a little too pretty and self-satisfied for the part, his smug demeanor seemingly at odds with a character wound tighter than a hangman’s noose. But Nelson is surrounded by a bevy of terrific character actors happily chewing on enough scenery to warrant a bite block. The toothpick-gnawing Hayden delivers his hardboiled dialogue with machine-gun ferocity. De Corsia and Bronson are believably menacing, while Jay Novello steals his scenes as a disgraced doctor and ex-con who gets pulled into the nastiness. Dub Taylor (billed here as “Dubb Taylor”) has a memorable turn as a bumpkin gas station attendant, and an uncredited Timothy Carey appears as a gang member so batshit crazy, you half expect him to begin drooling at any minute.
Shot on location in Glendale in naturalistic black and white, Crime Wave has the lean, no-nonsense feel of the early-television crime dramas that undoubtedly were pulling away movie audiences of the time. Director De Toth and screenwriter Crane Wilbur, both of whom had also collaborated on the the first 3D picture, House of Wax, keep the pace snappy and brusque enough for a compact 73-minute running time. Crime might not pay (or so they say) but Crime Wave definitely pays off as entertaining noir. —Phil Bacharach
Fritz the Cat, a countercultural icon based on the work of Robert Crumb, kind of proves that the counterculture really didn’t have that extremely large of a foot to keep on truckin’ through the ’70s. Ostensibly about a liberally fraudulent cat who loves to have as much unsolicited intercourse as possible, this animated film made — I’m willing to bet — far more Republicans than Nixon ever could.
In the typical fashion of director Ralph Bakshi, an extremely hit-or-miss filmmaker, we find Fritz hanging out in an anthropomorphized variation of New York City, getting high, having group sex and, I think, dropping out of school.
After a series of New York-based adventures, we follow him and a female dog (a bitch, get it?) to the deserts of California where, after a Nazi rabbit brutally beats a horse prostitute, Fritz hooks up with a terrorist organization to blow up a power plant, blowing himself up, with unsettling sexual results.
More a collection of art pieces than an actual linear story, Fritz the Cat seems to be made up of barely connected vignettes, done in the artistic stylings of early ’70s greeting cards. In between all of the horribly unsexual sex, the use of constant racial figures is most troublesome — for example, Black people are jive-talking crows — taking the film into Song of the South territory.
But that was the ’70s in America, I guess.
The first cartoon to be rated X, Fritz the Cat shouldn’t be banned, but it’s probably right where it deserves to be: a misfire and multicolor oddity that, honestly, could be mostly ignored and, thankfully, is. —Louis Fowler
Sopranos castmates Michael Imperioli (Christopher Moltisanti) and Steve Schirripa (Bobby Baccalieri) host the popular podcast Talking Sopranos. The results of their numerous interviews with the HBO show’s cast and crew are collected in Woke Up This Morning: The Definitive Oral History of The Sopranos. It is an informative and revealing look at the creation and production of the innovative and enduring cable TV series.
Many of the revelations are humorous. For example, Lorraine Bracco (psychiatrist Dr. Melfi) tells what the late James Gandolfini (mobster Tony Soprano) would do to distract her during their scenes in the therapy office. Or why Jamie-Lynn Sigler thought she had to sing during her audition for the role of Tony’s daughter, Meadow Soprano.
Others are more somber, such as series creator David Chase describing what it felt like to tell a performer their character was being killed off. Many of those performers also share their reactions when informed their parts were being whacked.
The structure generally follows the six seasons. The authors often alert readers to the cast or crewmember being interviewed, and the subject they discuss. Technical terms are defined for the benefit of the reader. One chapter is devoted entirely to the writers’ room and details how stories and scripts were developed. It ends with Schirripa’s top 10 best Sopranos quotes. A later chapter discusses how pop music was used to enhance episodes. A photo section near the middle features photos on the set or at various production-related events.
Throughout, Imperioli, Schirripa and those interviewed stress how the cable series stretched the boundaries of television. The effort was always to make scenes more cinematic, and the characters more diverse than usual. Readers will discover things they neither knew nor noticed during their initial viewing.
Woke Up This Morning comes highly recommended — and essential reading for all Sopranos fans. You’ll soon find yourself streaming specific episodes to take advantage of the authors’ insights. —Alan Cranis
While many people look to 1990’s Home Alone as the height of John Hughes’ Hollywood power, I look to the next year, filled with unsung flicks like Only the Lonely, Dutch and, at the top of my list, Career Opportunities, directed by TV’s Bryan Gordon; don’t worry, I haven’t heard of him, either.
The ultimate hipster by today’s standards, Jim Dodge (Frank Whaley) is the ultimate loser: Although over 21 years of age, he lives as home, is the town liar and, worse, starts a job at Target as the overnight janitor. As expected in these studies of arrested development, he goofs off at work, mostly by roller-skating in his boxers while wearing a wedding veil.
This all changes when he meets the alarmingly beautiful Josie (the alarmingly beautiful Jennifer Connelly), an emotionally impoverished rich girl who, apparently, fell asleep in the dressing rooms. Against all rhyme and reason, they fall in love. (Hey, it was the ’90s.)
The movie kind of falls apart in the third act when we’re introduced to two redneck crooks who are there to rob (?) the Target. As annoying as that might be for those who missed the pristine Hughes of the ’80s, it’s easy to forget the coasting Hughes of the ’90s, when comical crooks were a must.
Regardless, I’ve always loved this movie; even though it proved to be a Home Alone for the Gen X crowd that, obviously, had no time for it. Still, much of it worked, mostly due to the likable presence of Connelly and the sheer hope that, if I worked at Target, too, maybe I’d meet a girl like her.
Sadly, I worked at the local library instead, missing my chance. —Louis Fowler
In the midst of a freebase freakout, famed comedian Jo Jo (Richard Pryor) blows up his living room, as you typically do. Somehow, he’s taken to the hospital where, as he lays dying, his astral form steps out of his dying body and he wanders naked through the parking lot; good thing a limo is there to pick him up and, I suppose, clothe him.
