Stars: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd
Rated: R
Released: 1971
What I “know:” Absolutely nothing. I’m assuming it has to do with like a closing movie theater? Or that it’s a metaphor for life? Don’t know. But finally saw “Crazy Heart” last week so I’m all in on Jeff Bridges right now, so this is perfect timing.
What I know after reading the Netflix sleeve: “There’s not much to do in the windswept Texas hamlet of Anarene, where the town’s only cinema is about to close forever. So high schoolers Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane (Jeff Bridges) lust after incorrigible flirt Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd) while trying to chart their uncertain futures. When Duane heads for Korea after joining the service and Jacy gets shipped off to college, Sonny is left behind in a veritable ghost town.”
Well, sounds like I was right on both counts? It’s literal and figurative. I do hope this blurb is general studio-types overwriting things because I don’t want to watch high schoolers “try to chart their uncertain futures” as that seems very unlikely there would be extended conversations about that between 17-year-olds.
P.S. Why were movies so looooong in the old days? Like every movie I’m watching is 2+.
Trailer!
00:10: Well, the black and white sure does add to the bleakness. Yikes.
1:40: Why is that idiot sweeping in a windstorm? At least they picked people who could relatively pass for high schoolers, at least these two. Bridges was 22, Bottoms was 20. They look younger. Well done on that. If you’d asked me, I’d have never have guessed that guy was Bridges, though.
5:23: Oh, that wasn’t Bridges. Good. That’s Bridges, hopping off the truck. Recognized him immediately. Never mind. He also looks markedly older than the sweeping guy.
7:20: Why would anyone play high school football in that god-forsaken town? These poor kids are getting crapped on by every adult over 30 in town. Short answer, I know, is “It’s Texas.” But I guess I didn’t realize it was like that even in towns like that, even back then.
9:19: Mopey McSadface gets to make out with Timothy Bottoms? Weird. Also, gross that he keeps his eyes open to look at Liz Taylor while he’s making out with her, but I get it.
9:55: Look, Mopey, you don’t get to be homely and bitchy. That’s why they talk about how ugly girls have great personalities. You don’t pull your tongue out of Timothy Bottom’s mouth and then start bitching he didn’t buy you anything for your anniversary. I get it, he should have remembered, but maybe have that conversation more than 2 seconds after he’s been exploring your teeth for cavities.
10:06: Man, Cybill Shepherd was gorgeous. I’d only seen her from “Moonlighting” on, but hoo boy. I mean, seriously. Shepherd’s gorgeous, Bridges is hot with those dimples, and Bottoms is beautiful. Whatever was happening in that one-horse town, it sure led to good breeding.
11:46: Well, hello again, Mopey. She’s bitching about how cold it is as she’s taking off all her clothes for Timothy Bottoms.
13:23: OK, everyone loses in that scene. I don’t blame Bottoms for cutting bait, but you can’t do it right after she fends off your advances down below. And you can’t end it by telling her she wasn’t very hot when you just wasted a year of her life. Boo to both of you!
14:55: I like the “sassy waitress who tells it like it is.” That being said, $4K in medical bills in that time would have been unbearable. It’s not great now, but 65, 70 years ago? Assuming this is set late 40s, early 50s if Duane ships off to Korea. Inflation calculator tells me it’s about $40K equivalent in 2016.
19:05: The Rig-Wam Drive Inn is a great freaking name.
19:50: Who’s the weird guy in the helmet and sunglasses who takes bets on HS football games and who has apparently pissed off Jacy’s mom?
22:06: “Everything gets old if you do it often enough.” Jacy’s mom is speaking to me.
23:56: Hey, it’s Cloris Leachman!
27:16: Bottoms looks like a young Paul Rudd. That’s what’s been eating at me. Paul Rudd with a little Richard Gere.
28:51: Holy crud, is that Randy Quaid? IMDB tells me it is. He has always had the same weird, hunched, weird, loping, weird walk.
30:35: Oooh a catfight! But a good question … why is he kissing his boss’s wife? Jacy’s mom is trash.
30:42: Cloris Leachman was 46 when this was released. There is something about her, in everything I’ve ever seen her in, where even in her younger days she still looked old. I don’t understand it. I could have guessed she was 60 in this movie even though time tells me that’s not possible. She’s a puzzle.
31:16: Why is everyone so mean to the prematurely balding pastor’s son? Poor kid.
31:38: Jacy just told Quaid to wait for her outside while she’s dancing with Duane. Like mother, like daughter, I suppose.
33:32: Jacy, you saucy minx. She’s one to watch out for. As her boyfriend basically tackles poor Quaid and challenges him to a fight, she sits in the car and just calmly watches.
36:49: SONNY, YOU DOG. You can’t go around making out with your coach’s wife over a trash can! Have some decency. At least do it around the corner.
37:52: Again with the sexism. Nude dude gets shown from the waist up, nude girl gets full frontal. #nudeequality
40:42: So Quaid and a bunch of strangers got to see her naked before poor ol’ Duane? Unfair! (I’d try to do a whole blog in Trump fashion but I don’t think I could pull it off)
42:15: If Sonny is supposed to be sympathetic in some way, they are failing miserably. 1. Forgets his anniversary, tries to go up girlfriend’s skirt, breaks up with her; 2. Makes out with coach’s wife; 3. Lets his friends strip his (autistic?) brother down and send him off to a hooker. I do, however, feel bad for calling him a sweeping idiot earlier.
44:36: Good on the old pool owner. At least someone’s looking out for Billy.
48:27: Right around Sonny’s second thrust, Mrs. Popper started really regretting her decision to bed the high school jock.
57:22: I’m glad Sam’s around. These boys need guidance and leadership and forgiveness and how to learn how to be men. Good for Sam.
1:01:32: Speaking of Trump, that dude who hosted the swim party just grabbed Jacy by the hoo-ha.
1:05:41: Well, that’s a kick in the gut. I had just come to appreciate Sam, and now he’s gone. Who’s going to lead these boys now? Their shitty fathers? No. Awww he left $1000 for the pastor’s son everyone was shitty to. Good for Sam.
1:10:46: OMG, Jacy just said “that tickles” when poor Duane was trying to perform for the first time. The burn that left must have haunted him for life.
1:17:06: Man, Jacy picked the wrong dude. Went off and got married. No wonder she leaves town for college.
1:19:40: Dude. A.) She’s 18 at BEST. B.) She’s apparently your friend’s daughter. C.) You’re already banging her mom. Stop getting all rapey. D.) Apparently guys back then just laid on girls and that was sex. WTF?
1:28:53: Poor Cloris. Married to a terrible man and now dumped by her boy toy for the town tramp.
1:30:26: “He didn’t do nothing to her besides get her to take her underpants off.” Good lord. That’s something, you weirdo. Now I know why everyone picked on the pastor’s son. Weirdo.
1:38:48: Oh, Jacy, you can’t just marry your ex’s best friend because you’re lonely. Silly girl.
1:47:20: FINALLY we get to the title of the movie.
1:53:55: OH GOD NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. That broom lying there and the cars all stopped and people gathering. No. Sweet little Billy did not just get hit by a truck. Holy crap.
1:56:38: So he just leaves his brother’s body lying there, on the sidewalk, with his letterman’s jacket over his face, and then hightails it out of town? WTF, Sonny? I mean, I get that there’s nothing there for him any more, but … well, at least call the cops or something.
1:57:46: He came back just to talk to his old married screwbuddy? What in the everloving tarnation is going on here?
1:59:58: Wait, how does she already know Billy’s dead?
OK, I have absolutely no feelings about that movie, good or bad. Duane, oddly, was the only one who actually showed any growth, and even that was minimal. This reminds me of “Boyhood,” which I despised because there was no point, no plot, no anything. Just ugh. So I guess it’s good I didn’t despise this movie? Parts were enjoyable, parts were hard to watch, parts were OMG. Makes sense Sonny would go back to the one place he felt safe when he’d lost everything else. Meh.
Next up: “This is Spinal Tap!”
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