Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Uma and the Cowgirls: A decade and a half later
Gus Van Sant made Even Cowgirls Get the Blues between My Private Idaho and To Die For. You don't have to be Andrew Sarris to be able to see the end of one strain of filmmaking, as absolutely uncompromising as is possible indy and studio funded indy into a kind of uncompromising quality but compromising the edgy indulgence that is Gus Van Sant at is most personal and often his best.
The story of Sissy Hankshaw is a hippie feminist Candide. And it is without a doubt, is one of the strangest films with traditionally studio level of funding ever made. The tone is completely seventies midnight movie, yet it was made in 1993. Tom Robbins is touted as a counterculture author, but his humor and wit feel like a late fifties, more dark beat cynic from Virginia than mushroom infected love child In many ways, He drinks from the same bottle as Terry Southern, Jules Feiffer, Williams Burroughs and Buck Henry. The last two both appear in the film. Burroughs muttering on the street in a shot introducing Cissy's first arrival to New York. And Henry is in a couple scenes as her physician in a sequence of surgery on the heroine's enormous thumbs which was so Clockwork Orange it felt more like rip off than homage.
Part of the special fun of watching this film fifteen years after it is released is to see this cast in roles that were unique. Author Robbins reads as the narrator. Merry Pranksters Kens Kesey and Babs have a muggy cameo. Angie Dickinson and John Hurt have over the top bits. Portland TV and stereo store owner and late night PDX pitchman Tom Peterson even shows up. And Pat Morita seems to be having a ball as the guru with the offensive Asian epitaph.
But this film is all about the cowgirls ultimately. The radical sisters of Sisters who Mickey Finn Whooping Cranes in a Symbionese Liberation Army kind of move for The two dominant ones are Rain Phoenix as the charismatic leader and John Waynabee, Jellybean Bonanza. Heather Graham and singer Victoria Williams are great too in smaller roles. The real surprise to a viewer in the 2000s is Lorraine Bracco quite a ways off from Dr Melfi when she played Lorraine Bracco as Delores Del Ruby, the Peyote prophetess and bull whip expert.
Cowgirls is still a film for anyone who loves (or wants to love) Uma Thurman. She has a great presence despite the fact that she talks. Alot. Both Robbins prose and the loopy seventies style Van Sant maintains are often qute worrdy. And it is made more severe by Uma's Virginian affectation that is never entirely convincing or satisfying. But you forget about that when you see her making out with a normal looking woman (Phoenix) or simply parading around in a great wardrobe, especially the bird outfit.
My feeling is that Cowgirls will probably be most known and loved for its KD Laing soundtrack. Most of the world will likely not favor any kind of admiration for this odd bit of time capsule in a time capsule. There will be a shelf for it, at least in my house, for it alongside other films by great filmmakers who are concerned with hippy pop culture. Todd Haynes' I'm Not There and Scorsese's Rock and Roll films would be standing upside next to them.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:41 PM
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