July 3, 2009
The random decision to pick up Streets of Fire was based in Walter Hill's other work and its vague relation to The Warriors. I ended up liking it a lot more, so when I wandered across Eddie and the Cruisers and saw that it starred Michael Paré, who starred in...( read more) Streets, I was suddenly more interested in it. I was reluctant to watch it when it came up in my personal "queue" (which is nothing like a NetFlix queue, because I own all the discs and can change my mind and grab something I just picked up instead if I really want to, but I try not to) because the concept was not grabbing me, and sounded like it might end up something iffy or boring that I was riding for actor charisma more than anything else. Still, I decided I'd give it a go and watched it when the urge struck.
It's the 1980s, and almost 20 years earlier in 1964, the biggest hit in the country was Eddie and the Cruisers' "On the Dark Side," but now it's a hit again thanks to a revival. A television magazine latches onto this anniversary and decides to look into the band again. Reporter Maggie Foley (Ellen Barkin) suspects even that Eddie Wilson (Paré) did not die in the car accident that he was reported killed in in 1964, but wonders, more importantly, what happened to Season in Hell, their sophomore album that was never released. The tapes for it disappeared and were never released when the label shelved it for being too "out there"--now believed to be "ahead of its time." She begins to hit up the Cruisers, all wandering off to different places--Frank "Wordman" Ridgeway (Tom Berenger), the keyboardist who wrote their lyrics and has become a high school English teacher, Sal Amato (Matthew Laurance) who works in a club as head of a "tribute" band, manager Doc Robbins (Joe Pantoliano) who now DJs in Asbury Park where they all came from, and the more estranged female vocalist Joann Carlino (Helen Schneider), drummer Kenny Hopkins (David Wilson) and the more definitively deceased saxophonist Wendell Newton (Michael "Tunes" Antunes). The former Cruisers all recollect the events that led to their success--Ridgeway recalls being found in a bar, discussing lyrics with Eddie, a gig at Ridgeway's own former college--while they are all re-ignited with an interest in whether Eddie (whose body was never found) is perhaps actually still alive, and what happened to the tapes of that last album.
I'll be straight about this: this is not the first review I've done for this film. The other, however, was purely audio, completely off-the-cuff and not easily returned from its current location (and, in fact, it may actually be gone from the world already). The ideas I put forth in it, rapid and condensed though they were, are the same ideas I have now, though. This movie really got to me, in a good way. I expected to just sort of like the music, maybe appreciate the cast (Pantoliano, Paré, Berenger) and have a decent time watching it. Far from it. I really enjoyed it, actually, more than I was even expecting. I won't say that it was flawless, because it wasn't. The intro of the magazine staff discussing the Cruisers and watching archival footage sets up the plot perfectly, but it's pretty clumsy and awkward, so even though it puts forth exactly the right information in exactly the right amounts, it's not wonderful at the delivery. But it sets the plot up so well that it's easily forgotten. The transition between contemporary and flashback footage is spot-on, both in terms of being fluid and in terms of being appropriately paced. It never goes on long enough to confuse us, make us forget what movie we're watching, but always goes on long enough to fully establish a flashback's time and events.
What's most important is that the movie perfectly creates Eddie Wilson. Paré is--inevitably, considering the time the movie is set and the exit of his character--not the star, Berenger is. It's the perfect window into a rising band, showing us their way from bar band to new hot thing, with someone who has never heard of them being brought into their inner circle, and brought in far enough that he contributes in a meaningful way. Eddie is a distant thing, an enigmatic, charismatic and emotional star. He's kind of an asshole sometimes, in the way that most big talents seem to be in music, and yet sympathetic and clearly driven and tortured by a need to do what he does. We're brought to wonder what happened to him, brought to both possible conclusions: that he took that car off that bridge and went with it, that he made the whole thing up. He's close enough to be interesting and magnetic, but distant enough to be a mystery. He almost becomes a real rockstar--even though Paré is only lip-synching, no less--almost inspiring curiosity about what actually happened to Eddie Wilson, until you remember there isn't one. It feels like a real biopic, almost more authentic because he doesn't exist and there are no facts to point out as being misrepresented.
Berenger has an interesting role, actually. I'm used to him playing Sgt. Barnes or "The Substitute" (though I've never seen it) and the like, but here he's a poetry-reading English major, a kid in a bar who interjects his knowledge of cćsura into an intra-band argument by reading from Rimbaud. I was happily surprised to find Berenger does not have to be a gruff, dominant alpha male, and is actually pretty good at being a slightly arrogant bookworm, proud--perhaps too much so--of his upbringing and education. His character isn't the only perfectly defined one though, all are given strong motivations, and are the kinds of people that someone like Eddie draws around him as help to enact his need to create art--a manager who knows how to talk and who is driven and dreams, a bassist who writes their early lyrics and who wants nothing more than to be a star, a saxophonist who just means the music, and a drummer who knows his instrument but doesn't need to shine ahead of everyone. This is, however, a very rough caricature of each of them--even the egocentric Sal is shown in a contemporary moment to be conflicted. He confesses his anger at Eddie for disappearing and denying him fame, but he's clearly still suffering the loss of his bandmate and friend.
As far as the music, some people can't tolerate its anachronistic flavour--the Asbury Park reference definitely solidifies a feeling of E Street Band origins to the music, and director/screenwriter Martin Davidson has admitted that Springsteen was an influence on the style of the band's music (which was written and performed by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band). Of course, it's acceptable because, for one thing, it reflects the sensibilities of the era in which the music was actually recorded (it was the production style, to be sure), and in another because it does reflect more a bar band than a cleanly produced pop band from the 1960s. Much is made of it being ahead of its time, anyway. It's also, of course, a fantasy world, and this is the most important element. The songs are good and strong without feeling like they're reaching too far. They're not supposed to be the best songs ever written, but lost hits, which they easily could be--and in fact were, a few months after the film was released, in a strange sort of parallel "art imitates reality" story.
This may be one of the best rock and roll movies I've seen about a band, barring those that were actually OF a band (which hold a different allure) because it feels most true and real for its lack of necessary factual grounding.
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