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Author
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Topic: COCKSUCKER BLUES (1972)
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 01-16-2010 02:24 PM
It's the big, controversial Rolling Stones documentary by director Robert Frank. Only one 16mm print ever struck of the negs, which includes a lot of super 8mm footage, which when blown up to the screen in the museum theatre, looked uncomfortably soft. What's worse, he kept intercutting the 8mm with 16mm, making the soft focus that much more obvious. I gave up trying to focus.
The print was brittle -- I left a note that it should be treated with Film Guard to prevent it from being damaged further (quite a bit of splices throughout)
The big "controversy" surrounding this thing is that the filmmaker was given full access to the Stones on one of '69-'70s cross country tours and was able to film everywhere -- on stage, back stage, green rooms, the bus, the hotel rooms. But once the Stones saw the finished result which showed them as the Hedonistic, self absorbed, sexual abusing, women degrading, heroin shooting pigs that they are, they took the filmmaker to court to try to get exhibition of the film blocked from ever see the light of a lamphouse. The court almost gave in but gave Frank a slight out in that the ruling said he could show the film only once a year and he had to be present for a Q&A; the court seemed to think that if you dress a sow up in an evening gown, people won't notice that it's eating it's own shit. Evidently claiming that something is "educational" covers a lot of ills for these people with degrees after their names.
I suppose from a purely analytical perspective, this documentary does give an unsanitized look at "the boys" so it can be claimed that it is important to show future audiences the "real," uncensored life-style of these musicians. But I say, who really doesn't know that debauchery was part and parcel of that era for bands on the road? Talk about unsanitized, you walk out of this thing feeling you need to take a shower.
Let's see....there are scenes of rooms full of people drunk and/or high, some staring at blank walls in zonked out stupors, lewd carryings on with full fontal, naked women stroking their breasts and vaginas, penises dangling, hotel rooms strewn with liquor bottles, coke lines all over, a scene with a guy holding a naked girl at head height while he buries his head in her crotch as she screams for him to stop (today that piece of film would be evidence for an arrest for sexual assault), and the piece-de-resistance, long, close-ups of people shooting up heroin, you know, the shots where you get a good close-up look at the needle going into the arm. Simply delightful.
At one point you hear someone talking about how hot it is and everyone in the room (there are always more people in a room that the room can comfortably hold) is half naked and obviously sweating and uncomfortable and mostly looking very unwashed walking around aimlessly in this squalor, and the thought ran through my head, "Damn, that place must really STINK"....just like the movie.
The one thing it did reveal is that this band doesn't sound all that good in live performance. The sound was thin and their hit songs (only the scarce few that you actually got to see performed) don't sound very much like the quality that everyone has come to know from the studio releases.
And lastly, in the few stage sequence, Mick Jaggar did show off his signature jumping jack (flash) moves, but you know what, from the distance of more than few decades, what seemed outrageous and inventive back then, now just seems, well, pretty silly.
I agree with the court, but only in part; once a year is probably too many times for this thing to see the surface of a movie screen.
1/5
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 01-27-2010 04:03 PM
No, Mr. Frank wasn't present, so I don't know if this ban has been altered over time, or if perhaps it had an expiration date. Also, the print was being sent to another museum right after our screening, presumably to be shown there, so the ban if not expired, has been changed.
I might add that in the broad sense any documentary like this certainly is valuable in the historic context. This is the value, indeed the essence, documentaries -- to make a record of times and events and cultures regardless of how distasteful or unpleasant the end result. I would not for a second critize it from that perspective; if a documentary filmmaker is pointing his camera at something horrific, then so be it. But for a general audience, this film was certainly far off the "entertainment" mark, even for a sophistocated NY audience.
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