Payday


murdoch.jpgNew DVD alert: Payday, the 1972 movie that many people consider Rip Torn’s greatest role, is now available in rental stores and through Netflix. Directed by Daryl Duke, Payday is a “lost movie” that was well received by critics at the time but overshadowed in theaters by crowd-pleasers like The Godfather, Deliverance, Cabaret, and Last Tango in Paris, not to mention Superfly.

Payday gets inside the underbelly of American celebrity as it destroys both the adorers and the adored. Torn plays Maury Dann, a boozing, pill-popping, womanizing country-western music star who has lost his moral compass, if he ever had one. The story tracks his last days and nights ripping across the Deep South in the back seat of a Cadillac, accompanied by his posse of hangers-on and assorted losers. (Michael Gwynne is outstanding as the star’s manager/enabler.)

The movie is bleak—possibly another reason it didn’t reach a wider audience—but fascinating as a period piece (early 1970s casual misogyny and drug use; directed with real-life pacing) and as a brilliant work of acting. You simply can’t take your eyes off Torn as he drives himself, and his entourage, straight into the jaws of hell.

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March 16th, 2008
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Viewing 3 Comments

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    The misogyny at work both shocked and enlightened me. And it wasn't particular to the Deep South. Going by movies and music, 1972 strikes me as a seminal year in many ways.

    One of them, I now think, is that as feminism began to gain traction, a backlash occurred that I've read little about, although I'm old enough to recall witnessing some of it. Listen to the lyrics of old Rolling Stones, just as an example.

    By comparison, outright pimps (in movies anyway) seem almost gallant.

    (i>Payday is grim but fascinating, and I'm encouraging women to check it out. It's almost unbelievable today that men ever behaved so hideously, only to be met with (apparently) a collective, social reaction that this made them sexy.

    Incredible--until you watch Rip Torn.


    Fr
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    Rip Torn is just brilliant in this movie. I like the way he sings in it too. Behind the sentimental lyrics there's just the littlest hint of "Fuck all y'all, goddammit."
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    Cool, thanks for the heads up. Just added it to the NetFux queue. Unfortunately it's going to have to wait until I get the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Nothing against Rip Torn but I have a hot wager with a friend about how many times Michaelangelo says dude. I think it's over 20. He does not.
 

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