[Click here for a guide to Booze Revooze and the rating system used]
Fresh off the screens here in Yeaman where they love us more because they give us the movies before the rest of the world. Proof of that is On The Road was here in June 2012, and here’s the shots to prove i saw it before you did.
The Bar None in “On the Road”
From the juiced-box and the soundtrack: Jake La Botz – Hard To Love What You Kill
[Press ‘Play’ for something real and truer than anything you’ll find in the film.]
Oh wait, did i mention this guy and i hung out together? Yeah, a little face to face interview in Yeaman. Go ahead and start getting jealous now.
Ramblings: On the Road is a Dead End
Final Proof: 2½ Shots
You know how you get drunk with writers? They sit there across from you wearing the adhesive name tag “writer” like a medal of honor that makes them better than the rest of the world or at least better than you and they talk down to you making all these obscure references to make you feel stupid and they tell all these tales about how intense and crazy their lives are but their lives are less lived than yours as they slosh in the booth across from you and you’d think at least the stories would be interesting but these are writers not characters and especially not story tellers so all you get is this drivel like spittle dribble off a spoiled baby’s bib except you get a lot of it because everyone knows writers drink too much too often. Basically you end up drinking with a deaf guy getting blind drunk who rattles on like an engine that’s been shut down but still has too much fuel in the lines so it goes on and on and on long after you tried to shut it down. On the Road is a lot like that.
So Write and So Wrong
i knew i wasn’t going to like On the Road even before i saw it and it didn’t disappoint. There’s a Buick full of reasons i didn’t and i’ll try not to bore you with all of them but the main reason i didn’t like it was that it made me hate writers and more especially writing. Not unlike the book and this is a movie review not a book review but i’m gonna throw this up right here that the book On the Road, while certainly an iconic novel through no fault of its own, is just not that good of a book. If that makes me a heretic, crucify me, i’ve been living on borrowed crosses long enough as it is.
The only good thing that can be said about Jose Rivera’s script was that it didn’t try to make a story out of a novel that had no story. The bad things we can say is that the writer portrays “writers” as these pseudo-intellectual, self important, self absorbed, self centered, egotistical assholes who act as though they play by a different set of rules than the rest of the people and that they’re justified in treating other people like shit because they’re artists and that means the rest of the world has to let these evolved and tortured souls wipe their feet on those that love them before trampling them to death. This kind of hyper realism got on my nerves. Maybe the hardest part is that i consider myself a writer and i saw myself in these characters and i hated these characters so On the Road gave me an overdose of self loathing, which is OK if that’s what the flick is going for but the directing reeks of pretentiousness like the movie is a pedestal where we place these assholes so we can look up at them but that’s not a pedestal it’s pederasty. OtR comes off as a private message from writers and film directors to their loved ones saying, “Yes, world, I treat you like shit but it’s because you are shit and I deserve to treat you that way.”
So On the Road buys into the myth-conception that is the book, but even going down that one-way street, the film runs into a cul de sac because of the actors. No offense against Garrett Hedlund but fucking Dean Moriarty / Neal Cassady was a rusty gun that couldn’t stop firing on all cylinders and soared with such intensity that he was a shooting star burning for decades across endless night skies long enough that all those who saw him could not stop making wishes. Neal Cassady had enough life for two lives and he fucking proved it by becoming a Beat icon to On the Roadies and drove on to become a hippy icon as described in Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. How many generations have you influenced today? Well, Neal Cassady did two. And you’re going to find a Hollywood actor to portray that? There are some things that can’t be acted, man.
“Better luck next time, man.”
At least Hedlund tries, for christsake. Kristen Stewart figured because she was going topless she didn’t even have to act her age and whoever the fuck was trying to be Carlo Marx / Allen Ginsberg (wait, the actor was Tom Sturridge ) decided the melodramatic lines he had to recite were neither mellow nor dramatic enough so he turned the knob up to 11 where it was so painful to hear what he was saying and how he was saying it that even the dogs outside the movie theater were howling.
Twi-Harder Next Time
You wanna insist on seeing this movie? See it for Viggo. Viggo Mortensen as Old Bull Lee / William S. Burroughs is a sight to see and you can almost see the other, younger actors weeping with relief during their scenes with him because he gives the movie credibility and it’s like when you’re 10 and drunk and set the house on fire but your parents come home and take control of the situation and make everything all right again. Parents? Parents indeed because the amazingly underrated Amy Adams plays a mother of a mother Jane (Joan Vollmer, Burroughs’ common law wife he would later shoot and kill in Mexico during a drunken reenactment of William Tell). Her performance defies defiance and rocks so much madness i couldn’t stop wondering how the hell it was that she didn’t get a meatier role because she acted the shit out of everyone else in the place.
Walter Salles (the director) couldn’t even make smoking look cool. He did a good enough job recreating the scenes and images of the Beat Generation, Denver in ’65 and hobos scribbling with stub pencils but then when people showed up and started acting, the movie pretty much went into a tailspin and skidded off the road and into a ditch.
Buzz Kills (Watch Out for Spoilers)
Sex: 4 Shots
4 Shots! i know, right!? And the crazy thing it’s not just because Kristen Stewart goes topless for the first time not once but three times.
The nice thing about this movie going deep up into writers’ guts through their asses is that we get a butt load of sex because writers run on booze and feed on sex.
- Kristen Stewart topless on the bed
- Lots of guys hugging Kristen Dunst in a negligee
- Dean sleeps with Rita from the other room [wtf?]
- 3 people in bed (2 guys 1 girl) [this would be Dean, Rita and Carlo]
- Bisexual side [story with Dean]
- Terry [Alice Braga] topless sex in a tent with a little boy [watching]
- Lots of grunting in the movie
- Dean describes a 4-hour sex orgy
- Dancing like sex as KS [Kristen Stewart] comes while dancing
- KS in a bra, Sal & Dean & KS 3-way
- KS 3-way with her bra on i bet she’s like that in real life
- KS groaning sex scenes are awkward & uncomfortable
- KS bj while [the guy is] driving while 2 other guys in back seat
- Viggo bottomless [as in male nudity, from behind]
- KS topless giving hand jobs to guys on each side while [one of them is] driving
- KS and Sal sex in hotel room (KS topless sex scene)
- Steve Buscemi and Dean, Dean on top
- Mexican whorehouse
So yeah, Kristen Stewart (22) lost her screen cherry here a couple times. If only her acting were as fine as the rest of her.
Click on the Shot for a Wallpaper
i stuffed a lot of shots of her in my drawers all the way at the bottom.
Kristen Dunst was also in On the Road but, like a skinny chick on a mattress, she didn’t make much of an impression. She’ll catch a lot more eyes here and now with this…
Click on the Shot for a Wallpaper
Not only do i have shots of her bulging from my drawers, you have gotta check out the collage of her drunk i also keep there. Just keep scrolling down until you hit pay dirty.
Wrapping this up is the One Who Ruled The All, Amy Adams (37).
Click on the Shot for a Wallpaper
For those of you more into hard pavement than soft shoulders, there was the newcomer, Garrett Hedlund (27)…
Click on the Shot for a Wallpaper
And the old timer…Viggo Mortensen (53).
Click on the Shot for a Wallpaper
In the interest of equality, i got all kinds of guys shots stuck to the bottom of my drawers as well. Down there. ↓
While her appearance wasn’t all that brief, i’m sticking Alice Braga (29) here. She’s an actress we’ll probably be hearing a lot more from, and righteously so.
Click on the Shot for a Wallpaper
Alice Braga in the Bar None
Drink: 4 Shots
i don’t think i’ve ever seen a movie with so much sex and booze that i liked so little. Sure, there was a lot of drug experimentation here but one of the things i like about the Beats you don’t get so much with the Hippies is that they really drank and drank hard and drank long as this movie attests to.
I have enough for a pint of whiskey until dinner.
–Sal in the back of a pickup truck with other hobo hitchers
- Beer (Bud) in a bottle when the men meet
- The party goes from night to dawn
You can’t smoke but you can drink in this car.
–The driver of the truck hauling dynamite to Sal. They both hit from a labeless glass flask.
- Drinking beer at Rita’s in bed
- Hobos in Denver drinking by homeless trash can fire
I wish I could drink whiskey like a man.
–Kirsten Dunst drinking beer at dinner
- Wine at Sal’s sister’s Christmas dinner
- Gay Carlo drinking at a jazz club
- Viggo drinking martinis. He shares it with Amy on his lap
- Sal drinking beer and writing on the porch
- Sign “No beer sold to Indians” [in a bar]
- Sal and Dean drinking beer in a bar after KD [Kirsten Dunst] kicked him out
- Steve Buscemi bringing a bottle of whiskey bottle and glasses to Sal’s and Dean’s hotel room
- Pitchers of beer while rewriting with Carlo
- Dancing and drinking at the Mexican whorehouse
- Drunk on bad juju in Mexico City back streets
- Sal drinking [shots] while he writes On the Road
Rock & Roll: 2 shots
There was no rock in the film but sometimes that’s OK. Like when the soundtrack is full of awesome Beat jazz riffs that roll off your tongue like a crazy hot chick’s candy dripping in your ear. Or when you have someone like Jake La Botz, who i didn’t know until i saw this movie.
At the end, there’s this killer folk blues song about how “It’s Hard To Love What You Kill” and i scribbled that into my book thinking a line that incredible had to be famous like Friday night but nope. i dug and dug and dug on the internet and finally unearthed the song which i stuck at the top. i went through his YouTube songs and happened to enter his name on Spotify and found out he has like 4 albums and i’ve been listening to them in a constant loop for two days because, what can i say, the man’s music reminds me of what it was like to be young the first time.
Not only did i find out La Botz has a cameo as a hitcher in the film, i also learned he was fucking coming to Yeaman. So i Facebooked him and he friended me and Bob’s your drunk, we hooked up before his show for a sit down.
Jake La Botz (center) is Doomed to Meet Me Thursday
Boring Technical Crap
Written by: Jack Kerouac (book), Jose Rivera (screenplay)
Directed by: Walter Salles
Starring
You wanna see something funny? The “Full Cast List” over at IMDb says that the cast is listed by alphabetical order, but Kristen Stewart’s name is at the top…
Kristen Stewart – Marylou
Amy Adams – Jane
Kirsten Dunst – Camille
Alice Braga – Terry
Viggo Mortensen – Old Bull Lee
Garrett Hedlund – Dean Moriarty
Sam Riley – Sal Paradise
Jake La Botz – Okie Hitchhiker
Steve Buscemi
Tom Sturridge – Carlo Marx
Bottom Line
My favorite parts of the movie were the scenes with no actors or dialog. ‘Nuff said.
Al K Hall’s Drawers
It’s all over but the photos. Click on “Continue Reading…” to see them. i’ll stick the guys in the drawers first just to be a gentleman…
You know how you get drunk in a bar that’s just installed a classic jukebox? It looks cool and flashy as hell, vintage just like you hoped and you sit close to it with your drink and you’re so happy you have problems sipping without dripping because your grin is so big. You lean back, put your feet up and prepare yourself for a rocking night—until the music starts and it’s the same old song and dance and not even all that classic, just the same boring music you hear on the radio all the time. You end up having a good time anyway because even if the songs are tired covers, the juke looks good as hell. Still, when the evening’s over, you’re not so bummed that you want to stay past closing time. That’s what The Runaways was like.
Here’s a good idea: a squirt gun filled with vodka poolside at some cheap motel like Joan/Kristen had.
The Bar None -- High & Dry 