[UA] Alternate UAs

[STUART ANDERSON]

"Explosions and Tits"
1987 Alex Cox
*
Crispin Glover
Darren McGavin
Dick Rude
Tracey Walter
and Iggy Pop as "The Falcon"

This unsuccessful whack at hip cult can't make up its mind if it's a 
meth-induced voyage-of-the-damned down the Mississippi on a raft made of 
dynamite, or a farcical camp trash-opera showcasing the questionable talents 
of a dizzyingly styleless hybrid of Roy Orbison and the Plasmatics who seem 
to be called Bad Chad and the Underkaffers.

Glover stars as Hebner, a young man running away from a turgid suburban 
existance by running drugs and cheap cons from Cairo, Illinois, down the 
Mississippi River to New Orleans, a place he knows only from a snow globe (a 
N'Awlins snow globe?!) which his father evidently brought him from a 
business trip. McGavin embodies seedy cunning and drunken contempt as 
Captain, a recently-paroled car thief who sees talent in the boy and aims to 
exploit it.

The boys encounter the usual mismatched collection of freaks, burn-outs, and 
wierdos who are the actual text of any Cox film. Differing in approach from 
his better films, Cox seems to have little concern that his characters here 
exist in the same fictional universe. The plot leaps and charges through 
gaping narrative and logical holes faster than Bad Chad changes chords. 
There are so many explosions and tits that your brain will ache from the 
strain of trying to attach some shred of significance to the title. We are 
almost relieved when Hebner finally reaches Louisiana and crosses The Falcon 
(played with inept glee by Iggy Pop) in one of his scams, incurring an 
incredibly brutal, ritualistic beating. Unforgivably long, slow, and 
poorly-shot, this almost completely unneccesary and exploitive sequence 
makes more sense than any other scene in the film.

The closing scenes of the film seem to be some sort of hallucinogenic 
montage as Hebner slowly, inexorably crawls toward death from internal 
injuries in the oily muck of Lake Ponchatrain, the lights and music of the 
amusement park glittering in the background. The Captain emerges as some 
distorted spirit guide and all the freaks and wierdos retun as abstract 
embodiments of Hebner's gonzo-mythic Hero's Journey. Cox is clearly making 
his bones as the poet laureate of the neo-primative American asshole. Maybe 
I'm just not hip enough to get it. I couldn't see the saints as a tribe of 
carnival rejects. I couldn't see the choirs of angels playing off-key 
punkabilly. All I really came away with--aside from a king-hell splitting 
headache--was explosions and tits.

--Stu


>From: "James Knevitt" <psipsina at iprimus.com.au>
>Reply-To: ua at lists.uchicago.edu
>To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
>Subject: Re: [UA] Alternate UAs
>Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 13:06:16 +0930
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Chad Underkoffler" <chadu at yahoo.com>
>
> > > You know, I'd kinda like to see an "Alternate UA"
> > > book, a list of alternate settings for Unknown Armies.
>
> > I'd be up for:
> > Caveman UA
> > Pulp UA
> > Sci-Fi (pronounced "skiffy") UA
> >
> > Maybe make it the size of Acension of the Maggy-daggy.
>
>As long as Stolze & Tynes churn it out quickly (and well!) and call it
>"Explosions and Tits". Then I'll be happy.
>
>James
>
>
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>UA mailing list
>UA at lists.uchicago.edu
>http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua




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