Saturday, November 13, 2004
high adventure in the wal-mart bargain dvd bin, part 1.
Thrifty and shameless consumers are undoubtably familiar with it. That four-sided shelf fixture banished like a leper to the very outskirts of Wal-Mart's electronics department and usually surrounded by not-so-well-to-do immigrants with a tenuous grasp of English rummaging through, and making even more a mess of, an already haphazard collection of DVDs, mostly of dubious quality, which can be had for the modest sum of roughly five bucks.
For movie buffs (read: movie geeks, nerds, etc.) a decent find or two can be had here not too infrequently and this buff geek is no exception. The latest I picked up with a flutter of excitement upon finding it amidst the cinematic detritus is Oliver Stone's underappreciated Talk Radio (1988) starring Eric Bogosian and based on his play.
Like much of Stone's work, this was filmed locally (Dallas). The story revolves around a "controversial" Dallas radio talk show host called Barry Champlain (think Tom Leykis with none of the talent and all of the cliches ) who is doing his last night on the air before he is going to be syndicated nationally. This final local show serves as the wraparound story to an exploration of Champlain's personal shortcomings, self-destructiveness, fears, etc.
A decent movie overall and the only real problems I had with it were a few minor details. To wit:
1) Champlain is Jewish. One of the film's subplots involves him being harassed on the air by some neo-nazi rednecks. As a resident of north Texas I can assure you that our racist rednecks only hate the blacks and mexicans. They probably don't even know what a Jew is.
2) We are led to believe that Champlain's show is hugely successful. Being broadcast in the Dallas/Fort Worth area this isn't possible. His east coast brand of radio shtick would last as a local show here for maybe six months before he got shitcanned. The only thing people like around here is either conservative AM radio pundits or semi-literate, buncha guys sittin' around talkin' havin' average guy conversations with some radio bits thrown in like the Russ Martin Show or that asinine sports talk station.
But this is all nitpicky bullshit. Talk Radio is a solid movie well worth the five dollar asking price at Wal-Mart. Hell, you might as well skip the cheap version and spring for the new Oliver Stone DVD collection that includes it among his mostly better films. JFK is the shit.
