"The way he and the two of you (girls) danced, it was a scandal, he should have male friends not you girls, so Sydney was right, praise the Lord, for kicking him out before the boy turns into a communi$t!... Sydney and me are upstanding, good, Bible-believing Christians!"
As subtle as a sledgehammer crushing tiny defenseless hamsters. This anti-Christian, anti-conservative nonsense is what Altman considered "clever intelligent satire" of the Bible Belt, a region which pompous Reds have hated since the dawn of cinema. The boy in question is a gay character - and of course conservatives are all nasty, hateful, anti-gay lunatics who obsess over Reds and who draw these kinds of ridiculous conclusions, in their usual - very common - attacks of political hysteria.
Ain't that the pot and the kettle. Anti$a screamers, anyone? Nobody is more overemotional, intolerant or zealous than ess-jay-w snow flakes.
To make things even more pathetically obvious - which actually insults the audience - this Bible-thumping Juanita character is defined early on as a devious miser who recycles leftover drinks by pouring them back into the juice can. Because obviously right-wingers do that kind of evil, sneaky stuff - whereas Libs are all very refined, wonderful people.
That's how propaganda works: it reduces everything to banal demonization and glorification, and of course peppers everything with fallacies and lies.
It is a mark of very poor writing whenever "satire" is carried out by such black-and-white, bludgeoning bouts of uninspired simplification and extreme bias. By exposing such vitriolic hatred for the Bible Belt (or whoever happens to be your target) the writer cheapens his message, because the message is being relayed from the perspective of a zealot, not a rational observer of society. Altman was very far from an "intellectual" director as many consider him to be, he was in fact far from it: his strengths were in stylish directorial decisions: a great sense of aesthetics, not intellectual content. The proof is in so many bad and even downright horrible scripts that he'd given his thumbs up to. He actually received this trash of a script one day, and not only liked it - but decided to film it!
Of course, this movie has neither aesthetics nor intellectual content, it is completely devoid of anything redeemable. It isn't about fan-clubs nor is it about James Dean either. It's a thinly-veiled attack on Middle America, yet again, because Altman despised them with a passion that rivaled the Kremlin.
But on to a lighter subject... When Altman tries to convince us that Karen Black is really a man! This notoriously cretinous twist is one of THE dumbest moments in all of 80s cinema, and one of the most ridiculous B-movie scenes in any Hollywood studio film of any era.
Must I spell it out, all ye "progressives"?
The very notion that a man can be transformed into a woman looking like Karen Black is preposterous, having literally zero connection with reality. Ever hear of a "male fantasy"? Well, this must be a "tran$ fantasy". Or rather, "transci-fi". Perhaps in 50000 years this sort of conversion will be doable, but until then it will remain a very goofy fantasy. I've seen many of this new species (hard to avoid them these days: we're bombarded with this agenda) and not one of them was even remotely convincing. Certainly even the "least obvious" cases are nothing close to aesthetically successful.
Don't get me wrong, Black is no beauty, but she looked fairly decent back then, certainly not in the least masculine, and in fact I am amazed that she wasn't INSULTED to be offered this absurd role. After all, Kathy Bates - who is in this movie playing a woman - would have been a much more convincing choice.
Kathy gets to play a woman, yet Black plays a man! What Bolivian veggies was Bobby sniffing?
Another unsuccessful aspect of this terrible flick are the many past-to-present transitions. None of these women appear to have aged, despite the 20 years difference. But hey: Karen Black used to be a man, so how bad is that error? Comparatively tiny.
You'd think a bunch of James Dean fanatics would have reacted more dramatically to the news of his accident. Instead, that scene is very flat, unrealistic and decidedly undramatic.
And then there's Cher's fake, very corny-sounding southern drawl. I don't buy it for a second.
As subtle as a sledgehammer crushing tiny defenseless hamsters. This anti-Christian, anti-conservative nonsense is what Altman considered "clever intelligent satire" of the Bible Belt, a region which pompous Reds have hated since the dawn of cinema. The boy in question is a gay character - and of course conservatives are all nasty, hateful, anti-gay lunatics who obsess over Reds and who draw these kinds of ridiculous conclusions, in their usual - very common - attacks of political hysteria.
Ain't that the pot and the kettle. Anti$a screamers, anyone? Nobody is more overemotional, intolerant or zealous than ess-jay-w snow flakes.
To make things even more pathetically obvious - which actually insults the audience - this Bible-thumping Juanita character is defined early on as a devious miser who recycles leftover drinks by pouring them back into the juice can. Because obviously right-wingers do that kind of evil, sneaky stuff - whereas Libs are all very refined, wonderful people.
That's how propaganda works: it reduces everything to banal demonization and glorification, and of course peppers everything with fallacies and lies.
It is a mark of very poor writing whenever "satire" is carried out by such black-and-white, bludgeoning bouts of uninspired simplification and extreme bias. By exposing such vitriolic hatred for the Bible Belt (or whoever happens to be your target) the writer cheapens his message, because the message is being relayed from the perspective of a zealot, not a rational observer of society. Altman was very far from an "intellectual" director as many consider him to be, he was in fact far from it: his strengths were in stylish directorial decisions: a great sense of aesthetics, not intellectual content. The proof is in so many bad and even downright horrible scripts that he'd given his thumbs up to. He actually received this trash of a script one day, and not only liked it - but decided to film it!
Of course, this movie has neither aesthetics nor intellectual content, it is completely devoid of anything redeemable. It isn't about fan-clubs nor is it about James Dean either. It's a thinly-veiled attack on Middle America, yet again, because Altman despised them with a passion that rivaled the Kremlin.
But on to a lighter subject... When Altman tries to convince us that Karen Black is really a man! This notoriously cretinous twist is one of THE dumbest moments in all of 80s cinema, and one of the most ridiculous B-movie scenes in any Hollywood studio film of any era.
Must I spell it out, all ye "progressives"?
The very notion that a man can be transformed into a woman looking like Karen Black is preposterous, having literally zero connection with reality. Ever hear of a "male fantasy"? Well, this must be a "tran$ fantasy". Or rather, "transci-fi". Perhaps in 50000 years this sort of conversion will be doable, but until then it will remain a very goofy fantasy. I've seen many of this new species (hard to avoid them these days: we're bombarded with this agenda) and not one of them was even remotely convincing. Certainly even the "least obvious" cases are nothing close to aesthetically successful.
Don't get me wrong, Black is no beauty, but she looked fairly decent back then, certainly not in the least masculine, and in fact I am amazed that she wasn't INSULTED to be offered this absurd role. After all, Kathy Bates - who is in this movie playing a woman - would have been a much more convincing choice.
Kathy gets to play a woman, yet Black plays a man! What Bolivian veggies was Bobby sniffing?
Another unsuccessful aspect of this terrible flick are the many past-to-present transitions. None of these women appear to have aged, despite the 20 years difference. But hey: Karen Black used to be a man, so how bad is that error? Comparatively tiny.
You'd think a bunch of James Dean fanatics would have reacted more dramatically to the news of his accident. Instead, that scene is very flat, unrealistic and decidedly undramatic.
And then there's Cher's fake, very corny-sounding southern drawl. I don't buy it for a second.