Repo Man
(1984)
In fairness, I should probably check out more Alex Cox’s
later works. Before I consign him to the status of one who never made good on
the potential of his early success. But the bits and pieces I’ve seen don’t
hold much sway. I pretty much gave up on him after Walker. It seemed as if the accessibility of Repo Man was a happy accident, and he was subsequently content to
drift further and further down his own post-modern punk rabbit hole, as if
affronted by the “THE MOST ASTONISHING
FEATURE FILM DEBUT SINCE STEVEN SPIELBERG’S DUEL” accolade splashed over
the movie’s posters (I know, I have a copy; see below).
This wilfully non-mainstream sensibility is, I suspect, a
reason for Cox fighting his corner with sometimes ill-advised gobshite-ing. There’s his accusation that Terry Gilliam
(never one to hold back on the opinions side, so they’re well-matched on that
score) plundered his Fear and Loathing in
Las Vegas script (Cox fell off the project, but I’m just surprised he
managed to progress it as far as he did). Then there’s his perceived negativity
towards his Repo Man star Emilio
Estevez.
This does sound a little like a storm in a teacup; Cox
wanted to get a semi-sequel off the ground, Waldo’s
Hawaiian Holiday. Emilio wasn’t terribly interested. The director subsequently
came out with vaguely belittling comments about Estevez’s career. One wonders
if Cox thinks he’s protected from similar critiques behind a “Well, I never
wanted to be a success” shield of pride. There’s nary a comment on Estevez on
the film’s DVD/Blu-ray talk track, except to note that he wasn’t the director’s
first choice (that was Dick Rude, who plays Duke; in contrast, Napoleon Dynamite look-a-like Zander
Schloss appears as ultra-nerd Kevin in a role earmarked for Chris Penn) and
Schloss’ insight that the young buck was given to romping about in his
skivvies. Maybe Estevez was a pain in the arse (although, by the sound of it,
Harry Dean Stanton was the biggest culprit there) but it seems churlish not to
acknowledge the easy charisma he brings to the role of Otto. Or maybe the
actor’s reticence over reliving past glories (he has steered clear of Repo-reunions) sits awkwardly with Cox,
who must surely resign himself to it being the best thing he ever did or will
do. Perhaps Estevez made the movie a bit too
attractive, too accessible, for Cox’s
perversely self-sabotaging tastes (and perhaps the prize of Johnny Depp as
Raoul Duke subconsciously gave him pause when he was gearing up for Fear and Loathing; what if he
accidentally steered a path towards acclaim?) Would anyone be talking about Repo Man 30 years later if Rude had
starred? Dramatically fewer people, I don’t doubt.
Which isn’t to belittle Cox’s achievement, far from it.
Rather, it’s to note that movie alchemy doesn’t necessarily take place when
things play out exactly as the director had in mind (and Cox is quite open
about how the screenplay morphed due to Tracey Walter and Sy Richardson, how
the final act was rewritten to involve the expansive dimensions of Miller’s
savant insights).
Whatever the state of Cox’s blinkered creative faculties,
he’s a highly entertaining guy, and his crooked delivery and fascinating
face is one of the reasons Moviedrome attained
such an instant niche status on BBC. Cox is an instant cult figure; but as is
often the case with cults, the overriding criteria of joining the club isn’t
quality, it’s personality. It isn’t that Cox has lost his faculties, it’s that
he has been unable or unwilling to synthesise his strange fascinations and
anecdotes into something as singularly clever, insightful and witty since. To
hear him talk (and he is a fine raconteur), much of Repo Man came about from such spontaneity and synchronicity. It’s a
shame to see him recycle his one classic (Repo
Chick) or needlessly revisit past (not especially good) glories (Straight to Hell). Perhaps the cosmic
unconsciousness permits some to hit the bull’s eye just the once (I
wouldn’t compare Cox to Orson Welles, but they both peaked straight out of the
gates).
Break it down to its bare bones, and the plot of Repo Man is simplicity itself; chase the
MacGuffin. Which just happens to be a glowing radioactive car with the remains
of a space alien in the boot. Cox’s film is the missing link between Kiss Me Deadly and Pulp Fiction, although Tarantino is arguably much less inventive in
his referencing. Others have cited Repo
Man as a likely influence on the uber film nerd; the fast talking, pop
culture environment of Cox’s movie gets the drop on the indie squad about 10
years early. But, not to belittle Tarantino, Cox isn’t really interested in
pure film referencing. Repo Man is
chock full of “of the moment” material, but the director has his an abundance
of his own ideas to discuss too; he’s a political animal, which Tarantino very
much is not (indeed, Tarantino has
nothing to say about anything, and says as much repeatedly). As he
progressed, this would prove to be the director’s Achilles Heel. But here he transumtes
his ideas and views into keen satire, taking in everything from conspiracy
theories to the disintegration of the nuclear family. Like Tarantino, he
populates his world with hardened cynics, but unlike Tarantino that isn’t the
gag.
Perhaps the clearest example is the choice of music. Cox is
fond of the anecdote that it was the soundtrack that really got the film
released. Universal had no interest in the picture, but the music division
noted the LP was selling healthily. To release the film would make sense,
almost as a reverse tie-in. That soundtrack is made up of contemporary US punk
rock bands. Cox refers to Easy Rider
as a yardstick for zeitgeist sounds, and it’s very different from the nostalgic
plundering Quentin engages in. Perhaps the most obvious thing Cox’s film and Pulp Fiction have in common is an ear
for quotable dialogue. Repo Man must
rank up there with Withnail & I
(drug movies often do end up being overly referenced by consumers, although it
must be pointed out that this never happened to Less Than Zero) as one of the ‘80s’ most referenced movies. Barely
a line goes by that doesn’t have an after life. And Sy Richardson’s character
makes Samuel L Jackson seem hopelessly unhip; Jackson can’t boast a spoken word
track on a Tarantino album, unlike Richardson on the Repo album (Juicy Bananas’ Bad
Man).
Cox’s movie features abundant commentary but, like a great
wit, he never allows speechifying to overpower the plot. It’s so perfectly
balanced in that regard, one half wonders how he ever made himself an outsider
(the answer, he is not his films). But to have him tell the story, it seems
Universal perceived Repo Man as outspoken
enough that he was suspected of being a damn commie. Perhaps one of the reasons
the movie has aged so well (the only area that stands out now is one that stood
out then; it’s cheapness; flying Chevy Malibus on a budget have nothing on the
following year’s Delorean) is the resounding tone of disaffectedness. One might
accuse it of nihilism, but the movie is too spirited and vital for that.
Pervasive cynicism might be a better label. Cox infuses it with a
contemporaneity that taps into the aggressive anarchism of punk but finds its
characters of all ages in a lost environment. The ‘60s generation has just
given up (or made a lot of money); Otto’s parents sit on the couch getting
stoned, transfixed by Reverend Larry (“We’re
sending Bibles to El Salvador”). Otto is angry, but not out of a desire to
change the world. He has no aspirations whatsoever, personally or
philosophically.
Cox takes swipes at the modern age of distraction, consumption, and credulism at every opportunity. His characters’ disenchantment doesn’t allow them insight or self-awareness. Only Tracey Walter’s savant Miller, who has no interest in how he appears to others (he has risen above ego) is implied to understand what goes on (and in the evolving of Cox’s screenplay it is he that proves central to the final act, rather than Harry Dean Stanton’s initial mentor). On his commentary track, Cox notes the number of firsts his movie achieved. Some of these are amusingly minor details (the released airbags in the car of two agents, suffusing forth like the Rovers in The Prisoner; the mace spray directed at Otto, following his delivery of a dead rat to a “client”).
Others find him in the post-Von Daniken, pre X-Files wilderness, plugging the gap between the undercurrents of a paranoid fascination with a possibly arcane pre-history and the much mocked but ever-intriguing idea of extra-terrestrial visitors. So Cox is referencing Roswell with his boot of aliens, and knowingly prefiguring accusations that it’s all a big hoax (“Looks like sausage”). Leila (Olivia Barasch) works for the United Fruitcake Outlet (much to Otto’s amusement). But, for all Cox’s pranksterishness, his governmental agents are designated as very much a nefarious force, spreading disinformation (“It happens sometimes. People just explode”), pervading surveillance (“I can’t hear you, I’m using a scrambler”) and threats of violence. Leila, passionate for her cause, shows how few scruples she has when she joins forces with the government (“I’d torture someone in a second if it was up to me”). If there can be any doubt about the attitude of our trusted democratically elected apparatus, Edward Snowden would surely acknowledge the presiding sentiments they express as accurate.
Agent Rogerz: No one is innocent.
Miller’s account of the “lattice of coincidence”, or synchronicity, is straight out of Robert Anton
Wilson, with just the right push into dementia (“How the Mayans invented television”) Miller’s wonderfully pragmatic
Grandfather Paradox (since there had to be a time when there were no people, it
begs the question of where they came from; obviously from the future, and how
did they get to the past? In flying saucers, which are time machines) is proven
correct at the end when the Chevy Malibu lifts off and accelerates (to the
past). Whether Cox was riffing on some of the most creative alien theories (the
Greys are actually humans from the future, returning to sequester vital DNA for
the continuation of the species), he ensures it has just the right quotient of
batty stoned-semi-seriousness (Otto asks Miller if he did a lot of acid back in
the hippy days).
Elsewhere, Cox has a lot of fun with his swipes at more
organised forms of religion. He gets in there first with his take on
Scientology (Dioretix: The Science of
Matter Over Mind) a copy of which ends up on a bonfire, another is seen
being read by one of government agents. Then there is Reverend Larry (Bruce
White), the mammon-loving TV evangelist (“They’re
right. I do want your money, because God wants your money”) who finds
himself in the right place at the right time come the climax; the Malibu stands
in for Linda Blair when it causes Larry’s Bible to ignite (“Holy sheep shit!”)
This is a period where the “Greed is good” mentality is about to
become a cultural byword. Cox is in there, with a plot motivator fired by
capitalist tendencies (repo men thrive under Reaganism) that transpire in a
very different form. The trade of his characters is wholly based on a society
of credit; slavery to things we cannot afford, and which end up (literally)
breaking the global bank. And the worst offenders are, of course, the
super-rich. The ones who emerge unscathed from a financial meltdown (“Fucking millionaires. They never pay their
bills”). In the end, Otto rises above the shit in his search for adventure
and answers; except he isn’t really searching. He simply has nothing better to
do. It’s the ‘80s flipside of Roy Neary’s dream-fulfilled at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Otto: That’s bullshit. You’re a white suburban
punk just like me.
Duke: Yeah, but it still hurts.
This is also a generation that has become intellectualised
to cod self-analysis and categorisation. As Duke lies bloodied and bleeding he
rehearses a TV talk show (for this it would become) sound bite on how he is, in
fact a victim. This is Cox at his most acutely postmodern. We adorn ourselves
with signifiers that are superficial at best; the false religion of psychology
has disintegrated almost as soon as it was established.
Notional superiority over the unwashed masses takes many
forms. The artistic community will often hold forth on how they never had a
normal job (or just the one), as if such status is proof positive that their
hallowed status is deserved. Who knows, perhaps it is. Kevin nurses the
prospect of getting on by becoming a fry cook, and he is consequently ridiculed
for such a square outlook. Bud holds onto the idea that he is a rebel and an
outsider; it’s this mentality that finds him mentoring Otto. He genuinely sees
a younger self he can nurture, but Otto rejects Bud’s “normality” for a higher
truth. And it’s Miller sublimely who slaps down any suggestion that the
characters we have spent the entire film with have any understanding of what
the hell is going on. Everyone we see has been doing little else but driving
for throughout the movie; their careers are behind the wheel.
This being the ‘80s, the Cold War and spectre of nuclear
Armageddon (however imminent that may or may not have been, it was most
definitely worth its weight in gold as propaganda) makes its presence felt. This
was the same year that The Terminator
envisaged a world where civilisation ended at the behest of the machines we
built to make life simpler. Bud talks of “Bad
shit coming down”, the way every generation down has since the atom was
split, but this is the first time that a sense of resignation has taken over.
There’s nothing that can be done about it all, at all. And nothing would be
done when Chernobyl happened three years later. Nor when Fukushima started (and
continues to) to leak radiation 17 years hence. J Frank Parnell (Fox Harris) would be proud, of course.
I have to admit, the reason that the dead aliens are
radioactive escapes me, other than it establishes a readily identifiable visual
reference to Kiss Me Deadly. Harris’
character is probably the most bat shit hilarious of any in the cast (and
that’s saying something). His Looney Tunes
singsong delivery is delicious, and there can be little doubt where Cox is
coming from; the boffin who claims everything is all right in the nuclear world
(“Do you ever feel as if your mind had
started to erode?”) is shown to be off his rocker.
Otto: A lobotomy. Isn’t that for loonies?
Parnell: Not –at –all.
Indeed, Parnell has lost all sense of objectivity, suffering
from the classic malaise of the clinical scientist; a lack of ethical
grounding. He has his lobotomy for reasons of reparation of his fragile psyche
(“It’s so immoral, working on the thing
can drive you mad”). Cox has said the film is all about the insanity of
nuclear war, and the crazed rhetoric of Reagan and Thatcher. But I think he has
the nub of the movie’s longevity when he identifies as the initiator the “maniac culture” that elected them.
Thirty years later we have the same maniac culture, steeped in lethargy,
allowing our elected leaders to run riot in the name of the latest supposed
demons (while the Soviet menace appears to be redefining itself as a force of
diplomacy).
Parnell: You ever hear of the neutron bomb? Destroys people - leaves buildings standing. Fits in a suitcase. It's so small, no one knows it's there until - BLAMMO. Eyes melt, skin explodes, everybody dead.
Years later, Cox met one Sam Cohen, who informed the
director he was father of the neutron bomb. He loved Repo Man (which, in an inspired opening credits kicks off with a
map taking in locations including Los Alamos and Roswell), and was convinced
that there was a nuclear bomb in the trunk (I guess we never know for
definite). Cohen also saw the neutron bomb as a good Christian weapon. Well,
you have to tell yourself lies, or working on the thing will drive you mad. Although,
it sounds a bit as if Cohen was already there. And what is the end of the movie
suggesting? That only through a Zen haze can we overcome the destructive forces
of the modern world? If not, Miller and Otto won’t last very long.
By accident or design, Cox has also manufactured an
incidentally effective attack on consumerism. One where Kevin sing adverts (“I’m feeling 7-Up”) rather than chart
hits, and where products take on sinister overtones (“You’ll find one in every car. You’ll see” could apply to any number
of items that we have been persuaded to invite into our lives, with potentially
unintended health consequences). If that came about through a severe shortage
of sponsorship (Ralph’s supermarkets donated the movie’s food, a chain that
also memorably appears in The Big
Lebowski; now there’s some cool cachet), it results in one of the most
visually memorable sustained gags in the movie. All of the foodstuffs come with
generic, bland labelling; from tins of “Food”
to bottles of “Beer”. This even
extends to drugs (the bottle of butyl nitrate that Duke and Debbie (the
delectable Jennifer Balgobin) are consuming).
Bud: An ordinary person spends his life avoiding tense situations. A repo man spends his life getting to into tense situations.
It’s unclear if Cox has any comment to make about drugs
themselves, other than noting their presence as a fact of life amongst a
variety of groups, even those who abstain (“Hermanos
Rodriguez do not approve of drugs”). Otto’s punk pals consume substances
indiscriminately and invariably with excessive, destructive activities in mind;
they’re punks, so they react against the failed peace and love vibes that went
before them. There’s no need to comment on it, because the banality of reactive
youth movements is commentary itself. Bud, given to pronouncements (well,
everyone here is given to pronouncements of one kind or another; it’s
emblematic of an Alex Cox film), favours speed; it sharpens the senses and repo
men live intense lives. But Otto experiences all the rush he needs from a car
chase with the Rodriguez brothers (“Wow.
That was intense”); when they start snorting speed to excess, they are
rendered a couple of boxed guys buying beer. There’s nothing very exotic about
it. And appropriately, alcohol is the universal panacea, no matter what walk of
life you’re from (“You guys want a beer?”
comes the offer, as the repo men gather round to see the end show).
Miller: John Wayne was a fag.
In unison: The hell he was!
Miller: He was too, you boys. I installed
two-way mirrors in his pad in Brentwood, and he come to the door in a dress.
Every character in Repo
Man is a great character. It’s one of those films. The lines were the cast
making the movie great and the dialogue making the cast great stops and ends is
debatable, but from the sound of it Cox was very encouraging of an organic
process. As noted, Walter and Richardson’s roles developed as the film did (“Somebody pissed on the floor again?”).
As Lite, the latter’s street-smart wisdom (“Put
your seatbelt on boy, it’s one of my rules”) forms a counterpoint to Bud’s
Repo Code. He’s essentially spouting a stream of nonsense (“Managing a pop group is no job for a man”)
but it’s immensely winning nonsense. We can’t get enough of Lite; neither could
Cox, who added the glorious scene where Lite opens fire on a house whose
occupant is taking pot-shots at Otto.
Then there’s the blithe flippancy of Duke and Debbie, lines like “Come on duke, lets go do those crimes”, which involve buying sushi and not paying. Or even the a tiny recurring role for Dorothy Bartlett as an old lady who gets irate when Otto drives into her dustbins (“Pick it up!”)
This is a film with Estevez ostensibly front-and-centre, and
he is fucking hilarious during its first half. His trademark infectious laugh
sets the tone for the lunacy and craziness he later encounters. As the movie
progresses, Otto drifts into a more reactive role. He shifts allegiances,
graduating from the failed mentorships of Bud (who goes out quoting Emiliano
Zapata “I’d rather die on my feet than
live on my knees”) and Lite to the warped inclusiveness of Miller. Cox
intended for Otto to carry this empty page quality. To an extent he ends up occupying
the anarchic flipside to the untroubled ease with which the ‘80s best known
teen protagonist, Ferris Bueller, traverses all obstacles.
Cox has so many ideas, his movie overflows with tiny moments
and references. There’s something almost Joe Dante-ish about this, a
combination of cartoon slapstick and just throwing things in through spur of the
moment inspiration. During the hospital climax, a tannoy announces “Mr Lee, please return the scalpel”. When
Lite throws an unopened package from a car they have just jacked, we see that
it contained bundles of cash. During the supermarket shootout, blood and
ketchup fly as one (Cox claims this was an intentional means to bypass
censorship, but it’s difficult to envisage this ever being rated more than an
R). Cox’s government agents are given gems of commentary; as Otto ambles along
a street where a suited clean-up crew is at work we hear one composing a
flowery descriptive narrative of his activities (“I’m carrying his limp torso to the trunk. It feels like he’s only been
dead for a little while, but…”) Later another, out of shot, is set upon by Delilah
(Vonetta McGee). She raises a chair, and we hear him scream (“Not my face!”), only for her to drop it
seconds later (“My face!”) Elsewhere,
there are snippets of unfinished dialogue, or jokes without punch lines (“How come that pig’s got a wooden leg?”);
the full joke is a good one, though.
Cox was surprised and delighted to score Robby Müller
as his cinematographer; when asked whom he’d like to work on the movie he threw
the name out there as a not-remotely-feasible suggestion. A regular collaborator
with Wim Wenders, he’d also been wooed by cinephile Peter Bogdanovich and would
go on to work with Jim Jarmusch. Paris,
Texas, released the same year as Repo
Man and also featuring Harry Dean Stanton, is perhaps Wenders’ best-known
film. Repo Man is resplendent to behold, with a vivid nighttime cityscape
of greens and blues setting off generally unseen-in-movies areas of L.A. It’s as
memorable as Scorsese’s vision of New York in Taxi Driver (and later After
Hours). Cox deferred to Muller’s stylistic preferences (medium shots, little
camera movement; this is a very clean, unfussy picture, which ensures that the
dialogue and actors have the opportunity to bounce out at you). It’s a treat to
have the movie on Blu-ray, when for years all that was available was a
crappy-looking video release.
If the photography is a distinctive character, so is the
music. The Plugz provided the main score, a supremely catchy twang of unhurried
space guitar that is impossible to divorce from the images. Likewise Iggy Pop’s
Repo Man, sung over the opening
credits; it has an urgency that The Plugz lack, effectively setting the scene.
The soundtrack album comes highly recommended; I’m not the biggest of punk
fans, but the variety on there makes it a must, from The Circle Jerks (whom
Schloss joined) and When the Shit Hits
the Fan (“Doobedy doo wop wop say
what yeah”) to Burning Sensations’ Pablo
Picasso and the aforementioned Juicy Bananas with Bad Man (“One way to tell if
a woman really loves you…”). The other musical signature of note is that
The Monkees’ Mike Nesmith co-produced the project, a career path that had
recently seen success for George Harrison and some Pythons.
It isn’t easy to make a movie firmly embedded in one era and
expect it to remain relevant. Just look at Easy
Rider. Cox might have experienced beginner’s luck across the board. As I said,
I should be fair to the guy and investigate more of his work. The problem is,
when I realise I have unwittingly seen one of his (Death and the Compass) it doesn’t inspire me to seek out others.
This is certainly Estevez’ best film too, so it’s entirely understandable that
he doesn’t want to be reminded of the distant past. But Repo Man is exceptional, and its status can’t be lessened by name
checks from Cox or Universal (2010’s Repo
Men was a childish attempt to lay claim to the word “Repo” and encourage
Cox to cease and desist from going ahead with Repo Chick). And maybe it’s all to the good. As Miller says, “A lot of people don’t realize what’s going
on. They view life as a bunch o’ unconnected incidents ‘n things”. Repo Man will endure thanks to the
lattice of coincidence that lies on top of everything.
*****
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