Human Highway (1982)

 

Director: Neil Young and Dean Stockwell

Screenplay: Neil Young, Jeanne Field, Dean Stockwell, Russ Tamblyn and James Beshears

Cast: Neil Young as Lionel Switch / Frankie Fontaine; Russ Tamblyn as Fred Kelly; Dean Stockwell as Otto Quartz; Dennis Hopper as Cracker, Charlotte Stewart as Charlotte Goodnight, Sally Kirkland as Kathryn Geraldine Baron as Irene; Gerald Casale as Nuclear Garbageperson; Mark Mothersbaugh as Nuclear Garbageperson / Booji Boy; Bob Casale as Nuclear Garbageperson; Robert Mothersbaugh as Nuclear Garbageperson (as Bob Mothersbaugh); Alan Myers as Nuclear Garbageperson

An Abstract Candidate

 

Among idiosyncratic trends, one was a small amount of times musicians directed films. A few happened in the seventies – Bob Dylan’s Renaldo and Clara (1978) in its original four plus hour form, outside of fragments, was withdrawn, and Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels (1971) is a divisive and weird experiment I need to get to again before given a proper comment on. Even Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit gets into this line up with The Fanatic (2019), a genre film with John Travolta, and he did manage to get into a murder’s row of figures, as in the eighties especially, you get a set of really distinct ones from big figures of music. Prince directed Under the Cherry Moon (1986), and David Byrne of the Talking Heads made True Stories (1986), a film which got lost beyond being a known cult film, only to get a huge critical reevaluation and a Criterion approved re-release for physical media. There is also the subject for today, which has to be one of the weirdest, in that I can now talk today about a film Canadian born musician Neil Young, legendary for the likes of the After the Gold Rush (1970) album, in which he managed to get together with the likes of Dean Stockwell, a bugged out Dennis Hooper, older actor Russ Tamblyn, and the band DEVO just before their mainstream success with the song Whip It, and make a film were Stockwell taking salt in his coffee is the least peculiar thing on the table.

Young, to be blunt, is an incredibly talented figure but, like Lou Reed, his impulses over the decades are entirely his decisions whether his fans agree with them or not. His eighties period, before 1989’s Freedom album and Rockin’ in the Free World, is bizarre in general. Trans (1983) I will look to with sympathy as, with the tragedy that his son was born with cerebral palsy and unable to speak, the sudden shift as a rock musician to synthpop was as much dealing with trying to communicate to him as an experiment. It is however after this when David Geffen, the owner of his then-label of choice, demanded a "rock and roll album" from him, only for Young to make a rockabilly album as a response and Geffen to sue him for not making albums uncharacteristic of him. The eighties albums after are not well regarded, and even his return to Cosby, Stills and Nash for American Dream (1988), their last album from 1970 as a quartet, was not held in good regard. Human Highway, which has songs from Trans, predates that album, and was shot over four years with Dean Stockwell as a co-director¹, and likewise this is one of those films that, with Young's name as a selling point, which would divide people as much.

Young himself plays Lionel Switch, an idiot savant of a car mechanic who also dreams of being a rock star, someone who thinks that working on a car radiator is the same as the dangers of radiation poisoning, and openly admits to having drunk water from these radiators in the same dialogue. Stockwell is Otto Jr., who also plays his late father in an old man fake beard who died of said radiation poisoning, Otto the second having inherited the family gas station and diner, which is in close proximity to a nuclear power station, and was running into the red in bills when the son inherited it in the will. Hopper is among the diner staff, the chef with a loose hygiene plan and friend of neighboring raccoons, and Russ Tamblyn is the new employee Fred, a friend of Lionel‘s, taken in to work in the garage. DEVO, glowing bright red due to the radiation, work with the nuclear waste from the plant they casually dispose of, and both provide the most musical numbers and has member Mark Mothersbaugh, in the early era version of the band where he wore a baby mask, taking on the Dadaist Greek chorus by himself. Experiencing Human Highway, it is a vibrant plastic Americana in design to the production team’s credit, with throwbacks to fifties culture set against the new eighties era. Stockwell comes prepared with a pea green shirt and red tie, but for a film which has been difficult to see at times in a proper version, even a muddier version shows Neil Young already had a distinct eye even with help, creating a vibrant place even with minimal production design in idiosyncratic touches, like occasional back projection or the issue of nearby radiation from the plant causing flies to also grow bright red by a onscreen visual effect. Whilst cinematographer David Myers was more known for his history in musical concert films and working with musicians - he was the cinematographer on Renaldo and Clara, and was there to film the legendary Woodstock (1970) concert film - he also was cinematographer on a lesser known George Lucas project, THX 1138 (1971), a very aesthetically distinct film which, whilst different animals in aesthetic and tone, makes the stylization found here in Human Highway not a hard abrupt turn in his career. The look of this film stands out for what does admittedly wander to and fro from what presumably could be a plot, such as Otto considering torching the buildings for an insurance scam.

Sadly this does have one badly aged and problematic joke, of a stereotypical Middle Eastern (Saudi Arabian) figure of wealth that comes to the diner, clearly an actor in brown face and Young’s character using a racial term that is not acceptable. It is a sole sour note to a film where its biggest sin would be that, for Neil Young fans or film viewers, it is so scattershot and a weird flight of fancy it would lose people for not really caring for an actual story. You have to tolerate its peculiar lurches and that Neil Young, whilst capable of composing the likes of Cortex the Killer, or pissing Lynyrd Skynyrd off enough they added additional digs at him in live performances of Sweet Home Alabama, has a very dad humour sense of comedy too. His character Lionel with Russ Tamblyn play to old style slapstick, and the diner staff are over the top, so if you at all find this "lame" or still think this with a dismissive viewpoint, neither is that going to help with Human Highway. David Lynch is an apt comparison, more so as members of this cast would appear in his work – Stockwell and Hopper in Blue Velvet (1986), Russ Tamblyn in the Twin Peaks series - but even his most explicably comedic work, like the one season TV series On the Air (1992), whilst also having cheese ball humour, still possessed his own distinct sense of surrealism.

By the end of the film, Human Highway even rejects pretense of plot, as alongside abrupt nuclear catastrophe, a music number to celebrate it, and end credits evoking the Heaven sequence from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983), a portion of the film is Lionel being knocked out and having an extended fantasy about his rock success. This transpires after he meets his idol, also played by Neil Young, and knocks his head working under the star’s limo, starting a multi-scene dream sequence where, splicing in real concert performances, even the most impatient viewer will be rewarded, as Human Highway would have been worth preserving for the duet between Young and DEVO on My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue). This becomes of note as, whilst this timeline has been questioned¹, it is Mark Mothersbaugh, as he sings in the lyrics, credited to the phrase "rust never sleeps", which became the album this song would appear on with its acoustic counterpart. The heavier version of the song I first learnt of becomes a ten minute version here with added electronic noise instrumentation, and Mothersbaugh in a baby crib on the lead vocals, a sequence which is spectacular if you can appreciate a full blown rock jam session. It is, for a legendary song, an impressive moment for rock film history even if you sit through the whims of Human Highway and do not appreciate its goofball cheesiness.

That entire dream scenario may put off some who can even appreciate the first half, as it has its own aesthetic choices. It oddly evokes another director, Chilean figure Raúl Ruiz, and his eighties work with the obsession with idiosyncratic production design, saturated colour and viewers having to watch his work in VHS rips only, as Young choose to depict this passage of his own film with what feels like Vaseline smeared on the screen throughout.  Shifting between real concert footage, and moments of more slapstick, you have the character of Lionel is touring with the type of woodcarvings of Native Americans you would see in front of cigar stores in American films, seemingly wandering off at some point by themselves, and Young and real Native Americans at a celebration in front of a pyre, all of which becomes a stream of consciousness. The entire experience is unpredictable in a way, legitimately comparable to some experimental films, which can be appreciated but also liable to cause some viewers to pull their hair out for cohesion. Human Highway does show a lot of indulgences in its form, undoubtedly, but at the same time, baring the one joke I references earlier, the obvious issues with the film structurally have thankfully given way to so much that stood out and stayed with me in a positive. The final film altogether is absolutely of a period in Neil Young’s career which was ready to divide people, and even outside of it, this is an eccentric film I could appreciate but could have frustrated me if I was in the wrong mood. Thankfully I was in the right mood and could even at its silliness something to admire.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Stream-of-Consciousness/Wacky

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

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1) The Weird Story of Neil Young’s Human Highway by Jim Knipfel, written for Den of Geek and published June 4th 2018.

True Stories (1986)

 

Director: David Bryne

Screenplay: Stephen Tobolowsky, Beth Henley and David Byrne

Cast: David Byrne as The Narrator; John Goodman as Louis Fyne; Spalding Gray as Earl Culver; Annie McEnroe as Kay Culver; Swoosie Kurtz as Miss Rollings, The Lazy Woman; Pops Staples as Mr. Tucker; John Ingle as The Preacher; Tito Larriva as Ramon; Jo Harvey Allen as The Lying Woman

An Abstract Candidate

 

I'm a dancing bear!

David Bryne's celebration of Virgil, Texas, which begins with the tumultous history over centuries of Texas becoming to be, from the founding of the United States to microchip factories, was a cult title lost from wide access. Some idiosyncratic projects were financed in the eighties, and musicians were among those who got chances during the era. Prince was able to direct Under the Cherry Moon (1986), after the success of Purple Rain (1984), with mind that the soundtrack LP for the film is likely one of Prince's best records. Neil Young co-directed, with Dean Stockwell of all people, Human Highway (1982), which starred members of Devo, Dennis Hopper and Stockwell himself, a film which few probably even know exist. David Bryne had already had been on screen, with the Jonathan Demme helmed Stop Making Sense (1984), held as one of the best concert films ever made involving Bryne and the band Talking Heads, but with True Stories, as with the musicians already mentioned, Bryne got to sit in the directors' chair. It would be his only theatrical feature and is a curiosity to actually watch, especially now it has been made available in the best condition from Criterion, which is a significant boost in terms of them pushing the film, and a fascinating as this would be approached by those even fans of Talking Heads as a work from under the radar.  

Neither fish nor fowl, True Stories is a series of vignettes all tied around Virgil, a small Texas town. Beyond Bryne himself as the Narrator, an outsider in a cowboy hat looking around, the closest thing to a lead among an ensemble would be John Goodman as Louis Fyne; the ever reliable actor here is a lovable man who just wants to find a woman to fall in love with and marry. The film is certainly quirky, but Bryne (born in Dumbarton, Scotland originally but moved to the United States at a very young age) however is also taking a loving eye for quaint and eccentric Americana, from the tabloids obsessed with UFO and Elvis sightings, to Shriners in their tiny cars and fez headgear. It feels such an alien film when, in the modern day, cynicism would have tainted some of these subjects seen wide eyed here, especially its look at industry and corporations here which see them with a whimsy. Even in mind there is a person here who does raise the concern of too much power in corporate hands, from a Church minister of all people, the archetype of the preacher who would be a potentially scornful figure in a more modern film too, the film still finds an optimism that feels out of reach and surprising to see. One of the huge virtues to this tone still working is that Bryne also, with the help of the production team and cinematographer Ed Lachman, has a visual eye, which is really an advantage in fleshing out this world of distinct images.

True Stories is strange when it wishes to - a reoccurring character, an older woman (Jo Harvey Allen) whose pathological lying is a series of comically tall tales would make Baron Munchausen proud, allows this film to evoke the image of your mother keeping your removed tail from birth in a fruit jar. It is however more gracious as a film, open and kind to Middle America in its quirks, without anyone being dismissed. There is mild satire, or at least an eye to the world at the time, most connected to the theme of connectivity in all its quirks. Even content like television, which would be criticised as demonic in another film at the time, is seen with a playful curiosity even if with an extended parody of commercials as a music video at one point. Bryne's nameless narrator learns of this place with characters as we see snapshots of Virgil, merely an eye looking at the likes of television and modernity as eccentric. Even characters who would be depicted as grotesque or to be criticised, such as a well off woman so comfortable in wealth she can live her her life in bed with robot and human help, watching television, is treated with warmed. It is a film which even when showing some strange imagery and having fun with this on purpose, such as an elephant using an iron in one of the commercials on her television, True Stories is immensely sympathetic to all the characters onscreen. Even the businessman played by Spalding Gray, the highly regarded creative figure, gains Gray's prescience here in a small role, too humble and affable to make his corporate man, who laments that people now want to work all the time, hateable.  

The production design is exceptional; evoking this quirky world, it is all again without cynicism even when there is an intentional sense of humour there. A lobster on a bed of cucumber looks beautiful, part of a larger metaphor of a business-technological future that is completely alien to the more suspicious examples from tech giants in the days decades after, actually wholesome with utopian ideals than raising alarm bells. Seeing people dancing, secretly at night in their offices, and have lives in and out of the work place is itself more hopeful even in the modern day, that human beings (even in their eccentricities) can lead interesting lives. That in itself shows the distinction here in tone, a film that is both sweet and strange, to see a film without an ounce of darkness to its veins, all of humble town life where even business advances is not from heartlessness but a naive sense of American personality, not even getting into the anti-Reaganomics other films from this era touched on. The film's visual eye, and its lovable cast with Goodman always strong, is matched by the music, by the Talking Heads but sung by others too, with music videos and vignettes as striking to match. Early on, a fashion show with green Astroturf clothes among others, one of the songs sung by others, really emphasises the playfulness of the film alongside its qualities. Even the one piece explicitly with the Talking Heads is that TV advertisement parody, an incredible piece of work in itself, in splicing the band with ads, even having chocolate moulded versions of David Bryne and others for the confectionary section.

It is easy to see why True Stories was a maligned production at first, something very unconventional, and not a critique or satirical comedy either, too loving and quiet for that, and too loose and unconventional for the mainstream. Alongside this being where Radiohead got their band name from however, True Stories did clearly have enough traction until its eventual 2018 Criterion release, from a certain point of view a true cult film that took a while to get recognition but won it in the end. Even when proudly odd, having duelling cattle merchants contrasted by a male yodeller in the middle of them for a Virgil town celebration, it is contrasted unlike other films which would have found this ridiculous with a legitimate sense of admiration for this world onscreen.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None