The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 68, No. 2, Ed. 1 Monday, June 30, 1980 Page: 4 of 16
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Thresher/Fine Arts
Goat ropers need meaningful relationships, too
Urban Cowboy
Written by Aaron Latham and
James Bridges
Directed by James Bridges
American movies have often
tried to capture the atmosphere of
a certain region in order to add
flavor to an otherwise bland story.
Texas has apparently been deemed
fertile soil for such filmic
exploitation, Urban Cowboy
represents the latest and most
concerted attempt so far to cash in
on the state's sudden popularity.
Judging from Hollywood's proven
ability to romanticize, smear, or
generally distort its subject matter,
one could justifiably expect some
Giant-sized mistakes in this
portrayal of Texans and lifestyles.
Yet in all fairness, Urban Cowboy
manages to balance off its
inaccuracies with just enough
realism to salvage its credibility as
a film about Texas (and more
specifically Houston).
It is the isolated instances of
realism which, in spite of an almost
pathetically limp plot, lend the film
a degree of merit. Scenes such as
John Travolta's first dinner upon
arrival in Houston, and his fight
with archetypal bad-guy Scott
Glenn in an all-night diner seem
surprisingly genuine. Un-
fortunately, however, the
filmmakers saw to it that reality
did not gain the upper hand,
preferring instead to stay with the
tried and commercially true
canons of sentimentality,
simplification and stereotype.
In case you haven't heart yet,
Urban Cowboy is based on a
magazine article which describes
some of the ways working-class
Houstonians amuse themselves
after they finish their eight-hour
shifts. The broader implication of
the story is that the drabness of
their daily lives makes these people
desperate lor escapist, often
aggression-oriented activities. (So
next time some redneck in a pick-
up truck whips in front of you in
4:30 traffic on the Gulf Freeway.
Travolta looking Texan
be gracious, for he may be a victim
of the socio-economic system like
the characters in Urban Cowboy.
Furthermore, he may try to kill
you if you contest him.) But Urban
Cowboy does not exactly invite
sociological interpretations.
Rather, it seeks merely to tell the
tale of Bud (Travolta) and Sissy
(Debra Winger), and how they
deal with the ups and downs of
their relationship.
As a consequence, Urban
Cowboy fits into the boy-meets
girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-
back mold — the Hollywood
equivalent of the separation/
initiation/return motif. Bud leaves
his rural Texas home (actually
filmed near Rosenberg), bound for
the big city. The shots of him
driving into Houston are truly
impressive — enough to make any
native proud. After a brief
settling-in phase lasting all of one
afternoon, Bud starts to hang out
at Mickey Gilley's nightclub in
Pasadena. This is where the film
begins to falter. Interestingly,
Gilley's serves to detract from the
Texas-ness of Urban Cowboy, not
enhance it. Sure, there's lots of
kickers and country music; but the
extras seem more closely attuned
to Rodeo Drive and Steubner-
Airline Drive, and Mickey Gillev
sings the old rhythm and soul
tune Stand By Me instead of
authentic C&W.
Within roughly one week, Bud
has met and married Sissy, the
cowgirl of his dreams. Then
suddenly Bud, Sissy, love, and
Houston are all eclipsed by the
introduction of the film's most
persistent and relentless device, a
mechanical bucking bull which
simulates that particular rodeo
event. The bull threatens to
develop into the story's principal
character, (which must say
something about the depth of the
story), as it becomes the wedge that
severs the pair's happy marriage:
Bud rides it, Sissy wants to do the
same, and Bud's refusal to
condone cowgirl liberation leads
to the split. Aside from one
amusing scene in which Sissy
mounts the bull with undisguised
sexual fervor, though, the machine
would probably best have been
abandoned. So many aspects of
Urban Cowboy cry out for
elaboration that it seems
inexcusable to dwell on the
hackneyed - after - the - first - time -
you've-seen-it bull. What about
Bud's background, his work, his
other interests, for example? The
movie could also have brought in
several more characters, as well as
given us much more detail about
the most dynamic city in the U.S.
Eyebrows might legitimately be
raised at the notion of John
Travolta playing the hard-
drinking, hard-fighting, hard-
loving protagonist of Urban
Cowboy. He seems too much of a
'pretty boy' to be effective in this
role. Travolta as a Pasadena
redneck may be a little like casting
Paul Lynde as a Newark
longshoreman. Of course the
reason he got the part has nothing
to do with his cracker credentials,
but is simply the result of his recent
box office (and not coincideritally
TV) appeal. Nevertheless,
Travolta makes an effort, and at'
times (usually when his lines are
few) he performs adequately.
Debra Winger is somewhat more
convincing, looking like a real
welder's wife. And speaking of
welders, Scott Glenn is
refreshingly unappealing as the ex-i
con who takes up with Sissy and
teaches her everything she wants to
know about bucking bulls.
Houston's own Howard Norman
has a bit part — made even bit-er
during the editing process — as
Bud's younger brother.
On the whole, the cinema-
tography is more than satisfactory.
Naturally, settings such as
refineries (with all their verticals
and horizontals) almost defy a
cameraman not to take artsy
photographs. Yet some shots, like
those of brand new subdivisions on
the prairie with freshly-sprigged
tufts of grass where the lawn ought
to be, are quite eloquent. Anyone
residing in Houston will enjoy
these passing glimpses which add
more to the film than the writers
did.
If the bull (in its various forms)
is ignored, the viewer is left with a,
contemporary love story and a few
local trappings. Urban Cowboy
either succeeds or fails according
to one's reaction to these residual
elements. The film does not
attempt much more, which is
unfortunate. On the other hand, its
extremely limited scope has at least
steered Urban Cowboy away from
those disaster/ horror/ sci-fi fiascos
which supposedly represent the
state of the art for American films
in the 1980's, which is certainly a
a point in its favor.
—F. Brotzen
Cinema
Kubrick directs first hatchet job
The Shining
Written by Stanley Kubrick and
Diane Johnson
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
It is hot in Houston, really hot,
and under these conditions of
thermometric siege strange things
happen to the human mind.
University-trained intellects
carefully pruned into wonderful
Freudian literature-and-film
analysis machines collapse and are
reduced to simple devices which
seek simple entertainment
somewhere in the cool indoors.
Stanley Kubrick's new film, The
Shining, fills this bill just fine.
Dedicated film fans who
remember A Clockwork Orange
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and 2001: A Space Odyssey and
have thus come to expect
masterpieces from Stanley
Kubrick will find The Shining a
dissapointment. The ads are
touting The Shining as "A
Masterpiece of Modern Horror,"
the magnum opus horrorshock
epic of the decade, but it isn't. In
2001 and Clockwork Kubrick was
doing things nobody had quite
done before. (Remember, the Blue
Danube docking scene in Space
Odyssey? Remeber the Singing in
the Rain ultraviolence in
Clockwork?) Several scenes stand
out, but The Shining just doesn't
measure up to these earlier films.
Not to say that this isn't a very
good movie. The same meticulous
attention to detail which polished
Clockwork and 2001 into the gems
they are has quite clearly been
lavished upon The Shining as well.
Cinematography fiends, for
instance, will find much to enliven
their Coffee-at-Chaucer's-after-
the-Media-Center film technique
conversational jousting matches.
The film's opening footage is
superb, a wonderfully foreboding
aerial shot which quietly
transforms a glorious mountain
panorama into an eerie,
threatening environs. Equally
interesting is a one-camera style
which Kubrick uses to great
advantage in the opening interview
scene and in the chase scenes
through the hotel and the outdoor
Duvall as psychopathetic wife
hedge maze.
Some critics have hailed Jack
Nicholson's performance as the
finest of his career. This is
nonsense, People-magazine-
breathless media hype: Nicholson
demonstrates a fine pair of
triangularly arched madman's
eyebrows, and he is convincing as a
loving but psychopathic father
who will want to kill his child a few
days later, but his work in The
Shining remains a very good
performance of a pretty good
screenplay.
The film's other lead, Shelly
Duvall, does what she can with a
role underwritten for her talents.
'Nuff said. It is wise to keep in
mind that, since we judge things
against themselves, Kubrick films
have a far higher standard to meet
than most. This is a fine movie, and
after all, the theater is air
conditioned.
—Matt Mutter
1408
HYDE PARK
(across from the post office)
you gotta see it
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The Rice Thresher, June 30, 1980, page 4
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Dees, Richard. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 68, No. 2, Ed. 1 Monday, June 30, 1980, newspaper, June 30, 1980; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245442/m1/4/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.