"Joe Bob Goes to the
Drive-In" for 3/11/94
cutline: Bo Derek lives to emote
again, in "Woman of Desire."
By Joe Bob Briggs
Drive-In Movie Critic of Grapevine,
Texas
What
the heck do people mean when they say "premiere"?
I
thought "premiere" meant, "This is the first goldang time they
ever showed this movie--ANYWHERE."
But
every week I get stuff in the mail from film festivals--where did all these
film festivals come from?--where they're all advertising the
"premiere" of THE SAME MOVIE. They've got your West Coast Premiere,
your East Coast Premiere, your Florida Premiere, your European Premiere--and
I'm thinking, "What am I supposed to do--call my mom and say, 'Don't
FORGET--this weekend is the FIRST time they'll be showing 'The Getaway' in
southern Illinois? Of course, they already HAD the NORTHERN Illinois premiere.
I hope you didn't miss it."
You
know, there used to only be two film festivals in the whole world--the Venice
Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival. And these two festivals would
compete for films, and whichever one got the film, they would have the
PREMIERE. Which meant, that was the first place and the first time you could
see the movie. They didn't have the Italy Premiere and the France Premiere. They
just had the PREMIERE. Now even THEY don't do this. They just say it has to be
the first time the movie's been shown outside its native country.
And
the reason they do this is that there are 497 MILLION film festivals out there.
Passaic, New Jersey, has a film festival. There's a film festival in Avoriaz
that sends me press releases. I don't even know what COUNTRY Avoriaz is in.
They've got Science Fiction Film Festivals, Horror Film Festivals, French Film
Festivals, Iranian Film Festivals, Children's Film Festivals, and even PORNO Film Festivals. And ever dang
one of these things has premieres.
Listen
to me. As long as the film doesn't get scratched, it DOESN'T MAKE ANY
DIFFERENCE whether you're the FIRST person to watch the movie or the nine
MILLIONTH person to watch the movie. It's not like the actors are gonna PERFORM
BETTER for that opening night crowd. It's not like the director is gonna,
"Wow, this is such a great feeling tonight, I think I'll throw in three
extra scenes, JUST FOR THE PREMIERE."
If
it's in the movie, it will STAY in the movie.
If
it's NOT in the movie, you can't make it appear by going on opening night.
Don't
send me any more invitations. Please.
I'll
go to the Joe-Bob's-Neighborhood-in-Grapevine-Texas Premiere. That'll be just fine
with me.
And
speaking of something you'll definitely wanna rush right out and see in
wide-screen Cinerama Technicolor Smell-o-Vision, Bo Derek is getting nekkid
again, but this time it's possible to sit through the ENTIRE MOVIE, because
John Derek is NOT directing. Actually, "Woman of Desire" is one of
the weirdest goldang things I've run across lately, because the guy who IS
directing is Robert Ginty, star of "The Exterminator" and many other
tough-guy action flicks.
He
wrote this script about some people on a Caribbean island who run around
double-crossing one another and jumping in and out of bed a lot, and he got
Robert Mitchum to be in it, even though Big Bob is slurring a lot of his words
these days, and then he hired Jeff Fahey and Steven Bauer, who are the two guys
you hire when you can't get Bruce Boxleitner and Jeff Conaway, and then he
hired Bo to be the love interest get-nekkid-every-ten-minutes femme fatale
Sharon Stone type. And I watched about half of this movie, thinking to myself, "You
know what? Bo has finally gone to the Actors Studio or somewhere and got her
some LESSONS."
And
then I realized that about every fortieth word Bo said had a TEENY TINY British
accent.
And
then I realized that Bo's voice has changed. A LOT.
And
then I realized that Bo's mouth doesn't always open at the same time the word
comes out.
Don't
worry about it, though, because you'll NEVER be looking at her mouth.
What
we got here is basically the story of a guy who washes up on the beach one day,
babbling about the yacht he fell off of, and then you find out that Bo Derek
was on the yacht, and she was sleeping with him, and she was also sleeping with
a guy who died on the yacht, and she was also sleeping with another guy on the
yacht, and she was also sleeping with half the sailors in the Atlantic, and
pretty soon Jeff Fahey is being charged with murder and sent to the Crossbar
Hotel, but he manages to hire Robert Mitchum as his lawyer, and after about 74
confusing plot twists, we end up with the big "carnival" scene where
it's all explained--and lemme just say right here, if I see ONE MORE MOVIE
where the final chase scene is in a carnival, a Mardi Gras, a parade, a State
Fair midway, a funhouse, the Santa Monica Pier, or anyplace else that has
goofballs wearing giant clown faces, I'm gonna puke on my shoes.
I
hate to tell on Robert, but this script has one scene in it where he STEALS a
whole speech from Tennessee Williams' play "Orpheus Descending,"
which was made into the movie "The Fugitive Kind" starring Marlon
Brando. It's the speech where Marlon talks about the little birds that don't
have legs and spend their whole lives on the wing. When I saw the scene in this
movie, I thought it was a JOKE at first, but they do it with a straight face.
They just LIFTED the speech out of the play--or maybe the movie--and thought
NOBODY WOULD NOTICE.
What
is this world coming to?
Two
dead bodies. Seventeen breasts. Multiple aardvarking. Gratuitous midget. The
dreaded multiple flashback Fu. Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Jeff
Fahey, as the dimwit sailor who says "I would have done anything for
her"; Steven Bauer, as the iron-faced boyfriend who says "If this guy
lays a hand on you, I'll kill him"; Robert Mitchum, Mr. "Thunder
Road" himself, for keeping that drive-in career alive; and Bo Derek, as
the Queen Slut of the Caribbean, who says "A long time ago I decided that
the key to life was pleasing men."
Two
stars.
Joe
Bob says check it out.
JOE BOB'S ADVICE TO THE
HOPELESS
Victory Over Communism! The Kanopolis
Drive-In in Kanopolis, Kan., the only drive-in between Topeka and Dodge City,
still has its original 40-ton steel screen, its original window speakers, a low
$3.50 admission price, and old-fashioned carbon-rod projectors, creating a
brighter image than modern projectors. Not only that, but Tony Blazina, the man
who built the drive-in in 1951, still OPERATES the projector. The screen is
built from parts of eight oil derricks and 300 pounds of welding rods. On its
opening day, May 15, 1951, the feature was "The Red Stallion," and on
its 40th anniversary, May 29, 1992, the feature was "The Wizard of
Oz." The only time Tony has ever been away from his theater is during the
three weeks during 1992 when he was recuperating from surgery for throat
cancer. The Kanopolis can hold 170 cars, Tony's wife Olga still takes the
tickets at the gate, and it's the only profitable drive-in in America located
in a town this small (population 600). Jim Kanady of Hutchinson, Kathryne
Perney of Salina, Marion J. Schroll of Topeka, Fred Rich of Kansas City, Mo.,
Robert S. Lauderdale of Independence, Mo., Andy Bagley of Kansas City, Mo., and
Barbara McDonald of Columbia, Mo., all remind us that, with eternal vigilance,
the drive-in will never die. To discuss the meaning of life with Joe Bob, or to
get free junk in the mail and his world-famous newsletter, "The Joe Bob
Report," write Joe Bob Briggs, P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, TX 75221. Joe Bob's
Fax line is always open: 214-368-2310.
Dear Joe Bob:
Your column has been a fixture around our
house for a couple of years and in most cases you are right, but your scope on
Sam Kinison is dead wrong and you owe a lot of people an APOLOGY. We are not
exactly "straight" people--I was a burglar at 16, a "renowned"
writer at 23 with a novel about black magic and rock and roll under my belt, my
wife is a drop-dead gorgeous former topless dancer and stripper whose taste in
music runs toward Enya and Cowboy Junkies and whose taste in movies runs toward
barbarian slut films and whose former stage act included whipping herself on
stage with a whip dipped in theatrical blood . . .
We met Sam Kinison at a party in Santa
Monica at one point and we found him vain, arrogant, narcissistic, a bully of
both men and women, self-centered, racist, ugly, vicious and smelly. He didn't
scream all the time because he was sensitive and injured by the world, he
screamed because he couldn't stand not getting attention. We LITERALLY hugged
each other and jumped up and down in the kitchen when we learned he had been
killed in an auto accident. It was like getting reassurance that there is a
God.
Best wishes,
K & C
Columbus, O.
Dear K & C:
We're all the same. None of us are any
worse than the others.
Maybe some day you'll figure this out.
Dear Joe Bob,
I spent Thursday and Friday with Cambodian
and Vietnamese refugees and my students (who are working toward a B.S. in
misery). About 1 p.m. Friday, I walked around the corner of a building on San
Jacinto Street and stepped into a group of four or five Amerasians. I guess
they could be classified as young adults. I stopped and we talked for awhile.
Two of the students came over and in the
next 30 minutes we determined that there were several infants and children in
need of immunization and various other health-related services. As we left to
arrange for what was needed, I took the notion to have one of my students take
a picture of these young people and me. This is the point of the letter:
There we were, a young woman whose mother
was Vietnamese and father black American; the young woman's seven-month-old
daughter (father Vietnamese); another young woman whose mother was Vietnamese and father white American; two of
her children; a young man whose mom was Vietnamese and father white American;
and a 48-year-old former Marine--standing there together in East Dallas having
one photograph taken by a Baylor student. They really wanted their pictures
taken--me too--all together.
Now, this evening, I'm sitting here reading
your piece on Lenny Bruce. I'm not sure how this all fits--but it does. Thank
you. It helps.
Sincerely,
Charles Kemp
Dallas
Dear Charles:
I guess you could say we're all in this
together, WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT, right? That's what Lenny was up to, I
think.
Joe Bob,
Politically correct terms:
Large busted (big hooters)--bilaterally
prominent, bilaterally extrusive
Airhead (stupid)--intercranially vacant
Promiscuous--libidinously nonrestricted
Artificially large-busted (fake
hooters)--pectorally improved, mammarily enhanced
Small-busted (little hooters)--horizontally
impaired
Lesbos/homos--gender confused
Lesbophobic/homophobic (queer haters)--lost
sense of own business, sexually restrictive
Psychotic (crazy)--mentally disenfranchised
Joe Bob, get a politically correct help
line.
Later,
Phil Bob Keady
Sheridan, Ore.
Dear Phil Bob:
My favorite is "intercranially
vacant." You could also say "neurologically over-oxygenated."
Hey Joe Bob,
I'm a fan. Here's my nineties PC list:
Nudists--the Clothes Hampered.
Lawyers--the Vertebrate Wanting.
Televangelists--the Aerosol-Folically
Blessed.
Republicans--the White-Shoed
Truth-Impaired.
Russian commies--the Cyrillically Dogma'd.
Chinese lady swimmers--the Generously
Testosteroned.
Politicians--the Ethically Unencumbered
Dual-Functioning Loquation-Endowed.
Mormon midget albinos--No Pigment Pygmy
Polygamists.
Joe Bob recognized on the street--the
Dentally Depleted.
I know a good
dentist,
Glenn Keshner
Mountain View, Calif.
Dear Glenn:
Maybe we should invent a label for the
labellers. Something like Cerebellum-Lightened.
Dear Joe Bob;
I'm writing in concern to your article
entitled "More Teens on a Stick." The way you talked about and
portray males is a disgrace to manly men. I mean, pick on women for a change.
We can't stand some panty-waste dilettante who doesn't stand up to them and put
them in their place! I mean, some women start screaming and these pussyfoot
males start kissing up to them.
"Oh-oh. We're sorry. We'll change, but please don't stop having sex
with us." Grow up! Who's in charge, anyway?
But, while we're talking about getting raw
sewage shoved down our throat, you are in my mind the BEST MOVIE CRITIC! By
FAR! I've been spreading the word with great response every time I have someone
read your articles. But I must tell you in a million words or less how I came
across your dogma. I found a write-up you did on a movie I just saw, "Year
of the Dragon," in 1986. But the exactness was too much. You pulled out
all the stupidity in the movie and brought it to light. After that, I turned to
you for the best in entertainment. Like what some ex-Playboy bunny said,
"Nobody does it better."
But, Joe Bob, do you have a collection of
your articles for sale? If so, fill me in. I lost my "Yoko Ono Arts and
Garbage Show" one. After reading that it rejuvenated my art career. Now I
take half-eaten Big Macs, put them in formaldehyde and sell them for 100 bucks.
Thank you, Yoke-o.
Hey, Joe Bob, I saw this movie by Mr.
Woods, "Orgy of the Dead." A must-see. A blast from the past. Check
out the mummy and the wolfman.
P.S. Is George Bush from Texas? I thought
he was a Yankee but I hear him speak with the worst (no insult intended) Texas
accent I've ever heard. Is he for real? And who does he think he's fooling?
Surely not anyone from Texas.
Odd-E-Ose,
Joe Killmaier
San Francisco
Dear Joe:
There's something even WORSE than Ed
Wood's "Orgy of the Dead."
It's the "Milton Berle's Greatest
Comedy Highlights" video sold on an 800-number commercial.
Some things are just too grisly for
video.
© 1994 Joe Bob Briggs All Rights Reserved