042 - Mystery Train, 1989, United States. Dir. Jim Jarmusch.

Saturday, February 11, 2017

042 - Mystery Train, 1989, United States. Dir. Jim Jarmusch.

Have you seen Sling Blade?

It contains a classic scene where Billy Bob Thornton's character Karl Childers, who has just been released from serving years in an institution--which he calls "the nervous hospital"--is ordering food for the first time on his own.  He is trying to negotiate the large, adult world outside.  He walks through rural Arkansas and comes upon a Frostee Cream.

Karl stands there contemplating.  He is large and lumbering, slumped over, with a giant underbite.  And he makes slow and deliberate movements.  He speaks like a 33-1/3 record spinning at 27.

The pimply-faced teenage clerk stands inside the too-small window patiently trying to assist him.

Imagine Karl Childers talking as you read.  He begins on the second line.

Can I help you?
I was kinda wanting something to eat.
Well, what would you like?
You got any biscuits in there?
No, this is a Frostee Cream.  We don't serve biscuits.  We got a lot of other stuff.
What you got in there that's good to eat?
We got Big Chief Burgers, Bongo Burgers, Foot Longs, Corny Dogs, Frostee Shakes, Creamy Bars.  Did you want me to go through the whole list?
What do you like?
Well, the French fries are pretty good.
French fried potaters?
Yep, French fries.
How much you want for them?
They're 60 cents for medium and 75 cents for large.
I reckon I'll have me some of the big ones.
All right.  One large French fries.

And with that scene Billy Bob Thornton introduces the phrase "French fried potaters" into the public consciousness.

The boy straightens up in the window, and his paper hat pushes into the window frame above his head.  It knocks it off kilter.  He nervously reaches up with his hands to adjust it.  Throughout the exchange the boy keeps his gaze on Karl, incredulous at what he is witnessing, yet always appropriate and always polite.  It is an unforgettable moment.

The teenage boy is Jim Jarmusch.  He is 43 years old when Sling Blade is released.  And he is a force in American independent filmmaking.

Billy Bob Thornton had just acted in his movie Dead Man the year before, so when he was looking for a pimply-faced teenage boy to play the Frostee Cream clerk in his own movie, he had to look no further than to his fellow director friend.

And at 43 Jarmusch still looked the part.

It is important to understand how the independent film community sticks together.  How do you make a movie without the resources of a studio?  Without money, without equipment, without sound stages, without a skilled labor force?

We began our year discussing this question.  Go back and read our first entry, People on Sunday (001, January 1), about a group of twenty-something men in Berlin who had nothing, not even a script, who wrote their dreams on a napkin, who went out on the weekends and shot what they could while people abandoned them, and went on to become some of the great filmmakers in Hollywood history.

Billy Bob Thornton started to figure it out in 1992 when he and his writing friend Tom Epperson wrote One False Move, and Carl Franklin directed it.  He pushed forward with his 1994 short film Some Folks Call it a Sling Blade, directed by George Hickenlooper.  And he finally hit one out of the park when wrote, directed, and starred in the feature version, Sling Blade, and put himself on the map forever, winning himself an Oscar for Best Screenplay, and launching his career as a movie star.  So it is only fitting that Jim Jarmusch is acting in the film with him.

Kevin Smith worked it out in 1994, when he created View Askew Productions and made a movie called Clerks, about a group of guys working at a convenience store, and he launched his career as a filmmaker.  And what did he put in the closing credits?

Special Thanks to Jim Jarmusch (for leading the way).

So if Jim Jarmusch led the way, then let us look at Jim Jarmusch.  And his film Mystery Train.

What is "Mystery Train"?

"Mystery Train" is a song performed by Elvis Presley.  First recorded by Junior Parker.  Produced by Sam Phillips.  For both singers.

This Mystery Train is three groups of people coming to the Arcade Motel.  In Memphis.  Coming by train, by plane, and by car.  All on the same night, all hearing the same radio station--with DJ Tom Waits--all hearing the same Elvis Presley song--"Blue Moon"--and, the next morning, all hearing the same gun shot.

It is told in three stories.  1) Far from Yokohama.  2) A Ghost.  3) Lost in Space.

The film opens on railroad tracks cutting through the woods, the trees blanketed, covered in kudzu.  The train comes rolling down the tracks.  The train horn comes pushing down the tracks.

For some, this landscape may seem unfamiliar, like travelling to a foreign land.  For others, it looks like home, like the tracks across the street, like the kudzu down the street, with the sound of the ever-present horn.

Mitsuko and Jun pass junk yards, scrap heaps, landscapes.  They are pilgrims.  To Graceland.

(The Mississippi Delta is shining like a National guitar. / I am following the river down the highway to the cradle of the Civil War.)

She is enthusiastic.  He is bored.  He postures.  He poses.  He dreams of rockabilly glory.  He invents 50 ways to light a cigarette lighter.  She loves Elvis.  He loves Carl Perkins.  They argue.

The train arrives in the empty town.  In front of the United Warehouse and scraps of paper shuffling like tumbleweeds.  They go down into the bowels of the earth.  To Central Station.

A train station is a living museum, a memory still happening, a time capsule, a snapshot, almost a daguerreotype.  And a perfect place to film a film.

Yesterday in Blow-Out (041, February 10), John Travolta went through Philadelphia's 30th Street Station.  Today in Mystery Train, we go through Memphis' Central Station.

The first thing Mitsuko does is to shout into the cavernous hollow, betraying the emptiness of a bygone era.  "Nice echo!" she announces, always seeing the good in things.

They argue about where to begin.  He wins with Graceland, but in their meanderings they stumble upon Sun Records anyway, so they stay.  It is small.  The tour guide forces them all together and makes them slide sideways and she talks too fast for an American to understand, much less her Japanese visitors.  She lists the forgotten blues greats as though we all remember them.  She is as cheerful as a hot fudge sundae.

The two exit.  They have been in Memphis for maybe an hour and they are worn out.  She begs not to go to Graceland today but tomorrow.  She needs to rest.  He agrees.

Jun is burdened.  You wait for him any moment to announce that they have been had.

Jarmusch shows Memphis as a desolate place, a ghost town.  He follows them with tracking shots on a dolly track.  (We will see more of these shots later from both him and Wes Anderson.)  They walk on barren sidewalks past closed businesses, empty buildings.

You can save money on extras with this movie.  "Movie Comes to Town with a Cast of Ones.  Needed for filming tomorrow: a person, to play an extra.  Your job: walk past two people."

The Lamar Theater still holds up a marquee with the letters "Grand O  Opry."  This is a small old neighborhood one-screen theater in Memphis.  It is not the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.  What used to be here?  How long has it been closed?

They make their way to the Arcade Motel.  The Night Clerk and the Bellboy are worth the price of admission.  Watching Screaming Jay Hawkins will put a spell on you.  Four Rooms will come out six years later, and already you feel the twin pulse.  This could be the prequel.  It could be Three Rooms.

What happens to these two people in this motel?

What will happen to the others when they arrive?

The answer is a mystery.

Come ride the train.