Take One (Jul-Aug 1971)

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Book off the press October 25th. 36 on the machines and life-styles whose functions and freedoms we big people abuse and take for granted. | particularly enjoyed: a scene where the smallest dwarf (thus the film’s hero) makes several futile attempts at jumping up onto a large bed, a repeated sequence involving a car with its steering wheel tied and pedal depressed such that it is locked into an endless circular course, the dwarfs chasing, kicking, and otherwise abusing it in its helpless condition, and the car’s final plunge into a huge black hole. That Herzog keeps cutting back, time and again, to the same motifs is simultaneously tedious and hilarious. The audience with whom | saw this film seemed sullen and uncomfortable, and not particularly amused. Several left in the middle of the screening. It was the kind of reaction a young Bunuel would have relished. |’m sure ~Herzog giggled all the way through its making — fully aware of the effect his film would have on an unsuspecting audience. John H. Dorr FILLMORE A Twentieth-Century Fox release (1972). Technicolor. 105 mins. Conceived and Directed by: Richard T. Heffron. Producer: Herbert F. Decker. Executive Producer: Claude Jarman. Supervising Editor: Eli F. Bleich. Editors: Richard Clarke, Daniel Halas, Charles Titone. Photography: Al Kihn, Alan Capps, Paul Lohmann, Eric Saarinen. Cast: Bill Graham, Lamb, Cold Blood, Boz Scaggs, Hot Tuna, The Rowan Brothers, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane, New Riders of the Purple Sage, The Grateful Dead, It's a Beautiful Day, The Elvin Bishop Group, Santana. Unless |’m mistaken, the Academy has a rule against nominating an actor for playing himself. If I’m right about this, the Academy should change its rules in order to accommodate the nimble, peppery, immensely knowing and self-assured star turn of Bill Graham. who, in Fillmore, provides an absolutely smashing account of himself. Ostensibly an elegiac farewell to the Fillmore West, the film has been cunningly structured as a showcase for the impresario rather than his emporium. Snappy editing, calculated camera angles, rock stars confined to distinctly supporting roles — the whole works has been packaged in order to spotlight Graham front and center. And boy does Graham deliver, does he ever rise to the game of celebrity and the cult of personality. He’s given a star entrance, a walk along a huge line outside the Fillmore — the king graciously receiving homage from his youthful subjects — and a stunning Felliniesque star exit: amid the clutter of the final concert, balloon poignantly in hand, Graham glides through a single remaining spotlight. This studied frame is the fitting complement to.a complex, driving performance, a kind of high ‘50s Method-drenched, Kazan-directed feast of the neurotic actor. Businessman, social commentator, family man, regular guy, prima donna — we're treated to the many roles and the many sides of Bill Graham, and seldom indeed does a movie suggest such a detailed sense of the way a particular life is lived. Though obviously the Graham we are allowed to see is carefully packaged, it is a measure of the film’s success, and of Graham's persuasiveness, that we have the feeling we’re being offered the real Bill of Goods: Yessir, this is the sincere true in-depth story of Bill Graham. Graham with his little son, swinging, jogging in the park; Graham kibbitzing with a performer; Graham moving at the speed of light on the basketball court; Graham in a convivial moment with a journalist; Graham pleasureriding through wonderful San Francisco: these quick cuts are the garnish for the film’s entree: Graham the entrepreneur, for whom the office is home base, and the phone conversation his true metier. Quite properly, Businessman Bill’s most pungent moments are on the phone, exchanging sharp words with a temperamental member of Santana, alternately placating, pleading with and berating a recalcitrant Boz Scaggs, laying it on the line to the representative of a rejected light show. Graham on the phone is a double circus — as running commentary on, and counterpoint to, the supercharged phone conversations we get assorted grimaces, nods, winks, and muggings to staff, camera, and saucy secretaries. Graham's repertoire of emotion is large and resonant. Handling a petulant would-be performer, he’s tough, vitriolic. Reminiscing about his early history, his war-ravaged family and his years at an orphanage, the guy’s all heart. Describing the euphoria of the rock culture’s salad days, when no one was hurt and everyone had a good time, he’s well, yes, he’s charming. Attempting to account for the souring of the flowered vision, he’s the astute sober philosopher. Graham's got just the right mask for every occasion: here imperious, there the very essence of humility, now plunged in mockpuzzlement, now abristle with unshakable self-justification. Graham’s always “up” for the camera, conscious of his performance, but he’s absolutely believable. We know he’s acting, that the gestures and intonations are heightened (as well as tinged with irony and self-parody), but he makes us believe. At one point in his verbal peregrinations, Graham wonders what’s next for him. Need we point out that with such camera presence, with such flexible emotions, with such a sense of the apposite gesture and the requisite pause, with his Method-mumbled diction and his pleasingly lopsided weather-hardened looks, Bill Graham, movie actor, is a sure thing? Foster Hirsch of publications, including Film Quarterly, Cinema, The New York Times, Crawdaddy and Fusion.