Payday

Eliot's wishful illumination ("After such knowledge, what forgiveness?") is squashed by a hard-boiled crack ("People in Hell want ice water, too"). The Möbius strip of second-tier fame is given a name, "cowboy music," the harsh analysis is sustained to the very end. The crooner (Rip Torn) is twice seen in his trade, oozing homespun ditties under roadhouse lights and mulling a melody around in a motel room, eyes hooded with shadow in starkly lupine close-up. For the most part, however, his focus is on humping, boozing, pill-popping and general hell-raising, propelled by his oily grin and protected by the walls of his entourage. The manager (Michael C. Gwynne) deals wearily in haggling and payola, the main squeeze (Ahna Capri) dresses him down ("A little rich kid, with a lot of toys") and is thrown out of the Cadillac, replaced by the vacant groupie (Elayne Heilveil). The pit stop with the disc-jockey (Earle Trigg) is a virtual dance of mutual manipulation, quail hunting with the guitar player (Jeff Morris) segues into a scuffle. "Quit or fired?" "Little bit of both." Quite the dollop of Seventies neo-neorealism, Daryl Duke's view of the Alabama tour is a miniature canvas perfectly observed. The chauffeur (Cliff Emmich) has his loyalty exploited in the wake of a deadly altercation, the aspiring songwriter (Henry O. Arnold) tags along on the endless road to Nashville. Visit to the ex-wife (Eleanor Fell), "either four months early or eight months late" for a kid's birthday. A long lineage of excruciation (Robson's Champion, Kazan's A Face in the Crowd, Cassavetes' Husbands), a most harrowing comedy anchored by Torn's magnificent seediness. It concludes mid-sentence, as it were, with a suggestion of Osborne's Luther ("like a ripe stool in the world's anus...").