Before all of you movie fans get in a tizzy, or I start getting calls from the
Uma Thurman Fan Club, or I get a rock thrown through my window with a blood-soaked note from Gus Van Sant tied to it, I'd better explain my position first on why I think
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is one of the most confused, confusing and overly-complicated movies ever. Believe me, this is going to be a long explanation.
Thing is, Van Sant is not a confusing director: he made such straightforward, easy-to-understand movies as the gritty and tough
Drugstore Cowboy and the funny and sometimes touching
My Own Private Idaho. And lest we forget later triumphs of the will such as
To Die For,
Good Will Hunting,
Finding Forrester,
Elephant and that award-winner of his
Milk. He's a man who enjoys his craft, knows what he's doing and has a direct line on what, exactly, entertainment should be. Never mind that misguided, maladroit 1998 remake of Hitchcock's
Psycho. He knows what he's doing.
Usually.
Hollywood was still coming to terms as to what to do with this Uma Thurman person, though. Sure, she's pretty and sure, she has talent and oh yeah, she has that "certain something". But what kind of an "actress" was she? A serious Oscar-caliber actress? A fun pop culture movie actress? A symbolic art film actress? Good lord, let's not turn her into a "celebrity actress", who just shows up in a film and says a couple of lines then gets her name in the square outline of the movie poster text at the bottom (that's what happened to Lindsay Lohan and Heidi Montag, after all).
Before I started writing this review, the first thing I did was look up the man whose same-named book was the basis of this
folderoi. Tom Robbins, it seems, is a writer of some note, having written some nine novels - many of them with intriguing titles. Look at "Still Life with Woodpecker", "Jitterbug Perfume", "Skinny Legs and All", "Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas" and one of almost assured future filmability, "Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates" (if just for the title).
I also noticed (thanks to Wikipedia), the following quote about how Mr. Robbins goes about writing any one of his given tomes:
"When he starts a novel, it works like this. First he writes a sentence. then he rewrites it again and again, examining each word, making sure of its perfection, finely honing each phrase until it reverberates with the subtle texture of the infinite. Sometimes it takes hours. Sometimes an entire day is devoted to one sentence, which gets marked on and expanded upon in every possible direction until he is satisfied. then, and only then, does he add a period."
Unfortunately, Van Sant didn't have the same meticulous care with his adaptation herein. Otherwise, we wouldn't be talking about it now, would we?
Okay, as difficult as this is going to be, let's discuss the plot: Sissy Hankshaw (Thurman) is a lady who was born with enormous thumbs that, coincidentally, help her in her chosen desire of a bohemian lifestyle in hitchhiking through the US. Sissy has also become something of a celebrity as a print and TV model for feminine hygiene products. Coincidentally, the ads in questions never showcase her thumbs, but then again, what do thumbs have to do with feminine hygiene?
Anyway, her effeminate NY agent known only as The Countess (John Hurt) sends Sissy on a couple of errands: one to meet up with a handsome young man named Julian (Keanu Reeves) and his entourage for a hook-up which never materializes, and another more eventful trip to the Rubber Rose Ranch and Beauty Spa in California to shoot a new hygiene commercial, using the mating dance of whooping cranes as the body of the shoot. Which means Sissy will also have to dress in crane feathers and wear a white unitard... which, again, do nothing to emphasize her thumbs.
Once she arrives at the Rubber Rose, she is taken in by Miss Adrian (Angie Dickinson), befriended by cowgirl Bonanza Jellybean (Rain Phoenix), Bonanza's cowgirl friends and comrades in arms - among their number the whip-cracking, euphemism-spouting Delores Del Ruby (Lorraine Bracco) and is introduced eventually to a mystical Asian man who lives in the mountains beyond the ranch, known only as "The Chink" (Noriyuki "Pat" Morita). Using the mistreatment and exploitation of the cranes as a means of demonstrating against the commercialism of modern society in general, the cowgirls take over the ranch from the Countess and feed the cranes a steady diet of peyote with their grain. This is all the police need to besiege the ranch, surround it and create the ways and means for a showdown.
...and of course, Sissy and Bonanza fall for each other and become romantically involved. Almost forgot to mention that.
I guess I have a handicap going into
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, seeing that I have never read Robbins' novel. Unfortunately, it would seem that Van Sant has only glanced at it himself as he wrote a script from it. Oh, there's speeches for everybody, and Uma gets the most of them, but there's also the feel that we're getting a
Cliffs Notes version or, worse still, a
Classics Illustrated version of the book that hits the highglights and leaves the rest in the dust.
Take for example, Sissy's childhood, which is treated as a pre-credits sequence. Aside from a birthday party, a trip to the doctor's and a visit to a fortune teller, that's it. Then she's running down the street in her best dress, after having flagged down a Pontiac with her ginormous thumb. What; no life in school? No childhood friends? No childhood enemies? No traumatic episodes where she discovers that nobody makes gloves to fit her?
Like I said, I never read the book, so there might indeed have been only a smattering of Sissy's childhood touched on. But if the script is any indication, what with everything that has been brought to life, it feels just a tad too pretentious to have made it TO book form, let alone BEYOND book form.
While we can fault Van Sant the writer, no one can fault Van Sant the director: we get some big, bright, images and sweeping panoramas of the desert and the night sky as stars speed by. there's a veritable Felliniesque parade of unusual faces, closeups, grotesque figures and a veritable clip show of comic book proportions introducing people, episodes, events, allusions and metaphysical whatchamacallits, all linked by the consistent narration of Tom Robbins himself, sounding like a world-weary, seen-it-all entity who is relating yet another of his "hey, did I ever tell you about THIS one" stories.
So the look is there, the script is half-finished, and that STILL isn't the beginning of the problems with this movie. And one of the biggest problems is with the cast. I know, and this is probably where I'm going to get the letters and rocks and so forth. Uma Thurman, while luminous and an actress of limitless talent, seems at odds as to how she performs Sissy Hankshaw. Considering her thumbs at times as if someone had stuck corn dogs over them, she seems dazes and confused as to what she is, exactly. Is she a catalyst? Is she along for the ride? Is she just looking on as everyone around her speechifies and postures? It's a toss-up as to what the script demands and, sadly, as we look into Thurman's eyes as we get closeup after closeup of her lovely face, seems to be adrift her own self. This may not be acting... Uma may indeed not have know just what, if anything, was going on.
But a worse fate is set for Rain Phoenix. Sister of River Phoenix (who gets a small cameo near the end of the film), she has an unfortunate presence for someone who is supposed to be an actress: a lazy look to the eyes, vacant smile and a voice that suggests she just read the script a few minutes before cameras rolled. I guess I should be complimenting her on being one of those "unaffected, natural actresses". More to the point that Rain is like one of those Drama Club hopefuls who over-enunciates every word without bothering to relay any difference in tone with voice nor face. Even when kissing Uma Thurman. That would be hard to do, I'd have to think.
Lorraine Bracco is a great actress, as anyone who has seen
Goodfellas and
Radio Flyer can tell you. But here, as she delivers 75% of her dialogue to the camera, cracks whips at snake and playing cards, gets covered with mud and grit as she sleeps in lake edges with whooping cranes and makes herself as quirky as possible, she forgets the cardinal rule of acting: to invest your character with any connectivity. But that's okay; everyone else seems to have done the same thing.
That can certainly be said of Pat Morita. Does anyone remember when he was nominated for an Oscar for his Mister Miyagi from
The Karate Kid? Almost forgot, didn't ya? Understandable: he only gets about 10-12 lines in this whole movie, not even counting his "NO! NO!! NOOO!!!" shouts during the climactic shootout. As someone who is supposed to be some sort of wise desert mystic, he sure plays dumb convincingly. Maybe his character of the Chink was the same way in the book? I guess that would have been more anti-establishment that way....
John Hurt at least is flamboyant enough as The Duchess to make himself stand out among the terminal whimsy of this whole enterprise. Buck Henry has a couple of scenes as a doctor that make you realize he may just be the only actor in this whole thing that successfully got away with just being himself. Angie Dickinson really doesn't get a chance to do much else than provide exposition. Keanu Reeves does even less as he suffers an asthmatic attack and gets a hypodermic needle in his buttocks - so much for acting.
I won't even get into the cameos provided by Carol Kane Ed Begley Jr., Crispin Glover, Roseanne Barr, Heather Graham, Udo Kier, Grace Zabriskie, Ken Kesey, Ken Babbs, Lin Shaye, William S. Burroughs and a literal blink-and-you'll-miss-him cameo by Edward James Olmos. All I'll say about them is they add less than nothing to a story that is about....
Well, wait a minute: what IS
Even Cowgirls Get The Blues about, anyway? Hitchhiking? Fashion modeling? Health ranches? The discreet charm of the bourgeois? Seeing as how this is set during the early Seventies (the time the book was released in), there's the whole counter-culture thing going on... but counter-cultural cowgirls? I guess they're standing in for the hippies that were so prevalent at that time. But since they are the symbol of individualism and standing against establishment - since let's face it: how many cowgirls are out there nowadays - what is it they're standing
against?
Feminine hygiene products? Maybe, seeing as how their initial stand against The Duchess and Miss Adrian consist of them pulling down their cowgirls britches so as to... oh, I'd rather not get into it. Suffice it to say it was effective.
What about the whooping cranes, though? The cowgirls take over the Rubber Rose Ranch so as to save the cranes too, but then the feminine hygiene angle is dropped. So what, does that mean we have to switch gears just like they do, or let one plot thread drop in favor of another?
And while we're on the subject, what does Sissy Hankshaw have to do with any of this? At times, it's like Uma is just sitting in the corner while everyone else does their thing. John Hurt minces about, Lorraine Bracco cracks her whip, Rain Phoenix looks her over blankly, Sean Young and Crispin Glover take turns groping her, Buck Henry ponders the meaning of her thumbs. All while Uma is just kind of there, stopping cars and airplanes alike with a mighty swipe of her rubber thumbs.
This movie is really a mess, and apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so. For only costing $8 million to make - really small potatoes for any major release movie in today's world - one would expect it to at least break even. Seeing that it made back just under $1.8 million once the cow(girl)s came home, this is a classic example of throwing as much unusual quirk into a movie that should have had more grounding than what it did.
The worst problem that
Even Cowgirls Get The Blues has is there is no central character serving as a barometer for all of this to be happening to/for/with. Uma Thurman is a fantastic actress, but has absolutely
no involvement with what's going on, nor does anyone else do likewise for her. So many plot threads go nowhere and trail away, serving only for a visual gag or some wannabe iconic imagery. People come and go, offering nothing and serving only to let the viewer exclaim, "hey, it's Roseanne Barr!" or "hey, it's Keanu Reeves!". Even the last series of scenes, which should have had some powerful connection with the audience, feel more like things happening because they had to pad out the last few minutes.
When a character's death has little to no effect on the viewer, there is a feeling that, perhaps, something was lacking. I would say there is more of a combination of writing, acting, direction, framing, intimacy and common connection with the viewer at odds with what should be expected at the basic storyline level.
It was only a year after
ECGTB that we got the same brand of story in
Forrest Gump, about another innocent traveling through the world and falling into various cultural phenomenon throughout his life. I think we have a comparison that could be called less than favorable here. Much like my feelings for this movie.
Let the calls, rocks and blood-soaked notes begin.
