SAMANTHA WENDEL
My Dinner With Alice
I’ve been sitting for over an hour trying to figure out
which came first -- the Cheap Trick theme song to Roadie or
the film itself. The two seem so deeply interconnected. Rick
Nielsen, with one hand firmly on the pulse of late ‘70s America -- the other
on his five-neck guitar -- and Roadie, a strange and wondrous tug-o-war of
minutiae. Perhaps like all great partnerships before it, without one cannot
exist the other. But everything will work out if you let it.
Roadie (1980) demands you keep an open mind and an open heart. Open
to 106 minutes of Meat Loaf. Open to the idea that he could be a being
of sexual desire and a leading man. Open to thoughtful, tequila-drunk
discussions of Martian women. Open to awkward sexual tension, drugs and
excessive cameos. A film that’s more of an ode to other things than it is a
thing itself. A film from a long-forgotten time when audiences accepted,
without hesitation, that their female and male leads be chip-toothed and
Meat Loaf, respectively. A time that is missed -- not by many -- but by
the strong few who dare to wade through the misshapen and physically
unappealing.
Descending from the sky like a dusty, bloated, denim prince -- the boogiewoogie king of the chair -- Travis W. Redfish (Meat Loaf) is a long-haired,
beer-drinkin’, wrestling-lovin’, girl-twirlin’ Texas truck driver turned Ali
of roadies. Our sweaty hero’s tale begins at Redfish Salvage, the Redfish
family homestead and business -- aptly filmed in the same decrepit 1900s
farmhouse as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and home to a family combed
from the bleakest moments of Faulknerian Gothic Americana. Travis’s small
town plight leads him astray and into the immoral world of the rock ‘n’ roll
circus -- a long, exhaustive series of mundane events to include but not
limited to: succumbing to frequent bouts of astral clarity, kissing Blondie,
coining the slogan “No bazooms, no ride,” and bar brawlin’ -- until finally
he is drug-napped by Los Angelites, proving once and for all, that the world
don’t end at the county line.
of moral depravity, but she has maintained certain inalienable rights
as an American: the right to lose one’s virginity to the celebrity of one’s
choosing. And she has chosen Alice Cooper, playing into every young
girl’s devirginizing fantasies of going to New York City and having dinner
with the Bela Lugosi of rock ‘n’ roll (complete with the snake, the eyes,
the black leather and the red cup thing). The first punk -- sick, depraved
and unchristian -- Cooper’s tepid words at dinner are almost as soft as
his black, feathered locks. But who can deny his charm? Certainly not
Lola, a woman in moral flux, driven by her need to be in close proximity to
talentless piles of hamburger.
Lola and Travis have a lot more in common than just being a part of this
defiantly absurd film. They’re both seeking what lacks the desire to be
sought. This is one sweat-sheathed man’s fall into the statutory bowels
of virginal hell and one young girl’s journey from failed groupie to certified
psychic to Meat Loaf’s sex companion -- a love for the ages. Roadie is a
film void of value or pretension. Like most others, it teaches that love is
a tool best used to hide the fact that your script doesn’t contain anything
that could even be accidentally mistaken for a plot. When in doubt, add
a persistently awkward feeling of sexual interest between your two main
characters that lingers like that friend you invited over to crash on your
couch for a couple of weeks while he was in between jobs. If you’re lucky,
maybe he’ll only almost eat all of your food and score you free drugs in
exchange for the rent money he keeps promising will come “any day now.”
Said drugs would be very beneficial to anyone who mistakes this for a
movie instead of the roomful of pseudo-famous people that it is.
Roadie is an erroneous love letter glorifying rock ‘n’ roll through the most
unglorifying means possible, the bottom-dwelling squalor of touring:
roadies and groupies. The greatest groupie that ever lived, the sister of
mercy of rock ‘n’ roll, Lola Bouilliabase (Kaki Hunter) is committed to
pawing and heaving herself at whatever shit has floated to the top -- or
lower middle -- of popular music. In true Pamela des Barres fashion, Lola
is sixteen-year-old jailbait with a cosmic connection to Jerry Lee Lewis. You
know like, rock ‘n’ roll and the cosmic mechanism maaaaaaan. But unlike
Pamela, a sexual pioneer delusional with teenage hormones, Lola’s past
probably doesn’t include stories of cocaine “softies”, licking coke off of
cum-stained green room sectional couches, preteen S&M with cock-rocker
Jimmy Page (whose penis I have affectionately nicknamed “Hammer of the
Gods”), phallic fruits, pee play or interests in the occult. It’s hard to imagine
a life where you’re only as good as your last lay -- but try explaining your
modern feminist paradigm to Suzy Creamcheese.
Unfortunately, Lola’s