Galled Stones

Cocksucker Blues

Directed by Robert Frank

At the USA Cinema 57

February 23

EVERYONE has been paying a shitload of attention lately to this 16-year-old film, and there are four basic reasons for the hoopla:

First of all, its title, Cocksucker Blues, is fun to say. It makes the girl at the ticket counter blush at you, and one finds it scrawled on the walls of the bathroom. It's also, I admit, fun to print in newspapers, especially considering that local papers chickened out this week and puzzled thousands with mysterious reviews of "CS Blues" (Caribou Shit? Carrot Sticks? Carbon Sulfate?).

Secondly, it's a film about the Rolling Stones, and as director Robert Frank admitted to me while signing promo posters in the lobby before the screening, "Anything concerning the Stones is by definition bound to create hype."

Thirdly, the promo people who are in charge of Frank's new film Candy Mountain have timed the showing of Cocksucker Blues to coincide with the release of the new film in an attempt to saturate Boston with a Robert Frank revival and, in doing so, gain a little extra publicity.

But most of all, everyone's excited about Cocksucker Blues because it's incredibly hard to get a ticket. Scalpers were selling them outside for 70 bucks. In fact, there are very few people in the world who have ever seen this film, because Mick Jagger, when he first saw it, threatened to sue Frank to keep it from being released.

It's a weird story. The Stones asked Frank to make a movie about their 1972 tour, and he followed the Stones around with 16mm and Super 8 cameras, shooting whatever happened to be taking place in cinema verite style. Unfortunately, what took place turned out to be some pretty rough stuff, including the band's drug use, and later, when Keith Richards got busted for heroin in Toronto, the Stones were afraid that the film might be used as evidence against him and threatened a court order against its release.

The final outcome of the resulting legal tangle was a bizarre out-of-court settlement by which Frank agreed that Cocksucker Blues would only be shown in one moviehouse on one night each year. This year, because Frank's new film is opening in Boston, that one screening occured at Cinema 57.

THE two questions on everyone's mind in the theater lobby were "How sleazy is it?" and "Is it any good?"

Well, if it's sleaze you're after, try these little morsels:

--Mick and the boys banging on drums and tambourines while some roadies toss a lauging naked girl around their private jet.

--Two unidentified bodies having sex on that jet.

--Groupies snorting coke in the dressing room before a show, while the glitterati--Warhol, Capote and Princess Lee Radziwill (whoever she is)--look on.

--Roadies and, yes, Keith, shooting up, including one depressing scene with a young groupie wearily searching her arm for a functional vein.

--About two seconds of someone's penis, possibly Mick's, on blurry 8mm.

--An apparently stoned Keith Richards dropping a television from his hotel window for kicks.

--A groupie pensively rubbing someone's semen all over her naked body.

Pretty great stuff, huh? Worth that 70 bucks?

As to whether the film is any good, the answer, surprisingly, is yes. It's actually rather superb, a stunning visual record of the rock touring phenomenon, and a clear display of Frank's singular talent for effortless camera work.

The great irony of this film is that it isn't really about the Rolling Stones nearly so much as it is about a rock tour--yes, with its attendant sleaze, but also with its attendant boredom, superficiality, dreariness and plain stupidity. The sleaze isn't a dominant theme so much as a simple reality. Something happened--Keith shot up--so here it is on celluloid. The camera doesn't pay any special attention to Keith's drug use, at least no more attention than anyone on the tour seems to be paying. Frank's chief aim in this film seems to have been true cinema verite, a capturing of life as it unfolds around the camera. There is no indication that he was exploiting the Stones so much as simply watching them.

The few concert segments which Frank included do seem to have the express intent of deglamorizing the musicians and their work. During a concert with Stevie Wonder, for example, we watch Mick Jagger awkwardly attempt to share a mike with the blind musician. He bends over Stevie's piano bench, dodges the waves of his unknowing head, looks exasperated and finally gives up. The one close-up on Stevie himself captures him as he accidentally knocks his dark glasses off and fumbles to slip them back on.

COCKSUCKER Blues contains few moments of the Stones talking to the camera. Generally we are overhearing what they say, and usually it's rubbish: Mick, for example, ordering a fruit plate from room service, bitching about the heat in a station wagon, or mumbling nonsense while slipping into his psychedelic stage costume. A significant part of the soundtrack is just ambient sound, whether it be a radio or TV playing in the background or just someone mumbling behind the camera. Frank entirely avoids the obviously glamorous option of playing loud Stones music through the entire film, which would effectively have turned it into a rock video.

He clearly, however, made use of a great many montage techniques in piecing together the various parts of the footage: part in color, part in black and white, part in Super 8 and part in 16mm. There is plenty of quick, handheld camera work, following the Stones through corridors and dressing rooms and fending its way through crowds.

Oddly enough, by the time the film was over, I sensed an air of disappointment in Cinema 57's capacious movie hall. It was as though the crowd was slowly realizing that Cocksucker Blues could never have lived up to the rumors surrounding it. What were people expecting? What did they want to see?

The most common reaction to the film, judging from what I overheard in the lobby afterwards, was one of disillusionment with fallen idols. The Stones themselves just didn't seem all that exciting as real people, and touring with them looked something like a drag. All of this seemed to have not a few Stones fans pretty bummed out, and perhaps that was the real reason Jagger wanted the film suppressed. However, those of us who haven't always harbored the secret desire to tour with the Stones were able to appreciate Cocksucker Blues as a finely crafted minor masterpiece by a classic experimental filmmaker.