6/2/08: Medium Cool (1969)We’re all for this “Recreate ’68” movement if it makes Robert Forster a star again. We recently covered the end of his leading-man career with 1978’s
Avalanche. Things worked out fine for Forster, though, including a character-actor comeback after an Oscar-nominated turn with
Jackie Brown in 1997. He was always working—like in
Uncle Sam—but it’s been nice to see Forster saved from low-budget exile.
Medium Cool is one of Forster’s important early performances, and a proper cult film as a masterful blending of medium and message. Veteran cinematographer Haskell Wexler stepped up as director for a true classic of cinéma-vérité. He took his film crew to Chicago during the summer of the 1968 Democratic Convention, and used the real-life drama as a background to his tale of an aloof news cameraman (Forster, as John Cassellis) who has what’s almost a political awakening.
Medium Cool was embraced by the Leftists of the day. That’s nice. It kept the film’s reputation alive, and we can now enjoy
Medium Cool as a conservative celebration. The film starts with Cassellis and soundman Gus (Peter Bonerz) coldly shooting footage of an automobile accident on an underpass. “Better call an ambulance,” says Cassellis as they return to the WHJP-TV news wagon. There’s a guy above who’s walking past, but he doesn’t see the accident. He doesn’t have the right perspective.
Then we get one of the best title credits ever—later ripped off for the closing of
The Love-Kill Murders. Mike Bloomfield’s theme combines surf docs and spaghetti westerns while twanging away as a motorcyclist cruises through Chicago. Then we’re in the midst of a cocktail party where media types are debating the classic “if-it-bleeds-it-leads” mentality. Reporters are discussing the risk of death or maybe even damaging a $1,200 lens. One impassioned partygoer makes a point that really holds up:
I’ve made films on all kinds of social problems, and the big bombs were where we went into detail and showed why something happened. Nobody wants to take the time. They’d rather see 30 seconds of somebody getting their skull cracked, turn off their TV set, and say, ‘Wasn’t that bad..’”People skipping the details? Yes, that sounds like
1968.
We cut to some footage of protesters—most likely real, although we’ve never broken down what Wexler filmed naturally. We know the guy cheated a few things. The hippies certainly sound real, quickly going from reasonable complaints (“We see a war we do not want”) to idiocy (“We see an apathy toward love and brotherhood”). Then the gang of white guys starts singing “We Shall Overcome” before they’re tear-gassed. This is already great stuff.
Then we get to see more of Cassellis, who’s certainly one of America’s best-dressed cameramen. His fashion sense matches the film’s love for cobalt blue. David Cronenberg must’ve sprained a wrist taking notes the first time he saw this one at his local theater. Cassellis and Gus are interviewing some Kennedy volunteers.
“Why are you working for Kennedy?” asks Gus. “He’s got long hair,” says one ditz. There’s another young guy who doesn’t support Kennedy. He goes off on a rant about how RFK helped cover up the truth behind JFK’s assassination. Fortunately, a passing El train drowns out the creep. Gus had said earlier that the train wouldn’t be a hindrance. He was right. It’s a big help.
Cut to hillbilly music while a kid plays around with pigeons. We’ll get back to him. First, Cassellis has a hot date. He picks up a blonde nurse at her hospital, and finds that some kids have ripped off his radio antenna. Somebody stole his hubcaps a few days before. He complains about the “rotten kids.” The nurse doesn’t know what’s the big deal: “Channel 8’s got a lot more where those came from.”
“That’s not the point,” replies Forster. Then he takes her to a roller derby game with plenty of catfights and a midget referee. That, naturally, leads to hot sex back at Cassellis’ bachelor pad. A big sound montage tries to make a political or cultural point, but all we hear is the sound of a dream date unfurling.
Then we see more of that hillbilly kid in a crappy Chicago apartment. He’s reading a book about homing pigeons, and the animal’s habits make for a harsh metaphor about his own broken home. Times are tough all over, as we’re reminded when the camera cuts to a kitchen staff working while RFK is giving a campaign speech in the next room: “I would hope…now that these primaries are over, that we can now concentrate on having a dialogue or a debate…”
Hillary says don’t count your chickens, Bobby—and she’s proven right as frantic Secret Service men suddenly burst into the kitchen. Keep in mind that RFK’s murder actually happened during the filming of
Medium Cool. We cut to Cassellis and Gus out covering the funeral. They’re in a cab, watching the other camera crews set up. A song plays on the soundtrack:
Oh no, I don’t believe you You say that you think you know the meaning of love You say love is all we need You say with your love, you can change all of the fools All of the hate I think you’re probably out to lunchThat’s Frank Zappa’s “Oh No.” We’ll hear a lot of Zappa during this film, and it’ll mostly be his best anti-hippie tunes. He wrote a bunch of those.
Cassellis and Gus interview a hot older babe about how her family likes to go to Canada over the summer. So do we. Meanwhile that hillbilly kid is talking to a census taker about his family. We learn he’s from West Virginia, and he flashes back to his daddy teaching him how to shoot at cans and empty Jim Beam bottles. Daddy empties the Jim Beam bottle first.
Back in Chicago, Cassellis stops that same kid from breaking into his car. He picks up a basket that the kid drops. It has the family’s address. That’s the start of the plot, but Cassellis first has to have a date with that nurse again. They’re in bed, and she’s talking about the
Mondo Cane documentary. Specifically, a scene about some turtles on an island that picked up some radiation from atomic bomb testing. The turtles were so addled that they couldn’t find the sea, and would go inland to die.
“Aw,” says Cassellis. “I’m crying.”
Her big point is that Cassellis should think about if the cameramen helped the turtles.
“How the hell do I know what they did?” says Cassellis. “Those were Italian cameramen!”
Yeah, they probably took the turtles and gutted them to use as props for a cannibal movie they were making the next week.
If you didn’t notice, we linked earlier to Eddie Adams’ famous photo of the execution of a Viet Cong officer. Turns out that Cassellis has that same photo in his apartment. We first see it fleetingly, but then the camera lingers on it while Cassellis and the nurse have sex again. Yeah, we think it’s an exciting shot, too.
Forster drops that basket off and meets the hillbilly kid’s mother. They have a nice conversation; it seems they’ll go out on a date later on. First, Cassellis goes to the inner city to talk to a black taxi driver who turned in $10,000 that he found in the back of his cab. Cassellis had shot film of the guy earlier. He wants to follow up, partly as human interest and partly because he thinks the ten grand might be connected to upcoming protests in Chicago.
The poor taxi driver is already being interrogated by his neighbors. We see him before Cassellis arrives at his apartment. There’s a black militant asking him, “Were you acting as a Negro or were you acting as a black man?” Another guy adds, “Do you realize how much ammunition and guns $10,000 would’ve bought?” The poor cabbie replies that he tries not to think about that stuff.
Outside, Gus is being told that he’s too white to be allowed to buy cigarettes in that part of Chicago.
Cassellis knocks at the cabbie’s door, and is allowed in after one of the guy’s pals mocks the cameraman for being a honky. Gus arrives, and the same creeps accuse the poor soundman of being with the FBI. The cabbie politely tells Cassellis that he’d rather avoid any further media attention. Cassellis is cool with that, but he can’t leave the apartment without being berated by a black actress who demands time on the local news to tell her story. Then another guy lectures Cassellis about media arrogance, and mentions that white people get killed over that kind of thing.
Cut to some hot suburban housewives practicing their firing skills at a shooting gallery. There’s a nice scene where Peter Boyle plays the owner of the place. He’s being interviewed by Cassellis (who’s really more of a cameraman/reporter), and Boyle’s character is treated more politely than any reporter would treat him today.
Then, strangely enough, we see Cassellis getting outraged when he learns that the news station has been turning over his raw footage to the cops and FBI for purposes of criminal surveillance. It’s hard to be sympathetic. We were just wishing Cassellis had shot footage of that black militant who wanted $10,000 to buy ammunition and guns.
Anyway, Cassellis is fired from the news station. He goes over to have dinner with the hillbilly family. Mom explains that she used to be a schoolteacher back in West Virginia. Now she works at Motorola because she’s not qualified to teach school in Chicago. Her kid adds that his school system is pretty lousy. All they do is watch television. Cassellis replies that big-city schools use television as educational schools. The kid patiently explains that his class isn’t watching educational television. The students are just killing time.
The kid has another flashback to how his dad—who’s abandoned the family—once told him how “a man has to be boss of his home, because there ain’t no two bosses in a family, because it ain’t right.” Cassellis gets a new job shooting documentary footage of the Democratic convention.
But first, Cassellis takes the hillbilly mom out to a swinging nightclub. We hear more of Zappa goofing on hippies, but that’s not the Mothers onstage. Everybody in the club is tripping. “The sky is blue,” somebody says. Yeah, there’s probably plenty of
blue sunshine in the place.
The kid sees Cassellis and his mom making out, and runs away from home. He’s wandering around while Cassellis is covering the start of the Chicago riots during the convention. This is where
Medium Blue becomes more like
Blow-Up. The filmmakers probably felt like they were capturing footage of crimes. The media certainly saw the poor downtrodden hippies as victims of the Chicago cops.
The real-life footage, however, reveals a time where perception was soundly skewed. Never mind that the riot is backed by one of Zappa’s more sympathetic songs.
Medium Cool ultimately captures hard-working policemen trying to maintain order in the presence of creeps. Oh, is there a nice young hippie boy who got hit over the head? What a shame. Is his name Bill Ayers?
Cassellis then goes to help the mom look for her kid, and the film comes to an abrupt end. (Thankfully, so will this entry.) The ending won’t be revealed here, but it’s not very satisfying. The same idea would be done correctly in a few years by another film that we’ll write up soon. The important thing is that
Medium Cool ends with Cassellis trying to be far more useful than all those idiot hippies. He learns something. That’s more than the Democrats have over the past four decades.
Make it your own: Turns out that the DVD for
Medium Cool is a big collectors’ item. Fortunately,
the VHS tape can be found cheap. We’re baffled to add that there’s never been a CD release of the soundtrack. We got a
Zabriskie Point soundtrack, but no
Medium Cool. Something’s wrong there.
