Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (1981)

Director: Lou Adler

Writer: Nancy Dowd

Producer: Joe Roth

Cinematographer: Bruce Surtees

Paramount; 87 min; color

Cast:

Diane Lane (Corinne Burns), Marin Kanter (Tracy Burns), Laura Dern (Jessica McNeil), Peter Donat (Harley Dennis), Christine Lahti (Aunt Linda), Ray Winstone (Billy), Paul Simonon (Johnny ), Steve Jones (Steve), Paul Cook (Danny)

Early on, two of our three pissed-off teenaged girls, eager to escape all their suburban angst, are viewing their slipshod vehicle to freedom.  One of the girls looks at this rickety tour bus, and exclaims, “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”  The other girl replies, “Who gives a shit?  It’s our way out of this fucking town.”  This short, hilarious moment pretty much encapsulates the sassy tone of Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains; and for that matter, it is symbolizes its characters’ willingness to tolerate any situation, if it gets them a bit further on their journey to be rock and roll stars.  That “go for broke” sentiment is total rock and roll, and made by someone who would surely know.

Music producer Lou Adler didn’t make very many movies, but his rare sojourns into cinema were the last words of the love generation (Monterey Pop, which he produced) and counterculture (Up In Smoke, which he directed).  And although his direction here is sometimes flat, this cutting look at the punk music scene (with clever barbs at consumerism and its ample share of nihilism) benefits from a dynamite screenplay by Rob Morton (actually a pseudonym for Nancy Dowd, who earned her credentials for sass by writing Slap Shot), and game performances by its interesting cast.

Paramount put this movie on the shelf for three years before they released it, and even then, carelessly only let it run for a few days in limited engagements. Rather, the film found its audience with late-night airings on cable in the 1980s. Its appeal (and authenticity) is also helped in no small amount by the casting of Steve Jones and Paul Simonon (both of The Clash) and Peter Cook (of the Sex Pistols) as musicians.

At its core,Ladies and Gentlemen is a punk version of A Star Is Born.  Diane Lane (who was 15 during the production of this movie) plays Corinne, the leader of an all-girl punk act called The Stains.  Their gimmick is prancing around in trashy red nylons, skunk hair-dos, and no bras, while uttering the statement: “We don’t put out.”  Of course they can’t sing worth shit. (In fact, Christine Lahti, who has a small scene as Corinne’s aunt, has the best voice of all, as she sings along to Carole King on the radio!)  But what the Stains lack in musical talent (young Laura Dern plays the bassist!) they sure make up for in attitude.  (And this is punk- it’s not about musicianship, right?) Somehow, they become the opening act for the group The Looters in their cross-country tour.  Corinne has a dalliance with this one musician from the group The Metal Corpses (played by Fee Waybill of The Tubes)- and when he is found dead from an overdose (an image that doesn’t soon leave you), this scandal thereby forces the attention onto Corinne and her outfit, and before long, The Looters are opening for them, as the shows are now populated by Corinne lookalikes with the two-tone hair, trashy leather and nylon, chanting “We don’t put out.”  These scenes give more empowerment to young females than the likes of Madonna ever dared, or even Tiffany for that matter.  (And for my money, even with all the trashy threads, and Traci Lords brat pouts, Corinne is actually a more positive role model for young ladies than those half naked pop divas of today.)

Finally, enough is enough- the Looters are being booed off-stage by all the Stains fans, and lead singer Billy, with whom Corinne has also had a fling, manages to get this arena full of Stains-heads to realize how much they’ve been had, as all the Stains have really done is turn individualism into a commodity.  It’s an amazing scene, really, and it is a moment even truer now, with the way the mainstream swallowed the independent scene and turned it into commercial bubblegum.

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains is a very funny movie- and while it is a sharp satire, the laughter also evolves because it is so real and it pulsates with life.  But even if the movie is about pissed-off teenagers playing pissed-off rock and roll, it is also responsible.  With scenes of the guys in the Looters seemingly fighting each other every five minutes, the unforgettable shot of a rocker found with a needle in his arm, all captured by Bruce Surtees’ gritty cinematography, the world this movie creates is certainly no place for young girls.

As testament part of its troubled production history, because the original downbeat ending didn’t test well, Paramount had called the trio of young actresses back a couple of years after principal photography for a tacked-on upbeat conclusion, and I think the film is better for it. The finale is a brilliant MTV mock-up, in a startlingly prescient sequence featuring the Stains now all scrubbed up with poofy hair and those slutty long thin earrings, playing a brand of power pop, which turned the urgency and intensity of punk into K-Mart musak. This message is not lost in today’s climate of suburban mall pubescent yearning that Christina and company pawn off the racks at Walmart. The scene too is lent some authenticity because the girls had visibly aged in those two years, thus illustrating the time spent on their road to fame and fortune.

By the way, is the name The Stains a spin on the group The Wet Spots?

This Week's "Hard-To-Find" Film We're Seeking: Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1981)

"Cattle Annie was an outlaw, with a dime novel dream..."
-Lyric sung in the opening credits of Cattle Annie and Little Britches

If you can find it, I recommend a volume of film reviews entitled Produced and Abandoned (published by the National Society of Film Critics), which collects pieces about movies that may have had critical success, or at best cult audiences, but remain largely unknown to the general public. Among the reviews (featuring works by many authors) is a piece by Peter Rainer about a 1981 western entitled Cattle Annie and Little Britches.

Rainer's prose is devoted less to the film itself, and more to a lengthy tirade about the governing powers that prevent movies from ever finding their rightful audiences.  I wished that he had spent more column space on the virtues of the movie, especially since interested readers could at least vicariously learn more about a film that they may never see- however his review is a cautionary tale about how the life of a film can be ruined by insensitive execs, and is no more true than in our current climate, where films must open wide to maximum screens instead of slowly building an audience. Indeed- thirty years on, after Cattle Annie and Little Britches was acquired by Universal, and summarily dumped after only a scant few playdates (despite even receiving a warm review from Pauline Kael), the film has never been on home video. Luckily, I managed to see this little gem twice on television circa 1983-84, and to this day remember fondly its quirky charm.

In the conclusion of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, there is the truthful adage: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Our film centers on a young woman who has succumbed to that process. Clearly enamoured in the exaggerated over-romanticized tales of western outlaws that were published during the frontier days in dime novels (popularized by such writers as Ned Buntline), Cattle Annie is dismayed to find that her revered Doolin-Dalton gang is somewhat less than their larger-than-life depictions in those dime novels. With her young sidekick Little Britches, she joins the gang to re-instill in them the glamourous life of the outlaw that she idealizes.

Scripted by David Eyre and Robert Ward (from Ward's own novel), production for the movie began in the late 1970s, and although it was released (albeit haphazardly) in 1981, Cattle Annie and Little Britches belongs with the many so-called "old man westerns" of the 1970s.  Films as diverse as The Wild Bunch or The Shootist featured their aging stars as frontier men well past their prime who attempt one last hurrah before fading away completely into changing times. In this case, Burt Lancaster, in his 60s, appears as Bill Doolin (although his real-life counterpart only lived to be 38), who attempts to keep together the fledgling Doolin-Dalton gang after their disastrous 1892 robbery in Coffeyville, Kansas. The actor made a tremendous post-senior-aged comeback in the 1980s with Atlantic City, Local Hero, and Field of Dreams, yet this film shows evidence of what was to come, as he is marvelous as a gentlemanly Victorian Doolin who is persuaded by the passions of Cattle Annie.

John Savage and Burt Lancaster.

Another veteran, Rod Steiger, is cast as the marshall Bill Tilghman (the actor's resemblance to the real-life frontier lawman is uncanny), and gives one of his rare low-key, controlled performances as the lawman who is constantly thwarted by the outlaws, and befuddled by the public's admiration for their romanticized ways. The film is rounded out with younger stars John Savage and Scott Glenn (the latter as Bill Dalton), but it is especially notable for stars-to-be Diane Lane (in her third film) and Amanda Plummer (in her first). In her debut, it is clear that Plummer was going to go places. She jumpstarts her future career in unusual roles, and she is simply astonishing as Cattle Annie, whose passion to restore the outlaw gang is enormous.

This is also a career highlight for director Lamont Johnson, who always excelled in character-driven movies, such as The Last American Hero, and another underrated western, A Gunfight. While the script is fine, and there is enough action to satisfy the western fan, one most remembers the interplay among the cast: the love and humour displayed between the characters is what makes this lyrical film really shine.

Diane Lane and Amanda Plummer

Thirty years is long enough for people to discover this movie for the first time.  Or for those who were fortunate to catch it during its fleeting dates in the 1980s, a long overdue reunion is welcomed. Universal clearly didn't know what they had- this marvelous picture needs to be unearthed now!

UPDATE! In 2020, Kino Lorber has released this film to DVD and BluRay. Review will be added once we find a copy.