TALK RADIO
A film review by Shane R. Burridge
Copyright 1997 Shane R. Burridge
Talk Radio (1989) 110m.
Oliver Stone's film of Eric Bogosian's stage play (they collaborated on the screenplay) was received favourably by critics but ended up unnoticed by the public amid Stone's bigger-budget successes. It begins and ends with marathon performances by Bogosian in the role of Barry Champlain, a Dallas shock-jock on the verge of being syndicated nationwide. Everything about Champlain is on the edge, including his rocky relationships with producer/girlfriend Leslie Hope, wife Ellen Greene, and boss Alec Baldwin. Isolated in his darkened studio, he rants to unseen callers as if he were addressing his invisible demons. His listening audience is largely hostile, and he is always on the attack. At first we are prepared to accept Champlain as a champion for the underdog; as more and more callers run the gauntlet of his show we grow to mistrust him. The moment we believe he has finally lost his balance is when he turns on one of his admirers and insults her mercilessly, using exactly the same time of confrontational and interruptive tactics he reserves for the bigots, fascists, and junkies that comprise most of his audience.
Champlain is so unpredictable and fast-talking that it is difficult for us to figure out his real agenda. But he doesn't seem to have one. It's the line he snaps to a detractor at a ball game that gives him away, when he tells her the reason she doesn't like his show is because she has no sense of humor. Champlain is no activist, merely an egotist who is running his own private put-on (similarly, TALK RADIO masquerades as an issues piece but is essentially a character study) and is concerned only with his ratings. There are moments he has on air when he looks as if he may let the mask slip - but he has gone too far to turn back now.
Clearly, enjoyment of TALK RADIO will depend on how much you like Bogosian's performance. The scenes with him on the air crackle thanks to Stone's charged direction and tight editing by David Brenner and Joe Hutshing. If you've ever listened to late-night talkback and found some of the callers unsettling, you're bound to relive that feeling again in the paranoid atmosphere of Champlain's studio. Bogosian's meeting with an incoherent teenager (Michael Wincott) is by turns hilarious and chilling. He's just one of several memorable callers, many of whom were voiced by the same group of actors. Inspiration for both film and play was the assassination of Denver DJ Alan Berg by White Supremacists - exactly the kind of audience that would be incensed by Champlain's uncompromising broadcasts.
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