Talk Radio (1989) A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp Copyright 1997 by Serdar Yegulalp
CAPSULE: Unforgiving and bleak, but exacting portrait of a man drunk on the power of his own words.
The biggest mistake would be to compare Barry Champlain (Eric Bogosian), the non-hero of Oliver Stone's black-as-volcanic-glass TALK RADIO, to a specific real-life radio personality such as Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern. He has the worst tendencies of *both* of them, to the point where politics and even audience are irrelevant. He will do anything to get people to listen to him, even though they're already his captive audience. And what do you think that does to him, in the dark?
Expanded slightly from a stage play that Bogosian himself wrote, TALK RADIO is not so much an analysis of the title subject but a character portrait. Bogosian plays Champlain with machine-gun nastiness, getting mileage from his cruel eagerness to rip up callers to his late-night talkfest. He is not interested in actually *communicating* with anyone; he's like a verbal slam dancer, abusing his audience to see if they really will come back for more. He's convinced that 9/10ths of the world is stupider and crueler than he could ever be, so he's obviously not going to be anywhere nearly as bad as the jerk-offs who call him now, is he? Even if he tries to pander to their worst instincts, how's he any worse off than the guy who beats his kids and brags about it on-air?
We learn a bit more about Champlain outside of the studio -- his marriage, his younger years, etc. They aren't dwelled on excessively; there's just enough for us to get the picture. Champlain is smart, but has absolutely no idea what to do with his smarts, other than test other people's limits and see if they'll indulge him because he constantly astonishes them with his verbal excesses. And how far does he go? At one point someone mails him something that might be a bomb, and Champlain, smirking, rattles it next to the microphone. This is not a man with his feet on the ground.
There are other things he does that are not as explicitly disturbing, but that give unsettling clues to his personality. A foaming anti-Semite calls in, and Champlain tries a bizarre psychological tactic on him -- trying to play on his sympathy. But the guy doesn't have any, and there's a strong hint that Champlain may be one of those people who will literally say *anything* to get someone to stop hassling him. Which one's worse? Maybe they're both examples of the same kind of scum -- people who live to goad others and get intemperate reactions?
TALK RADIO is as intense and claustrophobic a movie as there might conceivably be. It is also excellently written and directed, and for that reason alone is worth seeing. The camera lives inside the studio, and the movie operates more like the stage play than we might expect -- we have to imagine the guy at the other end of the wire, and in Champlain's fetid, vicious universe, that's something that makes us cringe. We already know what Champlain himself his like -- what about his callers? And then the movie decides to settle *that* question, once and for all.
Four out of four mike-lighters.
syegul@ix.netcom.com EFNet IRC: GinRei http://www.io.com/~syegul another worldly device... you can crush me as I speak/write on rocks what you feel/now feel this truth =smilin' in your face, all the time wanna take your place, the BACKSTABBERS=
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