TELLING LIES IN AMERICA
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1997 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
Controversial screenwriter Joe Eszterhas has a reputation for producing pictures that push the edge of the acceptability envelope. >From his highly successful BASIC INSTINCT to his widely ridiculed SHOWGIRLS, he has managed to deliver many high profile and lucrative scripts and has been called the highest paid screenwriter in the world. When he was starting out, he made many excellent but less controversial movies, including JAGGED EDGE and that perennial favorite, FLASHDANCE. (One of the big hits of this year's art house circuit has been THE FULL MONTY, and in it the amateur male strippers use FLASHDANCE as their instructional video.)
Before the house lights went down at the press screening for Eszterhas's most recent film, TELLING LIES IN AMERICA, I read through the press kit. Apparently this was supposed to be a touching little film about a teenage immigrant's experience growing up in America and was a "semi-auto-biographical tale." Eszterhas himself came from Hungary at the age of 6 to live in Cleveland. By the time the house lights had come back up, I was surprised to have found that the film was exactly as billed. The story had many opportunities to get outlandish and rejected them all in favor of serious character development. Although far from an outstanding film, the people in it will touch your heart.
Set in Cleveland in the rock 'n roll year of 1960, the movie tells the story of an itinerant disk jockey whose current pseudonym is Billy Magic. Billy, played with a sleazy panache by Kevin Bacon in one of his few bad guy roles, travels the DJ circuit gathering payola. Whenever the heat from the local police gets too hot for him, he crosses the state line and picks a new moniker. His MO includes carefully choosing a juvenile boy to be his bag man. With the record producers giving the money to an underage kid, Billy stays clean, or at least clean enough to afford him time to beat a hasty exit when the cops start closing in on him.
Although Bacon's charismatic performance dominates the film, Brad Renfro as Karchy Jonas gets more of the screen time. Renfro and Bacon worked together in last year's outstanding but underappreciated SLEEPERS. This time Renfro has grown up more and plays the high school senior whom Billy uses as his shield against prosecution. Renfro's serious character contrasts nicely with Billy's flashy persona. Karchy lives with his somber and hard working father Dr. Istvan Jonas, played by a difficult to recognize Maximilian Schell. Dr. Jonas got his Ph.D. in law from a Hungarian university, but barely scrapes by in this country by working at a mill. His wife died in the refugee camps in the old country.
Even when the story saddens, as it does frequently, the high energy music of the era gives the story its hopeful underpinnings. Billy's gaudy clothes by Laura Cunningham and Heather Priest and his fire-engine red 1959 Cadillac convertible, with fins high enough to scrape the moon, make him the idol of the local girls, who are dying to go to bed with him.
The sweetest subplot in the picture surrounds Karchy's first girlfriend, a young woman named Diney Majeski, played with grace and confidence by Calista Flockhart from THE BIRDCAGE. Diney, being older and wiser than Karchy, tries to help him come to terms with his immaturity and lack of self-confidence. "Why you got to show off so much?" she asks. In a revealing reply, he says it's "cause I ain't got that much to show."
The dialog, while rarely memorable, has a honesty that sounds like it was lifted straight from a time capsule. When cocky Billy inquires about Karchy's sexual maturity, he couches it in just the right slang. "Have you done the nasty yet?" Billy asks him. Karchy lies rather than reveal the truth. "Lots of times," he shoots back.
After seeing too many films lately in which none of the characters are drawn sympathetically, it is refreshing to have one in which they are all worth caring about. Even if Billy is conning everyone, you can't help but love him.
TELLING LIES IN AMERICA runs 1:41. It is rated PG-13 for sexual situations and some profanity. The film would be fine for kids twelve and up.
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