This just happened to appear in this week's Austin Chronicle, funny how that
happens.
Framed
by Margaret Moser
It's disconcerting to watch your past on
television. For many, it's the twinge of
nostalgia while watching a rerun from
childhood or a long-forgotten cartoon. For
me and the scores of Austinites who have
braved long days on film sets as extras, it
comes unexpectedly whenever Roadie or
Outlaw Blues gets shown. It's not just the
coldwater-in-the-face realization of how long
ago it was, but the sweet tug at the heart
remembering the way we were -- turquoise
jewelry and all.
If I had nickel for everyone who has asked
me about Outlaw Blues (1/28, 5pm; 1/29,
6am ENC) this week, I could buy the rights
to the stupid film and ensure it never gets shown again -- it's been
running on TV
lately. But what I heard the most was not about the film, it was, "Is
that what
downtown really used to look like?" Oh yes. It is.
I wouldn't call those Seventies a kinder, gentler time, I would call it
the calm
before the storm. It's not that those years didn't see unrest -- we had
suffered
through the oil crisis, Watergate, inflation, the gas crisis, and the
Bee Gees. It was
a compressed decade -- the Sixties weren't really over until Nixon's
resignation
and the Vietnam War ended, and many people were still shell-shocked
from the
Sixties. Is it any wonder so many of us threw ourselves into the hazy
daze of the
Armadillo?
When it was announced that Outlaw Blues was filming in Austin in
mid-1976, the
hip community was a-twitter. Peter Fonda was still a genuine
counterculture hero
coasting with Easy Rider (and underrated for The Hired Hand). Susan St.
James had just left NBC's enormously popular McMillan and Wifeseries --
you know this is the Seventies, her co-star was Rock Hudson. The film's
predictable plot -- talented con has his song fleeced by a no-good
established
country star and mayhem ensues -- wove in elements of the cosmic cowboy
scene
via locales like Soap Creek Saloon and the Split Rail.
It's not much of a film, but its depiction of Austin's cosmic cowboys
is pretty much
the way I remember it. Locals like Steven Fromholz and Playmate Janet Quist
got plenty of screen time, and when it came time to cast those
inevitable club
scenes, the staff of The Austin Sun was invited to fill the frame.
That's where I
was working then, younger and greener than I care to imagine, and it
was the
most exciting thing that had ever happened to me.
About 20 of the staff (including my then-editor Jeff Nightbyrd, columnist
Michael Ventura, and sportswriter Bigboy Medlin) went down to Soap Creek
Saloon to play clubgoers in the scene where Bobby Ogden (Fonda) performs
with Greezy Wheels and then makes a run from the cops, who bust into the
club. We had to show up in the morning for this scene; some might have
seen the
club by sunrise, but few of us recognized it during the day. Inside, it
was business
as usual, with Billy Bob Saunders at the door and the usual suspects
bartending.
The Pearl beer was flowing free and a production assistant ran around
passing out
cigarettes. "We want it really smoky!"
Since Greezy Wheels mimed playing but Fonda didn't mime singing, it was
truly
boring and anticlimactic. We sat there for hours as first this angle
and then that one
was shot, but finally the big moment came and the cameras were turned
on the
crowd as the cops came busting in. We were instructed to look around
and point
every which way to confuse the cops. Fidgety, drinking, and stoned, we were
more than happy to comply, and at some point, the camera zoomed on my
face. It
was glorious to see.
Two years later, Roadie came to film in Austin.
Roadie didn't just use Austin as a background, it played on its musical
sensibility
and is arguably the prototype Austin slacker film. Medlin and Ventura
had written
the screenplay for it based on Travis Redfish, a fictional character
from Medlin's
sports column in the Sun. In the paper, Redfish was merely a philosophical,
sports-lovin' seat-warmer at the Hole in the Wall. In Roadie, he became
-- ta-da!
-- a philosophical, sports-lovin' roadie.
Woo hoo! It was the high days of punk and a cold February. Nightbyrd
asked me
to round up some of my punk friends for the club scene taking place at
L.A.'s
Whiskey A Go-Go. Really, it was being filmed at Club Foot, which did
remarkably resemble the Whiskey's multi-level interior. Although Meat
Loaf and
Art Carney weren't as famous stars as Fonda and St. James, the cast
included
Alice Cooper and Blondie and Alan Rudolph directed it.
The Standing Waves were performing as "Spittle." I was loafing betweens
scenes on the club's bottom level with the Huns' Phil Tolstead and
Chickadiesels' E.A. Srere when someone tapped me on the shoulder and I
turned around to see Alan Rudolph motioning me to follow him. "Stand
here," he
said, and wandered off while three or four people buzzed around me
setting lights,
etc. for the next 45 minutes. That's how I got to open the scene at the
Whiskey in
Roadie.
Unfortunately, I was too memorable for the casting director, who saw me
as an
extra a few days later at the festival scene with Blondie at Manor
Downs. "Oh
no!" she shrieked, and literally pulled me out of the crowd shot. "You
can't be
here! This is Idaho, and you were in Texas!"
Honeysuckle Rose with Willie Nelson and Amy Irving started filming here a
few weeks afterward, but I passed on being an extra for it. In
retrospect, that was
a stupid decision -- Honeysuckle Rose was uneven, but the concert
footage is
sublime. Of the three films, it's the least embarrassing (except, notes
my film critic
officemate, "that scene with Dyan Cannon and the whipped cream") and
the only
one I can conscionably suggest watching for. Tape Outlaw Blues for a
hoot but
avoid Roadie unless desperate.
