CREEM: AMERICA'S ONLY ROCK 'N' ROLL MAGAZINE (B) - This one is quick (75 minutes) and serviceable, an insider's fawning tribute to the hard-rock magazine of the 1970s that was home to Lester Bangs and other sons of Hunter Thompson and William Burroughs. The writer-director (Scott Crawford) and most of the producers (including talking head Jaan Uhelszki) are alums, so don't expect a hard-hitting Me-Too slant on the rampant celebration of the sexist, homophobic, drug-glorifying ways of the era.
But this does give a good sense of the era, love it or not. Creem was the upstart middle-finger-waving bad boy that complemented the more effete ways of Rolling Stone magazine. And it rode its highs or crashed hard along with the fortunes of the insufferably blunt Bangs or the foul-mouthed, hard-partying owner, Barry Kramer, both of who would live to glimpse the dawn of the Reagan era. Speaking of blunt, the ex staffers are not shy about airing some very old dirty laundry.
Dave Marsh was the star editor of the heyday before escaping with his sanity mid-decade for the relative peace and quiet of Rolling Stone and other ventures. He's still full of piss and vinegar while reboarding that rollercoaster. Uhelszki (with an assist from Gene Simmons) recalls her on-stage stunt with KISS (in full makeup). Others act like children of broken homes meekly speaking out decades later after the parents have died. Tributes pour in from R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe (who found in Creem a recognition of his own otherness); Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers); Jeff Ament (Pearl Jam); and a frazzled Kirk Hammett from Metallica.
For better or worse, this was how we lived back then, and you'll either get a mild kick out of all that black-and-white footage, or you'll take a pass on yet another exit to Boomerville.
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE (1972) (B-minus) - I'm under-educated in Kurt Vonnegut's novels, but I'm guessing that his mastery on the page is tough to translate to the screen. Here, veteran George Roy Hill (in between two little films called "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Sting") is in full '70s swing, though this is less of a road trip than a head trip (which is its own kind of a road trip).
We follow Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks, who did not go on to have much of a career) as he time travels and hopscotches from his horrific experience as a WWII POW in Dresden during the bombing through to his death and beyond, to immortality on another planet with Valerie Perrine (playing Montana Wildhack). Hill is a skilled storyteller, but the whiplash this movie induces can be irritating. Not to mention Ron Leibman, chewing scenery from start to finish like a shark on a diet.
The message here is that we don't live in linear time but instead constantly in the now, which can be at any point in that timeline. That concept certainly helps deal mentally with not only our inevitable mortality but also with blotting out the horrors of unspeakable war crimes. Watching a film from 1972 allowed me to jump back in time and muse upon Perrine -- here comfortably and defiantly naked in a pair of randy scenes -- who would soon go on to break ground with her bare breasts on PBS in 1973's "Steambath," which I still associate with her and didn't mind hopscotching back to. Just another piece of that adolescent puzzle that either defines or distracts a person as he navigates the tracks of time.
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