cowgirls
and cowboys:
even cowgirls
get the blues
red rock west
maverick |
director/screenwriter
Gus Van
Sant
based on
the novel by
Tom Robbins
producer
Laurie Parker
cinematographers
John Campbell
Eric Alan Edwards
music
Ben Mink
k.d. lang
editors
Curtiss Clayton
Gus Van Sant
cast
Uma Thurman (Cissy Hankshaw)
Lorraine Bracco (Delores Del Ruby)
Noriyuki 'Pat' Morita (The Chink)
Angie Dickinson (Miss Adrian)
Keanu Reeves (Julian Gitche)
John Hurt (The Countess)
Rain Phoenix (Bonanza Jellybean)
Ed Begley Jr. (Rupert)
Carol Kane (Carla)
Sean Young (Marie Barth)
Crispin Glover (Howard Barth)
Roseanne Arnold (Madame Zoe)
Buck Henry (Dr. Dreyfus)
Grace Zabriskie (Mrs. Hankshaw)
Ken Kesey (Sissy's Daddy)
Heather Graham (Cowgirl Heather)
Udo Kier (Commercial Director)
William S. Burroughs (Himself)
Tom Robbins (Narrator)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 101m
u.s.
release: May 1994
video
availability: VHS
other gus
van sant films
reviewed on this website:
- psycho
(1998)
- to
die for
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Some of the most critically
despised movies of recent years -- Walker,
The Dark Backward, Shakes the Clown, and several
others you've never seen because the reviews scared you away
from them -- have been guilty favorites of mine. So when Even
Cowgirls Get the Blues, the new film by Gus Van Sant, opened
to near-unanimous loathing, I had high hopes. Van Sant's previous
two movies, Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho,
were oddball but terrific; maybe the critics just weren't getting
this one. For about half an hour, I was feeling pretty smug:
The movie was entertaining, it looked great, and it was shaping
up to be one of those films nobody likes except me. (That there
were only three other people in the theater intensified my smugness.)
At about the 45-minute mark, though, I started checking my watch,
which suddenly seemed frozen in limbo. Despite a promising start,
Cowgirls is one of the most boring movies of all time,
a ridiculous stew of mysticism, flat satire, and whimsy. Essentially,
it's a Warhol film played almost straight, with prancing queens,
killer lesbians assaulting their foes with feminine body odor
-- all handled without irony. At least John Waters would have
milked this material for all the rude humor it was worth. Van
Sant, whose accepting, democratic style served him well in his
earlier films, pays reverence to characters he should be scoffing
at. By the time an old desert sage was saying "The earth
is alive," I was praying for Denis Leary to burst in and
deflate the movie's hippie-dippiness with a few verbal pinpricks.
Cowgirls is based on the cult novel by Tom Robbins, who
narrates the movie; I haven't read it, but it has to be better
than Van Sant's adaptation. Cissy Hankshaw (Uma Thurman) is born
with abnormally large thumbs, which help her to become the best
hitchhiker ever. She gets involved with various weirdos, including
a revolutionary group of cowgirls who have branched off from
a fat-farm ranch and dedicated themselves to saving the whooping
crane. This sounds bizarre enough to be engaging, if handled
well, but the movie dies at about the same time the story develops
some tension -- should Cissy hit the road again or stay with
her new love, Bonanza Jellybean (Rain Phoenix)? Again and again,
Van Sant short-circuits the narrative with endless scenes of
people discussing visions and destiny -- the sort of conversation
you hear at parties where the smell of weed hangs heavy in the
air. I can't remember the last time I was so grateful to see
the end credits.
Van Sant is a respected filmmaker (though he won't be for long,
if he comes another cropper like this one), so he has lured lots
of hip actors to contribute mostly meaningless cameos. Roseanne
Arnold gets a few lines as a palm reader, Keanu Reeves appears
as an asthmatic, John Hurt vamps his way through the fairly offensive
role of "the Countess," and many other performers (Lorraine
Bracco, Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, Buck Henry, Udo Kier,
Angie Dickinson, Grace Zabriskie, Crispin Glover, Ed Begley Jr.,
Carol Kane) get chances to look foolish. What can you say about
a movie in which Sean Young gives the best performance? About
the only thing Cowgirls has going for it is k.d. lang's
mesmerizing, plaintive score, which has been available in stores
for months while Van Sant tinkered with the movie in a bootless
attempt to make it watchable. Thanks to k.d., at least it's listenable.
 Elsewhere on the independent-movie beat: Red
Rock West, a Texas film noir that's gradually gaining
a cult, can be seen either on video or at one of the art-house
theaters that have begun to pick it up nationwide. Either way,
it's a keeper. Nicolas Cage stars as Michael Williams, a down-and-out
ex-soldier who takes a job without knowing quite what the job
is; it turns out to be a hit, and the man who's hiring him (J.T.
Walsh) thinks he's a hit-man from Dallas. You would hate me if
I revealed more, except that Dennis Hopper is in it, behaving
as anti-socially as ever, and that J.T. Walsh proves in this
movie and Needful Things that he is among the great unsung
character actors now working. Director John Dahl, who wrote the
script with his brother Rick, throws a mind-bending number of
curveballs and stages a diabolical set piece involving Cage,
a plank of wood, and a truck. Red Rock West: rent it or
buy a ticket for it, as long as you don't blow it off.
 Let's face it: You will see (or not see) Maverick
regardless of what I say about it, but for the record, I thought
it was a lot of fun. (Of course, the memory of my ass falling
asleep at Even Cowgirls Get the Blues the night before
seeing Maverick probably put me in the mood for something
mainstream and halfway entertaining.) The movie, as you may have
heard, stars Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster; Gibson has been getting
altogether too serious lately (Forever Young, The Man
Without a Face), and Foster has been altogether too serious
her entire career, so the sight of them goofing around is one
of the nicer pleasures of the season. Richard Donner, who did
his best to keep a leash on Gibson in the Lethal Weapon
series, directs Maverick with a light, easy touch, though
at two hours and ten minutes the movie could have stood to lose
about a half hour. Only screenwriter William Goldman knows for
sure how much of the zippy dialogue is his and how much was improvised
(reportedly a lot), but again, you will see it or not see it
regardless of what Goldman or I say about it. If it's not the
first big hit of the summer, I don't know summer movies; I can
say with some confidence, however, that Even Cowgirls Get
the Blues won't pose much competition.
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