PicoBlog

Though there are enough Christmas movies that it’s possible to spend an entire year watching nothing else and you still won’t see them all, there are surprisingly few New Year’s Eve movies. Oh sure, there are plenty of movies that have scenes that take place on New Year’s Eve, but few that are actually about it, and it doesn’t say much for them when the best of the bunch is New Year’s Evil, a movie about a serial killer who stalks Pinky Tuscadero from Happy Days.

There is another one, however, largely forgotten except by people of a certain age (old) who had ready access to cable in the mid-80s. Consider 1983’s Get Crazy, the rare party movie that makes the party seem cool and fun, as opposed to gross and depressing. Directed by Allan Arkush, it’s similar in silly, cheeky spirit to his earlier movie Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, even featuring some of its cast, including 80s weird movie staples Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov, and Clint Howard, in minor roles. It also similarly has an insanely awesome soundtrack, including a title theme by Sparks, and tracks from the Ramones, Fear, and Lou Reed, but we’ll get to him in a minute.

For a movie that’s 90% drug jokes (possibly as much as 95%), Get Crazy is surprisingly good-natured, with far less of the racist, sexist, and/or homophobic humor that makes revisiting a lot of 80s comedies such a dispiriting experience. Compare this to say, Sixteen Candles and Revenge of the Nerds, released roughly around the same time, both of which conclude on date rape gags. The raunchiest Get Crazy gets is a played-for-laughs orgy scene, which is depicted as a literal pile of bodies with a foot sticking out. Considering no one is tricked into or too drunk to consent to it, it’s almost tame.

It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and the concert of the year is about to commence at the Saturn Theater, owned by Max Wolfe (Allen Goorwitz). Overseen by put upon stage manager Neil (Daniel Stern), the concert features a line-up that could be politely described as “eclectic,” including hippie troubadour Captain Cloud (Howard Kaylan), who thinks it’s New Year’s Eve 1968, blues man King Blues (Bill Henderson), new wave/punk singer Nada (Lori Eastside), accompanied by a band consisting of somewhere between 12 and 37 people (plus Lee Ving as Piggy, so ferocious he can only be transported in a car trunk), Mick Jagger stand-in Reggie Wanker (Malcolm McDowell), and the reclusive Auden (Lou Reed), who’s called out of retirement to play at the show under the belief that Max is dying.

Before you say “Wait, the Lou Reed?” yes, the Lou Reed, and he’s unexpectedly hilarious, playing a Bob Dylan-esque folk singer who composes songs on the fly according to whatever’s happening to him at the time. In keeping with the movie’s playful tone, it’s not making fun of Dylan so much as paying affectionate homage to him, and it’s a nice surprise to see Reed, one of show business’s all-time biggest crabby patties, relaxing and enjoying himself.

Getting in the way of a good time is ruthless real estate developer Colin Beverly (Ed Begley, Jr., in an astonishing silver lame leisure suit), who is trying to coerce Max into selling the Saturn so that it can be demolished and made into luxury housing. When Max refuses, Colin turns to Max’s weaselly nephew Sammy (Miles Chapin), demanding that he trick Max into signing the sale agreement. If that doesn’t work, they’ll simply blow the theater up. Meanwhile, Neil, while immediately falling for former Saturn stage manager Willie (Gail Edwards), is trying to control a rowdy crowd, an overwhelmed staff, and a teenage sister (Stacey Nelkin) who’s using the show as an opportunity to, uh, get crazy.

Let me be clear, all this “plot” is secondary to the absolutely blistering concert, in which everybody featured, even McDowell, does their own singing. The high point is Piggy’s revved up rendition of “Hoochie Coochie Man,” a slice of pure punk gold made all the more better by a shot of Paul Bartel dressed like a doctor and crowd-surfing. I don’t even like live music that much (even when I was in my twenties I often grumbled about the lack of seating at a venue), but this scene gives me a sense of “Man, I wish I had been there” wistfulness that is usually only found when people watch clips from Woodstock or the first Lollapalooza show. It’s wild, it’s fun, it’s weirdly joyful.

“Joyful” is a pretty good word to describe Get Crazy in general, particularly when it comes to its Airplane-esque sight gags, like the Saturn’s men’s room being so disgusting there’s a shark swimming in the several inches of water on the floor, Reggie Wanker’s drummer (played by Doors drummer John Densmore) playing drums with a pair of chicken legs, and giant anthropomorphic joint that attends the concert. Is it supposed to be an actual joint, or just a guy in a costume? It’s unclear, but by the end of the movie someone has attempted to smoke it.

Then there’s the one running joke that everyone who’s seen Get Crazy even once remembers, and that’s Electric Larry, a cowboy hat-wearing intergalactic drug dealer who appears in a burst of smoke to offer grateful bystanders everything from cocaine to acid that’s so strong it makes Reggie Wanker not only think his own penis is talking to him, but hires it as his new business manager.

I concede that I am possibly overselling this movie.

But I don’t know, man, if you can’t find joy in a movie where the good guys win (again, not by disguising themselves and raping their nemesis’s girlfriend) and the credits roll on Lou Reed singing one of his most touching songs (“Little Sister,” which would eventually show up on an anthology album), I don’t really know what to tell you. Is it a great movie? No, though, to belabor a point, if I were to rank 80s comedies it would be pretty high on the list (conceding that that list would also include such things as Screwballs and Hamburger: The Motion Picture, it was a dire time). It is a fun, upbeat movie, though, a snapshot of a night you’ll wish you hadn’t missed.

And with that, I wish you all a very HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! *blows horn* Thank you for reading my nonsense here, and I hope to keep offering you even more nonsense in 2024, as a distraction from the fall of democracy. Take care, be kind to yourselves, love you muchly.

Yr Pal,

Gena

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