In the 1973 drama Payday, a
country-music star dances as close to oblivion as possible while attempting not
to be destroyed in the process. Fueled by weed, whiskey, fistfuls of pills, and
naked greed, Rip Torn spends the film wreaking havoc and testing his luck,
confident that there will always be somebody around to clean up after him,
whether it's his big dumb animal of a driver/flunky, or an ashen-faced manager
whose job entails a lot more than negotiating contracts and dealing with
promoters.
Daryl Duke's minor cult classic
documents, with unblinking candor, a brief tumultuous period in a singer's messy
existence. Payday ambles alongside
Torn's crooner as he promotes his latest single, goes hunting, cavalierly
trades in his brassy girlfriend for a ditzy young groupie who's far less
innocent than she pretends to be, and tries to bribe his way back into the
hearts of his neglected children. What begins as a smartly cynical
slice-of-life comedy/drama about the seamy underside of country music takes a
dark turn, as an accident leads to a grim reckoning for a man never more than a
few steps away from self-destruction. Payday's hard-living protagonist is a roughneck aggregation
of bad habits and character flaws, but since Torn plays him with irascible good-ol'-boy
charm, it's easy to feel a little sympathy for this handsome devil.
Payday's title quickly takes on a sneaky double meaning.
It's the title of one of Torn's homespun singles, but it also speaks to his
mercenary nature. There's a wonderful scene early on where he visits a tiny
radio station: Though Torn and the DJ publicly preserve the useful fiction that
they're simply old friends sharing a laugh, undercurrents of bribery, extortion,
and ugly manipulation course just beneath the surface. At best, they're dealing
in mutual exploitation. At worst, it's a double-sided Faustian bargain. In Payday, everyone
has their price, but Torn eventually learns the hard way that destiny
stubbornly refuses to be bought off.
Key features: A
relatively sparse, less-than-scintillating audio commentary from producer/music
mogul Saul Zaentz—who stresses the importance of verisimilitude in
capturing the film's music-world milieu—and an endearingly
enthusiastic/barely comprehensible Daryl Duke