You know in another time and in another age in Hollywood the story told in Telling Lies In America about the Fifties and the age of payola might have had Brad Renfro's character be a populist hero if it were Frank Capra doing it. Billy Wilder or Preston Sturges might have made Kevin Bacon's character one of their acid studies in cynicism. As it is Telling Lies In America is a good film with an accurate depiction of the times it's set in. But it falls way short of a classic.
Brad Renfro plays a 17 year old high school student, a refugee from the Hungarian Rebellion with his father Maximilian Schell who would desperately like to fit in. The father who was a doctor in Hungary now working some menial job while waiting his citizenship spends a ton of money to get Renfro into some private Catholic school.
Still with all the handicaps of an immigrant, Renfro who's now deep in America's rock and roll culture hits on a plan to gain instant popularity. Some radio station with disc jockey Kevin Bacon is running a popularity contest, the high school hall of fame. If someone has friends write in postcards suggesting a person they get into this high school hall of fame. So what does Renfro do, but forge a bunch of postcards and he gets his entrée with Kevin Bacon who offers him a job as an assistant, basically a glorified go-for.
Of course it's all one big scam because Kevin Bacon is hip deep in the world of payola where he accepts all kinds of favors in sealed envelopes from agents to play their artist's records on his show. What he needed was a kid naive enough not to question what's going on around him and just be grateful for the relatively large amounts of money he's earning with Bacon as opposed to Renfro's previous job in a poultry market.
It was the Fifties and I well remember a lot of rock and roll disc jockeys losing their careers over this, the most famous being Alan Freed. Kevin Bacon who has made a good career in villainous character parts is one cynical creep in this film. Two generations before, Kirk Douglas would have gone to town on this role.
Maximilian Schell should also be praised as the wise father who because of the generation gap has different ideas about the American dream than Renfro. But there's no mistaking the bond these two have for each other.
Telling Lies In America has a lot of good elements and it's an interesting story. But it's short of a master director to make it a classic.
Brad Renfro plays a 17 year old high school student, a refugee from the Hungarian Rebellion with his father Maximilian Schell who would desperately like to fit in. The father who was a doctor in Hungary now working some menial job while waiting his citizenship spends a ton of money to get Renfro into some private Catholic school.
Still with all the handicaps of an immigrant, Renfro who's now deep in America's rock and roll culture hits on a plan to gain instant popularity. Some radio station with disc jockey Kevin Bacon is running a popularity contest, the high school hall of fame. If someone has friends write in postcards suggesting a person they get into this high school hall of fame. So what does Renfro do, but forge a bunch of postcards and he gets his entrée with Kevin Bacon who offers him a job as an assistant, basically a glorified go-for.
Of course it's all one big scam because Kevin Bacon is hip deep in the world of payola where he accepts all kinds of favors in sealed envelopes from agents to play their artist's records on his show. What he needed was a kid naive enough not to question what's going on around him and just be grateful for the relatively large amounts of money he's earning with Bacon as opposed to Renfro's previous job in a poultry market.
It was the Fifties and I well remember a lot of rock and roll disc jockeys losing their careers over this, the most famous being Alan Freed. Kevin Bacon who has made a good career in villainous character parts is one cynical creep in this film. Two generations before, Kirk Douglas would have gone to town on this role.
Maximilian Schell should also be praised as the wise father who because of the generation gap has different ideas about the American dream than Renfro. But there's no mistaking the bond these two have for each other.
Telling Lies In America has a lot of good elements and it's an interesting story. But it's short of a master director to make it a classic.