This film is a timeless piece of Americana that cuts across social classes. There are few clues about its date - the dial-a-hustler plot device could easily be eliminated without detriment to the film - it could be last summer, or fifty years ago.
Ed Hood is arch, infuriating and very funny. Although, as he says, he is very well educated, he quotes Dante in a disjointed way, combining the initial lines of the Inferno with lines 47-48 of Canto XX of the Paradiso, and appears to believe Kali is a Syrian goddess, Blame it on the alcohol. He is a compelling old dominator at 29, the same age as Sugar Plum Fairy (Joe Campbell). The screen lost a great character actor when Ed retreated to Cambridge to pursue his PhD, boys and Gallo burgundy.
Ed dismissively assigns Genevieve to the bottom of the homosexual caste system: a "fag-hag", but nothing can disguise her beauty and joi de vivre. She did not, to my knowledge, and sadly, appear in another film. Why, one asks, do the most talented and beautiful make a meteoric appearance and then disappear? Viz. Natalie Pascaud in Les Vacances de M. Hulot.
Paul America is pretty convincing as a football player about to go wrong. He comes across as very young, and Ed as old, although the age difference is only 8 years. America is not innocent, exactly - more cautious and impassive. "I just want to get high." The hard, slick, defeated Campbell tries the usual queer come-ons in the bathroom scene, and then realizes that he needn't bother - America will let anybody do anything to him.
Poignant and eerily convincing is the final procession of supplicants before America - each with essentially the same pitch - the girl, the queer and the androgyne try to convince America to go run away together. Poignant because we know that America will not accept any of them. Ed Hood's dark glasses, beer-sucking, display of money and willingness to address the camera directly are the scariest and most fascinating.
Ed Hood is arch, infuriating and very funny. Although, as he says, he is very well educated, he quotes Dante in a disjointed way, combining the initial lines of the Inferno with lines 47-48 of Canto XX of the Paradiso, and appears to believe Kali is a Syrian goddess, Blame it on the alcohol. He is a compelling old dominator at 29, the same age as Sugar Plum Fairy (Joe Campbell). The screen lost a great character actor when Ed retreated to Cambridge to pursue his PhD, boys and Gallo burgundy.
Ed dismissively assigns Genevieve to the bottom of the homosexual caste system: a "fag-hag", but nothing can disguise her beauty and joi de vivre. She did not, to my knowledge, and sadly, appear in another film. Why, one asks, do the most talented and beautiful make a meteoric appearance and then disappear? Viz. Natalie Pascaud in Les Vacances de M. Hulot.
Paul America is pretty convincing as a football player about to go wrong. He comes across as very young, and Ed as old, although the age difference is only 8 years. America is not innocent, exactly - more cautious and impassive. "I just want to get high." The hard, slick, defeated Campbell tries the usual queer come-ons in the bathroom scene, and then realizes that he needn't bother - America will let anybody do anything to him.
Poignant and eerily convincing is the final procession of supplicants before America - each with essentially the same pitch - the girl, the queer and the androgyne try to convince America to go run away together. Poignant because we know that America will not accept any of them. Ed Hood's dark glasses, beer-sucking, display of money and willingness to address the camera directly are the scariest and most fascinating.