I SAW IT ON TAPE - Bad Lieutenant

For the first half of 1998 I consumed more video rentals than all the movies I'd rented in my life up until that point combined. (I don't know if that sentence makes sense - point is, I was renting a ton of movies in '98.) A few things lined up to trigger this binge - the biggest ones being that my mom was working at a used bookstore that was next door to a Blockbuster Video (which had recently moved in, taking over the real estate previously owned by my childhood Mom & Pop video store), and I was in a newfound situation where I would have the house to myself every Friday night for the foreseeable future. As a friendless 14/15 year old with no interest in weed or video games, movie watching was to be the thing. But my god, 2-3 new movies a week? I know it was the 90s but no decades' "New Release" shelves could maintain that kinda momentum. Fortunately (and very predictably) I had a watchlist - a list that was entirely informed by all the books and magazines that I'd immersed myself in for what seemed like my entire life, though perhaps even more intensely in the months leading up to this adventure. 

I had a general understanding of Blockbuster's limitations so things like Pink Flamingos and Eraserhead seemed unlikely, but every week I'd present my mother with a list of my selections, and on Fridays after work she'd do her best to get the goods. And the goods she did get; between January and July of 1998, I watched for the first time: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, King of Comedy, The Piano, The Player, Short Cuts, Blue Velvet, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, 2001, French Connection, The Untouchables, Chinatown, Blood Simple, Barton Fink, Miller's Crossing, Amadeus, Schindler's List, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Inherit the Wind, Duck Soup, Boogie Nights, My Dinner With Andre, and Citizen Kane. Thank you, Blockbuster, for helping me to expand my scope of Mainstream Cinema, but my gratitude ends there; clearly these are all notable memories of movie viewings but the most memorable incident is when my mom brought home Blockbuster's sole copy of 1992's Bad Lieutenant. See, when Blockbuster started taking over all the stores I didn't really know what to think - for all I knew it was like Disney World was occupying and improving all the local amusement parks. And that actually what it sorta was -- in the most horrific, vile ways. I do know that the thing that initially turned me off (and remains my biggest complaint against them) was the plain white wrapper the videotapes came in; you couldn't bring home the damn cover to the movie! That, like, immediately deducted 20 points from the experience, so they were already on thin ice. 

I was aware of Bad Lieutenant from all the Independent Film literature I'd been reading, but mostly I knew its video cover from one of the surviving local joints that was still in operation - that terrifying image of Keitel with the gun, and that small but bold, bright orange reminder: "RATED NC-17". Yeah, you'd better believe that was on the damn watchlist, and eventually it made its way from Blockbuster to my VCR (without the rad cover but whatever). Regardless of my thoughts on the quality of the film, I was confused as to why this would be rated NC-17 - was I already so desensitized to sex & violence that it seemed fairly tame to me? Or did I simply miss the disclaimer at the beginning that not only had it been modified to fit my screen, but also edited for content? Or did I not bother looking at the stupid white box it came in that indicated "R-rated version"? I had to plead ignorance, I didn't know such a thing existed -- I didn't know the concept of such a thing existed. Blockbuster lent me only part of a movie?? Fortunately I knew right where an uncompromised copy existed, and the following Friday was a sorta "take 2" for Abel Ferrara's paranoid hangover of a film.

I think it was the first sorta Crime/Urban Neo-noir type of movie I'd seen that didn't glamorize a single element of that world; everything felt uncomfortably real, which ultimately creates a very paced, melancholic drag of an experience. It was entirely different than all the pulpy pizazz I'd been ingesting around that time, which technically was a nice surprise, but even still I struggle with whether or not I enjoy revisiting it. But I'm more than grateful that I never have to revisit Blockbuster. 

- Paul