Payday

SPOILERS

I'm not certain that Maury Dann is modeled after Hank Williams and honestly I just don't care.  1973's PAYDAY is not a straight bio but it probably captures the hard driving life of a country music star as accurately as anything ever committed to celluloid.  Not restricting your movie to the exploits of a particular luminary allows you to embrace poetic license with abandon, to capture the spirit of a life rather than slavishly trying to be accurate to the truth.  And you know there's three sides to every story anyway.

Speaking of....late in the film, Maury (Rip Torn) has accidentally killed a man.  There are a few witnesses, two of whom are part of his entourage, and one of them dutifully willing to take the rap for the temperamental singer.  The other is Clarence (Michael C. Gwynne) his handler, his "mother hen", who is forever cleaning up his messes.  But this one's a doozy.  Maybe hush money will help keep the locals quiet, to go along with the story that Maury's unassuming chauffeur, Chicago (Cliff Emmich) did the killing.  What is the truth? Can you question it, even if you saw it firsthand? Will it come back to claim you, even if it is later rather than sooner?

Maury Dann can't be concerned with such things.  He has concerts and recording sessions and guest appearances.  Many people's jobs depend on him, he reasons.  When the hawks finally circle around him near the film's close, he crumbles like a pack of cards. Up to that point, he always got his way.  Money, drugs, booze, women. He even nails a young groupie in the back of his Cadillac while his older, cynical girlfriend naps on the other side of him.

But the realities of life beckon.  In a great scene, Dann makes a stop a radio station to bribe the local DJ with quail and booze.   This will be essential as the jock subtly hints that if Maury can't make a show at the local high school next Monday he may not spin his latest album.  The tired singer also stops at his ex wife's house with birthday gifts for his son.  But the gifts are inappropriately juvenile as the kid is a teenager and his birthday is months away.  Time has no urgency for a man constantly on the road, downing pills (handfuls kept in his guitar case) to stay awake for days at a time.

PAYDAY is a real lost treasure.  Forget COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER or HONKYTONK MAN, this flick really digs into the life of one who plucks strings for a living and lives what he writes and sings.  Rip Torn is marvelous as Maury, and as many have said, should've become a big star for this performance. For all the excesses and occasional outbursts, the actor never chews the scenery.  His pained silences are just as affecting as his wilder episodes.  Note the scene at his ex-wife's house, a terrible, crippling moment of the realization of failure.

Director Daryl Duke gets some seriously good work from his lead and the entire cast of unknowns.  Everyone feels like they belong in the dreary hotel rooms and fast food joints of the American South.  Wearily watching signs on the interstate fly by on the way to the next gig.  The movie is unpleasant, sometimes quite vulgar, and utterly fascinating.  You can practically taste the state air conditioning in rooms with cigarette smoke saturated carpeting.

Don Carpenter's excellent script traces the final day and a half of a low rent C & W crooner, allowing scenes to play as naturally as possible, with awkward pauses and all.  Duke almost frames it documentary-style.  A fistfight over a dog. The boys going quail hunting.   A lengthy, revealing conversation between the groupie named  Rosamond McClintock (Elayne Heilveil) and the chauffeur about cooking.  Maury practicing on his guitar in the middle of the night. A woman being thrown out of a car and the driver coming back, leaving, coming back, and leaving again.

I love films from the '70s as they often let their characters breathe, let events play out in ways that resemble real life.  Duke creates a masterful picture that deserves some comparison with Altman's NASHVILLE, but is more compact and focused.  We feel uncomfortable while watching PAYDAY because even though we know where Maury is headed, many scenes don't follow the path we expect.  Keeps us on edge.

And there are some great lines.  When Clarence asks if a venue can get a cut of the gate money, Maury responds that "people in hell want ice water, too."   Mayleen Travis (Ahna Capri), Maury's main girl, dresses down Rosamond in the ladies' room after the backseat assignation - 'If I was a man, I'd ball you too.  God knows you're easy enough."