By Erin Free
With his joyous, moving but ultimately elegiac 1978 documentary, The Last Waltz – which captured the final concerts of the seminal group, The Band, who merged blues, rock and country into one stunning, vivid musical whole – director, Martin Scorsese, unearthed a coolly cinematic presence in the form of guitarist and bandleader, Robbie Robertson. The two became firm friends (Robertson would contribute musically to many of Scorsese’s films, and would often act as a creative sounding board for the esteemed filmmaker), and with his sleepy eyes, slightly torn-and-frayed good looks, and loose-limbed casual swagger, Robertson looked like he could have become an unconventional movie star of the era, a la equally hip and unconventional playwright, Sam Shepard.
Though Robertson never did become a movie star, he did give it a shot with the largely forgotten 1980 drama, Carny. In this wonderfully evocative and wholly original curio (which Robertson also produced and co-wrote), Jodie Foster is typically brilliant as the vulnerable Donna, a smalltown girl who sees a travelling carnival as her way into a new, more exciting life. Her entrance into the circus is through Frankie (a stunning turn from Gary Busey), a hulking brute who dons clown makeup, sits in a dunking booth, and then insults carnival passersby with such unfettered venom and enthusiasm that they can’t resist buying tickets to see him hit the icy water. After a one night stand with Frankie, Donna then becomes fascinated by his friend, Patch (Robbie Robertson), an inveterate huckster and cynic who sells the tickets and further cajoles the crowd while Frankie berates them. Against a backdrop of inspired carnival weirdness – and with nasty mob types also circling as they try and put the squeeze on the circus – the strange, dysfunctional relationship that burns away between Donna, Frankie and Patch makes for curiously compelling viewing.
Though the direction from Robert Kaylor (who wouldn’t make another film of note) is somewhat muddled, and the film was never properly released, this deeply personal project from Robbie Robertson (“When I was young, before I went off on my rock’n’roll adventure, I worked in a carnival,” he told Musician. “I left that experience, and it just stayed with me. It’s one of Americana’s very special, creepy, wonderful things”) is a funky, rootsy slice of perverse Americana that feels like it could have sprung from the mind of Flannery O’Connor or Carson McCullers.
