TALK RADIO: Blu-ray (Universal/Cineplex Odeon Pictures, 1988) Twilight Time

Oliver Stone tackles prejudice, hatred and other social ills in Talk Radio (1988); a movie about the, then ‘new’ phenomena of the shock-jock radio personality, permeating the air waves all across the fruited plains.  Actor, playwright, monologist, novelist, and historian, Eric Bogosian does his level-best to recreate the caustic and contemptuous energy of his original performance-piece one-act play. This not only dazzled the off-Broadway crowd with a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize; its reincarnation on film also earned Bogosian the prestigious Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear.  Perhaps realizing the play, while possessing a certain spark of genius, was also hardly commercial, Stone was not altogether eager to accept the challenge of transferring it to celluloid. And, in hindsight at least, one can definitely see the deficits, along with the strengths in Bogosian’s electrifying wit and performance. Talk Radio has not aged well since its debut, perhaps because the era of the shock-jock, though still very much with us, has become rather passé and par for the course of the radio-land landscape; audiences, long-since anesthetized by the likes of Howard Stern, Tom Leykis, and, Opie & Anthony, to name but a few.

Shot for a paltry $4,000,000 (and barely earning $3,468,572), Talk Radio’s commercial appeal was limited, both by its B-grade budget, and also, Stone’s decision to star Bogosian in a reprise of the role that had gained him so much notoriety on the stage, but equally, failed to lend him any cache or make even a ripple of progress to advance his reputation and/or star potential in the movies. Despite having appeared in more than a half-dozen TV shows prior to the launch of Talk Radio, ostensibly, nobody knew who Eric Bogosian was in 1988. Then, as now, part – if not all – of any picture’s success is predicated on the box office drawing power of the name above the title. Bogosian, quite simply, didn’t have it. Nor, was he to acquire it after Talk Radio’s theatrical release. Unable to find a facility to suit the movie’s unusual requirements, Stone had his production designer, Bruno Rubeo build a facsimile from scratch, affording the director and his star enough space to maneuver about with some truly impressive Steadicam tracking shots. These follow the maniacal Barry Champlain (Bogosian) as he navigates his way through this ‘behind-the-scenes’ labyrinth with his blood, either boiling or about to curdle, shouting cruel commands, diatribes, insults and the like at his boss, Dan (Alec Baldwin), call screener, Stu (John C. McGinley), and producer/girlfriend, Laura (Leslie Hope). Bogosian had, in fact, loosely based his character on radio host, Alan Berg, whose real-life disturbing murder at the hands of a disgruntled listener eventually found its way into Stone’s movie adaptation.

Talk Radio’s flashback, Stone’s not altogether successful attempt at ‘opening up’ Bogosian’s play (illustrating the moment when Barry, a Jheri-curled sales guy, working in high-end men’s fashion, meets his idol, beloved radio jock, Jeffrey Fisher, played by Robert Treybor, gets the opportunity to appear on Fisher’s program, eventually eclipsing his popularity) was, in fact, also based on Berg’s chance meeting with Denver’s KGMC-AM talk show host, Laurence Gross. Unlike the film, Berg did not depose Gross, but stepped into his time slot after Gross took another job in San Diego, rather magnanimously suggesting to the station that Berg be named his successor. Talk Radio – the movie – also leans on other aspects of Berg’s life story for its inspiration; chiefly, Barry’s incurring the wrath of a white nationalist’s group, his estrangement from a dutiful wife, (Ellen Greene, herein as Barry’s estranged significant other, ‘Ellen’) and, Barry’s penultimate demise – murdered in a blaze of gunfire by an unknown assassin (Rockets Redglare). The various monologues that dominated the stage production have been distilled into loaded exchanges between Barry and the various inane callers he barely tolerates on his nightly broadcast; the one exception, a scathing indictment Barry shouts into his mic after being pushed to the brink of his own sanity, accusing his listeners of being a pack of classless, crude, and moronic reprobates who have nothing better to do with their leisure than listen to his cruel invectives, and, even more obsequiously, admire him for it.

Talk Radio is book-ended by some breathtaking aerial views of Dallas at twilight; the shimmering facades of its steel and concrete jungle, offset by glowing credits and voice-overs of various radio promos that lead into ‘Night Talk’ – the open-mic show, hosted by radio shock-jock, Barry Champlain.  Barry, bitter, Jewish and presently carrying on an affair with his much younger producer, Laura, is callously droll, condescending to his audience as he espouses his own controversial political views. Barry’s boss, Dan, thinks him a royal pain in the ass. But he can also recognize what it would mean in revenues for his station if Barry’s show went national. And indeed, after working out the kinks, it looks as though Barry will get his shot at the big time. A representative named Dietz (John Pankow) from the media syndicating giant - Arbitron, has come to audition his program. This is hardly good news to Barry, who regards Dietz as a bean-counting distraction and does everything he can to disgust his potential new employer. Besides, Night Talk is ‘his’ show. He will do it his way or not at all. After enduring a litany of inarticulate callers, whose banal concerns are given short shrift by Barry; impatient, merely to cut them to shreds with his sharp tongue before moving on to the next, Barry receives an anonymous brown paper package delivered to the studio. The next caller informs him of its arrival, and further suggests it contains a home-made bomb, set to go off during the broadcast. While Dan and Dietz get their knickers in a ball, Barry – who absolutely refuses to be intimidated – opens the package live on the air.

Inside is a dead rat, a neatly folded Nazi flag and a threatening letter, informing Barry his days are numbered. Relieved to find no imminent threat, Barry verbally crucifies the caller as a coward before hanging up on him. The next night, Barry is scheduled to make an appearance at a local basketball game, the coach (Harlan Jordan) a huge fan of Barry’s show. But the PR stint turns rancid after a revolted listener, Denise (Anna Levine) provokes Barry with her scorn, sousing him with her drink. Formally introduced and brought to the podium, Barry is booed off center court in a shameful moment of realization. He may have his ardent fans who nightly plague his conscience with their idiotic woes, but the majority of public beyond the safety of the station do not think much – if anything – of his work. Suddenly feeling insecure about the prospect of going national, Barry telephones his ex-wife, Ellen and begs her to fly to Dallas for his first nation-wide hook-up.

Although already married to another man, Ellen agrees to support Barry by coming to his inaugural coast-to-coast broadcast. We flashback in Barry’s mind to the moment when he first met Ellen, and, the other pivotal sequence of events that landed him his big career in radio. Barry is casually introduced to his idol, radio host, Jeffrey Fisher. In no time, Barry is a regular on Fisher’s program. But he infuriates Fisher by overstepping his bounds during one of their mutual exchanges. Fisher is miffed. But Barry is a hit. So, Fisher is out and Barry is in. It does not take long for fame to go to Barry’s head. After Ellen refuses to work for him, Barry becomes increasingly despondent and aloof. So, it is perhaps no surprise to anyone, except Ellen, when she comes home prematurely from visiting her mother, only to discover Barry and Stu in her house – high, and entertaining two naked groupies.

In the present, Barry is informed by Dietz that the audition process has stalled. His national debut is on hold – maybe for a week, maybe a month, maybe longer or never. The fate of his future all depends on how Barry performs tonight. Determined to win his spot, Barry charges headstrong into a tirade against every caller of the evening; transvestites, blacks, gays, drug addicts, rednecks etc. et al.  In reply, his callers become increasingly more hostile towards him. The tipping point comes when one caller admits she feels sorry for Barry because he has never learned how to love. Unable to laugh off her truth, Barry swallows his pride while the caller forewarns him that his day of retribution is coming. Put off his mark, the show tanking, and Dietz beginning to have second thoughts about its possibilities to go nation-wide, Ellen sneaks into a private office, calling into the show under a false name she frequently used when Barry was just starting out. On air, and under this pseudonym, she openly confesses to still having feelings for him and all but begs for an on-air reconciliation. Instead, Barry cruelly admonishes her as being unfaithful to the man currently in her life, and furthermore, informs her there is zero chance of their ever getting back together. Humiliated, Ellen tearfully departs the station, a real wake-up call for Laura, who has already begun to entertain second thoughts about her own flawed relationship with Barry.

With nowhere to go, Barry bares his soul – or rather, what remains of it – to his listeners, suffering a real meltdown on-air. He suggests that the American public are thoughtless, clueless sheep - so mindless and easily lulled in their deification of any false prophet, he not only feels incredible apathy for them but equally fears for the future of the nation; one in which there is no place for him. In Barry’s world, hypocrisy trumps idiocy every time. And the American people are dumb, misguided, oblivious to their own absence of thought, and wholly unable to comprehend any genuine emotion or purpose beyond their own naval-gazing, gutless and stultified existence. In a rather desperate attempt to shake them from their complacency, Barry demands that his listeners tune out and sign off, of course, completely forgetting that if they do, he no longer has a show or any real purpose in life – having already alienated himself from virtually anyone who might have even remotely cared about what happens to him. Believing Barry’s diatribe to be part of his schtick, Dietz is thoroughly impressed. Indeed, the ratings are the highest since Barry began broadcasting Night Talk.

Emotionally spent, Barry signs off for the night and retreats with Laura on his arm. Whatever his flaws, she reluctantly loves him still. And Barry, whether sincere or otherwise, promises to be a better man for her in the morning as the two lovers part company on the roof-top parking garage. Will he remain true to his word? We will never know. As Barry walks over to his car, he is confronted by a stranger reporting to be a huge fan of the show and wanting his autograph. However, as Barry reaches for a pen, the stranger pulls out a pistol instead, repeatedly firing it into Barry’s chest and stomach. The shock jock has met his untimely and rather prophetic end. In the movie’s epitaph, the camera flies high over Dallas as various voices call in to pay tribute to Barry, praising him as a gifted, clever and amusing man. In these penultimate moments of reflection, we can almost hear Barry screaming from beyond the grave, “No, no. You morons. Have you learned nothing? Ugh!”

At the time of its release, Talk Radio was truly shocking. Sadly, the age of celebrity dreck has caught up to Oliver Stone’s fiction – surpassed it, even. We have entered an age where nothing Barry says or does sounds any more prophetic, ugly, cynical or even sadistic than what we generally see or hear on the nightly news. His race-baiting, hatred of women, rank disgust for his lessers – and betters, for that matter – all appear as ‘normal’ to us now – a rather sad indictment on how far down the proverbial rabbit hole society at large has traveled since 1988. Eric Bogosian’s portrait of a morally repugnant narcissist, imploding from his own self-loathing and turpitude was meant then as a cause célèbre for America, not to drown in the mire of its sycophantic love affair with pop culture. This message was never heeded. So, today, with the advent of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the like, making instant – if only temporary ‘stars’ out of some of the most mundane navel-gazers (Honey Boo Boo, anyone?) - the prophecies in Talk Radio have all come true. Barry’s worst nightmare is our reality – gone, even beyond what once seemed grotesquely absurd and implausibly never-to-be possible. And the movie that then, at intervals, was very hard to take without slightly squirming from social discomfort, now plays as ever the quaint reminder and/or embarkation marker from whence we can chart the downfall since into very dark and disreputable times.

Talk Radio arrives via Twilight Time’s newly inked deal with Universal Home Video. I sincerely hope this Blu-ray is not a harbinger of things yet to come down the pike. Uni has provided TT with a very old, careworn and imperfect 1080p transfer. Not only has basic image stabilization not been applied, resulting in a frequently wobbly frame with a lot of fine details ‘floating’ in place, and oodles of edge enhancement and age-related artifacts to boot, but color density is all over the place. The flashback sequence, shot in a gauze-based de-saturated sepia with blown-out contrast, herein looks wan, distorted, muddy and dull with tons of age-related debris. Truly, the flashback is a garish experience to wade through. The rest of the image, presumably taking place in real/reel time in the then present, exhibits medium to thick grain levels; grain itself, registering as digitally harsh. The image has been artificially sharpened too. So, more edge effects and a very gritty quality throughout, unflattering and wholly unnecessary. Contrast is fairly solid, but fine details are wanting in all but extreme close-ups. Honestly, this is another sub-standard Uni offering from a studio that seems to relish, in tandem, bastardizing and cannibalizing its own history without any thought put forth on how best to represent its deeper catalog releases. The 2.0 DTS audio is adequate, but just. Extras include an isolated effects/score track and a half-hour featurette where Oliver Stone waxes affectionately on the making of the movie. Bottom line: while I want to sincerely promote a lot of Uni’s back catalog, because the studio’s rich heritage is worthy of rediscovery, their Blu-ray standards are so lax, I fear nothing but a total shake-up in their management will lead to better product being promoted on disc in the future. So, pass on this one and be very glad that you did.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

1

EXTRAS

1