URBAN COWBOY: Blu-ray (Paramount, 1980) Paramount Home Video

John Travolta and Debra Winger ride a mechanical bull, and sell a great deal more of the garden variety Hollywood kind in James Bridges’ Urban Cowboy (1980) – a picture to stretch 15-mins. of corn-fed, good ole boy, honky-tonk revelry into a nearly 2 ½ hrs. prolonged music video to promote country music – then, still considered something of a niche, only marketable south of the Mason-Dixon line. The movie also acts as an extended commercial endorsement for Gilley’s – that chip-kicker clubhouse where bawdy and brawling brutes used to hang out.  Stock-piling Urban Cowboy’s soundtrack with some of the biggest acts in country music then, including Mickie Gilley, Bonnie Raitt and Charlie Daniels Band (all of whom actually appear in the movie), Johnny Lee, Boz Scaggs, and, Ann Murray – the métier of Urban Cowboy is not to be found in its ‘trailer trash’ back story. Indeed, the real star of our show is Gilley’s – a Texas-sized hot spot in Pasadena, to mysteriously burn to the ground in 1989. Part owned by country singer/songwriter, Mickey Gilley and record producer, Sherwood Cryer, the latter was largely responsible for the club’s transformation from a defunct watering hole known as Shelley’s into a Texas institution of international repute. Indeed, Cryer put Gilley’s on the map by getting writer, Aaron Latham of Esquire magazine to do an article on it; a decision to infuriate Mickey Gilley, but also directly dovetail into interest shown by Paramount producer/mogul, Robert Evans. By the time Hollywood’s travelling menagerie descended on Gilley’s to shoot Urban Cowboy, the club had already entered the Guinness books as the world’s largest honky-tonk, covering roughly the same girth as a football field and able to accommodate up to 3500 patrons in a single night. Like everything else about Texas, the club’s reputation was super-sized.

Impressions of the state of Texas have continued to morph quite a lot in these intervening decades, from the ‘big as all creation’ viewpoint of authoress, Edna Ferber’s Giant (and the Liz Taylor/Rock Hudson/James Dean film spectacular that followed it in 1956), to the epicenter of a Presidential assassination in 1963, the stomping grounds of the Dallas Cowboys – and their sexy cheerleaders – and home to TV’s unscrupulous oil baron, J.R. and the Ewing clan. Today, Texas is marked as cosmopolitan as New York or California. But in the late 1970’s, the stench of cattle dung and Beverly Hillbillies’ bubbling crude still clung to its reputation; that, and, the ‘rough n’ ready’ iconography of Texas itself as the ‘last bastion’ for a certain sect of gun-toting, rodeo-romping cow-puncher, barely civilized, despite an influx of capital from the science-boys over at NASA. In a very odd way, Gilley’s was a part of this cultural renaissance, altering outside opinions about the state, even as it promoted the Texas ideal – bull-headed hunks in hard hats at the local refineries by day, traded for Stetsons each night as the crude oozed from beyond the rigs, finding its way into the clubs where hard-drinking, slightly unkempt bruiser types came to carouse and prove their chest-thumping mettle by beating the living tar out of each other for the sake of their trophy gals in liquored-up brawls.   

There is a bit of a disconnect in John Travolta’s Bud Davis, Travolta’s inbred mid-Atlantic birthright and somewhat scrawny deportment (he’s a veritable wraith among this hulking backwoods brood), too fine-boned and ‘pretty’ for Texas, creeps in and out of his otherwise down-pat rough-hewn ‘fish out of water’ farm boy in the big city – lent the right ta-ta, but the wrong ho-ho in his scenes opposite Irish/Native American, Scott Glenn’s more legit, bronco-bustin’ baddie, Wes Hightower. That and the fact our leading lady, Debra Winger (as Sissy) hails from Cleveland, and therefore is about as rawhide as a tanned leather purse from Halle’s. There is just something inimitable about the Texas swagger. It cannot be mimicked or aped, much as Travolta and Winger try their best, feudin’ and fussin’ their way through an episodic screenplay, coauthored by James Bridges and Aaron Latham. The first half of Urban Cowboy plays like one glorified montage to country music, with Travolta’s Bud barely able to say two syllables and come up with one coherent thought before another segue to Gilley’s high-stompin’ nightlife. The picture was actually shot at the club by day to accommodate its regular spate of patrons each night, with only a handful of pick-ups made in Hollywood after production wrapped. The location work lends authenticity to the piece, though precious little else. There is a lot of local flavor here. But where is the story? Flushed down the proverbial crapper in country music clichés; ‘my baby done left me, my truck broke down, and, somebody shot my horse’.

It’s really Bud’s story we are telling – the bearded buck’s move to Houston, under the auspices of his Uncle Bob (Barry Corbin) and Aunt Corene (Brooke Alderson) who introduce him to Gilley's; Pasadena’s little slice of raunchy heaven. On his first night out, Buck lands two of the local tarts, Becky (Ellen March) and Jessie (Jessie La Rive) in a boozin' and ballin' threesome. He also gets a job at the oil refinery, thanks to Bob’s recommendation. Through hard work, Bud distinguishes himself as a valuable employee, and, is generally liked by his coworkers. However, Gilley’s gets into Bud’s blood and soon he becomes a regular fixture there. He meets Sissy, a no-nonsense gal who inquiries whether or not he is a ‘real cowboy’. Even as Bud supposes it all depends on one’s definition, he and Sissy fall in love. Bud makes an error in judgment when he slaps Sissy for flirting with Wes Hightower – a rough-trade parolee from Huntsville Penitentiary, looking to reintroduce himself into society. Wes gets a job at Gilley’s under the auspices of fellow employee and friend, Steve Strange (James Gammon), working the mechanical bull. Having ambitions to ride professionally, Bud takes his lumps on this mechanized marvel, proving he can stay on longer than most and earning the respect of the club’s patrons. He and Sissy reconcile and are wed, moving into a new trailer on the outskirts of town. Alas, it is hardly smooth sailing. Bud is the jealous type and Sissy, a hard-headed independent gal, who repeatedly tests his traditionalist’s views when reporting to be ‘the man’ of the house. Despite their frequent spats, the couple settles into the daily grind of work and play. Sissy, however, aspires to ride the mechanical bull – something Bud absolutely forbids.

Pushing Bud’s buttons, Wes openly flirts with Sissy. Wes and Bud get into it outside a local diner. Bud is bloodied, but spared total humiliation when his friends intervene. Despite his insistence, Sissy makes daily pilgrimages to Gilley’s without Bud’s knowledge, gaining access to the mechanical bull. Wes, a professional rodeo rider, teaches her the ropes. Meanwhile, at work, Bud narrowly escapes death after he slips from a scaffold high atop one of the refinery’s towers. He manages to cling to life until help from his coworkers arrives, but is thoroughly shaken by the incident. His aunt Corene comforts him back at the trailer. Corene is frankly appalled by the couple’s living conditions. With its disheveled bedding, beer cans strewn about, and, mountainous piles of dirty dishes in the sink, the trailer has fast become a sty. Bud is incensed Sissy is not there to be with him. Thus, when she returns hours later and discovers Bud has suffered a near fatal mishap, Sissy’s compassion seems very untrue to him. Nevertheless, after a few choice words, Sissy and Bud decides to forgive each other. Their reconciliation is short-lived, as they decide to go to Gilley’s where Sissy plans to show Bud what she has learned by riding the mechanical bull. Bud is incensed his wife has disobeyed him and, once home, he slaps her across the cheek before throwing her out of the trailer. The next night, Bud attempts to apologize for his actions. But Sissy is remote, angry, and quite unwilling to entertain him with her forgiveness. To make Sissy jealous, Bud picks up another club patron, Pam (Madolyn Smith) whose affluence impresses him.

Indeed, Pam’s daddy – an oil baron we never meet – has a lot of money. As such, Pam has been indulged with the spoils and a fashionable penthouse. It all goes to Bud’s head. He spends the night with Pam and, shortly thereafter, asks Sissy for a divorce. To spite Bud, Sissy takes up with Wes, who is living in a trailer adjacent the club. Aspiring to win a $5,000 contest at Gilley’s for riding the mechanical bull, Bud begins to train in his free time with his Uncle Bob who also happens to be an ex-rodeo champion. Indeed, Bud and Bob are very close.  All the more devastating then, when, during a routine midnight shift, lightning strikes the refinery, causing a huge explosion that kills Bob before Bud’s eyes. At the funeral, Sissy attempts a reconciliation as, by now, she has figured out Wes is not the man for her. In fact, he has been cheating on her with Gilley’s employee, Marshalene (Connie Hanson). But Bud rebuffs Sissy in Pam’s presence, suggesting they are planning to marry and move away to start their lives together. A tearful Sissy returns to Wes’ trailer where she is physically assaulted by Wes. Meanwhile, Bud continues to have lingering doubts about his relationship with Pam. Although she loves him dearly, Bud recalls his Uncle Bob’s advice: to swallow his pride and make up with Sissy. Wes informs Sissy of his plans to run away to Mexico after he wins the $5,000 prize money. Alas, on the night of the contest, Wes reverts to his old ways – breaking into Gilley’s office, tying up its cashier and stealing the club’s payroll. Meanwhile, realizing Bud will never love her, Pam encourages him to make his peace with Sissy. As this is the right thing to do, Bud rushes to Gilley’s, finds Sissy and reconciles with her. In the dim and smoke-filled atmosphere of the club, Bud is unaware of the bruises inflicted on her by Wes, that is, until she turns to the light. Thrown into a fitful rage, Bud finds Wes exiting the office and pummels him to the ground, exposing his theft to the club’s bouncers, who part the men before Bud can thoroughly avenge his wife’s abuse. Wes is arrested and Sissy, confident she has found her knight in shining armor, goes home with Bud.   

Urban Cowboy is so cliché-ridden and nonsensically strung together – the plot, a mere excuse to hinge montage-styled homages to country music – that it simply fails as a filmed entertainment about flawed young love in the backwaters of Texas. It’s not a musical, though there are lengthy departures into Grand ole Opry-inspired ‘feel good’, more tacked-on to promote the soundtrack album. This would kick start the ‘pop-country’ craze, intermittently referenced as ‘neo-Country’ or ‘hill boogie’. Worse, the characters here are strictly drawn from cookie cutter stereotypes. The movie’s dance numbers, including a spirited two-step performed by Travolta, looking slightly idiotic from the waist up (he shakes like a break-dancing chicken), were loosely choreographed by a very young Patrick Swayze, who would return to this honky-tonk milieu as a bona fide star and his own hunk du jour in Road House (1989). And Travolta, while not ideal for the role in many ways, almost pulls it off – mostly, on the box office carry-over of his chart-topping performances in Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978).  When Sherwood Cryer and Mickey Gilley aligned to open Gilley’s in 1970, they could likely not have foreseen the tidal wave effect Urban Cowboy would have on its popularity. Overnight, the club went from a modest revenue-producing honky-tonk to an A-lister’s ‘standing room only’ venue with line-ups around the block. Despite its high profile, Gilley’s retained its reputation as a slightly seedy, generally filthy watering hole – a place where one could just as easily pick up a whore for the night as get into a jaw-busting broil with the local color. From 1981 to 1986, Cryer and Gilley continued to reap the residuals from the picture; Gilley, in particular, his status as a country music star, instantly catapulted into the stratosphere.

Those attune to such things will take notice that the trailer park sequences in Urban Cowboy were shot with a picturesque mountain range as its backdrop. As a matter of record, Pasadena, Texas has no such topography. So, these scenes were photographed elsewhere – possibly even in California – once location work had already wrapped. Also, during a pivotal moment, Wes indulges in tequila shots with Sissy, making a boastful pledge to ‘la vida luna’, which he erroneously translates as ‘the crazy life’. ‘La vida luna’ – literally means ‘the life moon’ and has no bearing, in its literal translation, to any subliminal reference in this movie. Point blank – it makes no sense at all.  Apart from making mechanical bulls a main staple of the club scene – and not just in Texas – Urban Cowboy’s other claim to fame may be ‘The Cotton-eye Joe’ – briefly, a pre-boot-scootin’ boogie dance craze. Certainly, the movie’s soundtrack was a major plus to ticket sales, with Ann Murray’s ‘Could I Have This Dance’ and Johnny Lee’s ‘Lookin’ For Love (In All The Wrong Places), two of the stand-out smash hits. In Urban Cowboy’s wake, the face of country music was forever changed from its ‘outlaw’ strain to the homogenized ‘poppy’ sound we have come to associate with country music today.

As for Gilley’s – its regular patrons, the hard-working/fun-hankering common class, were whittled out of their old haunt by this new caste of affluent urban interloper for whom the trend was in, but the fix, decidedly out. After the oil bust in 1986, the club’s popularity waned, further fueled by a prickly disagreement between Mickey Gilley and Sherwood Cryer. This effectively led to Gilley’s closing, shortly before an intentionally set blaze leveled it to the ground. To this day, Mickey Gilley is not talking about this notorious final act. Like the infamous Chicken Ranch, immortalized in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), Gilley’s will forever be embalmed as a bygone Texas institution in Urban Cowboy; a very thin slice of local color that, like the vintage of urbanite sophisticates who dropped acid and bumped uglies inside New York’s infamous Studio ’54, can never be recaptured again today. Viewed today, Urban Cowboy is very much a freeze-frame from ‘another time’ 40-years removed from our own, and legendary for its excesses. Wrinkles in time ought never be recreated, or, if so, then, hopefully, only through the rose-colored lenses of their own time-capsule ‘charm’ for a certain generation, decidedly ‘been there/done that’ but otherwise, having moved on from its golden epoch.

Urban Cowboy arrives on Blu-ray via Paramount Home Video. Given the studio’s recent affinity for launching a line of collectible titles under their ‘Paramount Presents…’ banner, it’s odd to find this one not among the offerings. Perhaps, the studio was just not all that interested in going back to original film elements to remaster in 4K. The effort put forth on Urban Cowboy is better than middling, but disappointingly below par for what the hi-def format is capable. For starters, the opening sequence, including main titles, suffers from a curious gate weave – the image rocking from left to right – back and forth. In a few shots, the upper half of the Panavision frame actually jitters in frame, as though from some weird sprocket damage. Mercifully, these issues correct themselves shortly after the main titles. But the image remains decidedly dark. Yes, Reynaldo Villalobos’ cinematography is intent on capturing the dimly lit interiors of Gilley’s in all their cigar and cigarette-filled smoky atmosphere, complete with mood-lit red and orange spots, the only ambient light coming off back-lit glass shelves in the club’s bar. But fine detail here is decidedly wanting throughout. Even in brightly lit ‘day’ scenes, detail is wanting. While color saturation is generally solid, the image has an overall bland quality, further exacerbated by the low-lit conditions inside the club. This tends to further obfuscate background detail. Film grain looks indigenous to its source. But the image is frequently soft. The remastered 5.1 DTS really shows off the jam-packed country soundtrack to its best advantage. Alas, dialogue is frequently inaudible or sounds rather tinny and/or slightly muffled. Extras include a ‘look back’ with Mickey Gilley, who waxes affectionately and with rapid-fire recall about the events that led to the club’s consideration for the movie. We also get several deleted scenes and outtakes. Bottom line: Urban Cowboy is a picture of its time. It hasn’t held up all that well in these past 40 years. Paramount’s so-so 1080p transfer is adequate, though hardly exceptional. Bottom line: for those who recall it with fondness – this is your first (and likely ‘only’) chance to experience Urban Cowboy in hi-def. Others can pass.

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

2.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

3

EXTRAS

3