Static

By F.R.

FM

Directed by John A. Alonzo

Screenplay by Ezra Sacks

Depending on one's point of view, FM is either 1) some Hollywood executive's idea of an extravagant practical joke or 2) a major breakthrough in avant-garde cinema or 3) the most amateurish major studio release so far this year. Those moviegoers who conclude that FM is 1) or 2) will find the film a fascinating experience. Those who decide that FM is in fact 3) may want to write the film's distributor, Universal Pictures, and demand their ticket money back. But any moviegoer with a taste for adventure will surely want to sample the evidence and make up his own mind. Films like FM just don't come along every day of the week: they are usually locked up in studio vaults or sold directly to cable television.

FM marks the directing debut of Cinematographer John A. Alonzo (Chinatown), who here reveals some rather provocative notions about film making. FM seems to be two hours of unedited footage thrown together without regard for the admittedly old-fashioned niceties of narrative movies; indeed, at any given moment, it is impossible to decipher what is going on in FM or to identify the characters onscreen. It is also quite difficult to make out what anyone is saying. In what must be the most innovative use of sound since Woody Allen's What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966), Alonzo has decreed that much of the movie's crucial dialogue be drowned out by either rock music or random background noise. Perhaps lip readers will be able to judge the merits of FM's actors, who include Martin Mull, Michael Brandon and Eileen Brennan.

Alonzo's principal collaborator on FM is Ezra Sacks, a screenwriter with an unabashed affection for recent American movies. His script, which seems to be about a war between hip deejays and crass moneymen at a Los Angeles radio station, is a scrupulous homage to such entertainments as Car Wash and Between the Lines. At least one of his three jokes is right out of MASH. Film buffs will undoubtedly have a whale of a time picking out such references to other movies; viewers with a less academic bent may wonder if Sacks might not be trafficking in stolen goods. Maybe it doesn't make any difference. In the end, only history can conclusively determine whether FM is Hollywood's answer to Last Year at Marienbad or just a particularly rank piece of garbage.

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