Talk Radio

I have seen it a few times and get completely glued to it every time. It is very suspenseful and intense. To describe it sounds boring but it is amazing. It is the kind of movie where you need can't miss a thing, but if you soak it in it sticks with you long after it ends. Now thinking about it I don't even know what Stone was trying to make us see. Just the story of Alan Green? I don't think so. It was a look at ignorance, stupidity, self-absorption, and a guy just loosing his grip. Maybe he had more grip than the listeners though. I didn't like Barry but still seemed worried about him for some reason. I was perplexed at why I couldn't get him out of my mind when the movie ended. I wish I could see inside Olive Stone's mind for this one.

A top notch drama enhanced by Stone's camera work. The story involves the meteoric rise and fall of a popular shock-jock. The main character's ego and opinions drip out of his pores like sweat on a hot afternoon. Stone's camera sweeps and glides around the radio studio like a hungry panther. His use of reflections turns up the heat until the whole world starts to warp and melt around the main character as his world starts to crumble. Bogosian's dialogue is sharp but sometimes preachy. The voices over the telephone seem brainwashed and generic but I think that was done with purpose to enhance the DJ's view of his audience as being mindless followers. The technical work on this film is what does it for me. It adds up to a fine film.

Eric Bogosian is electrifying as Barry Champlain, loud mouth and controversial host of a talk radio show. The opening 20 minutes or so is mesmerising, with its claustrophobic atmosphere and deep sense of impending menace. With the scenes involving Champlain's ex-wife, the temperature drops noticeably. The writers here take the easy option of making her too virtuous and Barry as gratuitously nasty and selfish, thus reducing any sympathy towards him. Back in the studio, the threatening atmosphere returns, but this time we have heard it before. Too many of the same callers saying much the same thing begins to pall. In particular the continual comments of an anti-Semitic nature simply wear thin. The writers once again make it easy for themselves in making all the bad callers white redneck neo-Nazis while the only obviously black caller was shown as almost Pollyannaishly happy. With a bit more variety and more honest writing (ie a wider cross-section of callers, not just endless white bigots) this could have been outstanding. As it is it is worth watching for Bogosian's wonderful performance.

I have never been a great fan of Oliver Stone, often because I have found his films to be forced, preachy and generally flawed. The two Stone films I truly like are JFK and Talk Radio, yet Talk Radio takes the cake for being Stone's finest achievement. Stone is a director whereby you are either a fan or you are not, it is safe to say that before watching Talk Radio I was not fond of the guy and considered one of the most overrated directors in the film industry, though after watching Talk Radio some of my perceptions have changed. Talk Radio is an unsettling and amusing attack on what is now known as "reality TV".

Talk Radio follows a self-indulgent, dysfunctional, determined, hysterical, outrageous and perplexing radio host, named Barry Champlain who hosts a controversial late-night radio show in Dallas. Quickly becoming well known for his bold and quirky air-presence he becomes a late night sensation, whereby depraved junkies, delinquents, racists, sociopaths, sickos, perverts and morons call in to be ridiculed on air. The film shows the rise and fall of the man's career, carefully making an accurate portrayal on freedom of speech. Originally adapted from a stage-play, the film attaches itself to the theatre theme that it was originally built around, wonderfully conveying the film's fierce nature.

With the ferocious energy and non-stereotypical air, Talk Radio brings all the hilarity behind "crass media". It remains even more poignant today than it was in the late '80s. The film goes into depth studying the likes of arrogance, self-obsession, offensive behaviour, controversy, hypocrisy and ignorance. The film shows through a controlled manner how it is good to have a personal opinion and freedom of speech, yet it is something that should be used wisely rather than shamefully blunt. Stone tries to show how freedom of speech is a crucial importance in life, but is something that we should be wary and cautious about. The film asks the question of "is our main protagonist just the same as the sad people who call up the show?"

Stone fabulously creates the film's key set-piece (the radio station) with an ambition and cold atmosphere. He then succeeds in capturing the isolation, fear, ambiguity and the dangerous emotions that are built up at the radio station. Eric Bogosian is perfectly cast as the isolated, self-absorbed and complex genius, Barry Champlain. He fits the role perfectly letting off his lines with such enthusiasm, urgency, perplexity, brusqueness and ultimately the bold hilarity of his offensive nature. The performance brims with spark, which was evidently robbed of an Oscar nomination. His voice suits the character, being that a primary element of a radio host and his power of acting along with tragedy and comedy works brilliantly.

There is a strong use of editing in Stone's films and Talk Radio boasts some of his cleanest, most rhythmic editing. He uses beautifully controlled camera techniques, which differ from being calm to suddenly becoming turbulent. There is a vibrant energy behind the film, with its raw and wonderfully delightful script working as a centre-piece for the greatness of the film. The striking and virtuous cinematography stands out in the moments inside and outside the studio, most impressively capturing the city at night. Not forgetting the hauntingly heartbreaking and yet darkly funny climatic "spiral to decline" is ultimately remarkable cinema.

Talk Radio is an essential modern masterpiece, I am certain you will be surprised by just how great it really is. I highly recommend Talk Radio for anyone interested in media or film. Talk Radio is a fine example of top-notch, intellectual and insightful entertainment, which still packs a well-earned wakeup call. Finally, if it was not for Eric Bogosian the film would not be the fun, delightful and enduring masterpiece it is today.

In one of the more under-seen films of the late 1980's, at a time when Oliver Stone was riding high with Platoon and Wall Street (and before his opus Born on the Fourth of July), he co-scripted and directed this look at the world of radio, specifically one radio host in the middle of Texas. This man is Barry Champlain, in a once-in-a-career turn from Eric Bogosian, who wrote the original play and also co-wrote the script. Barry is like a mix of Howard Stern and one of those pundits you hear on the radio stations many of us might turn off. He's got ideas on his mind, opinions, and he's not only un-afraid to speak them, but also to stand up against the phone callers. The callers, indeed, are the driving force in the film, as Barry has to combat against the mindless, the obscene, the racist, and the purely absent-minded. As this goes on, he also has to contend with his boss (Alec Baldwin) and a hit or miss deal to go nationwide, outside the confines of the Southern way station he's in.

While after seeing the film I felt curious as to see how it would've been done on stage (I'd imagine it was a one-man show, as Bogosian has had several on the side), the direction of the film is phenomenal. Stone has been known, almost typecast, as a director who loves quick cuts, the limitless effects of montage, and effects with the styles of camera-work and other little tricks, that give his films in the 90's a distinctive, almost auteur look. But in the 80's he had this energy and feverish quality to the look of the film, and wasn't as frenzied as the other films. In order to add the proper intensity that is within the studio and head-space of Barry Champlain, he and DP Robert Richardson make the space seem claustrophobic at times, gritty, un-sure, and definitely on edge. The scenes in the middle of the film, when Barry isn't in the studio, are fairly standard, but the style along with the substance in the radio scenes is among the best I've seen from the Stone/Richardson combination.

And one cannot miscalculate the performance of Bogosian, who can be obnoxious, offensive, angered, passive, and everything that we love and hate in radio show hosts. There is also a funny, near distracting supporting role for Michael Wincott as Kent/Michael/Joe, who prank calls him one night, and the next gets invited to the studio. These scenes are a little uncomfortable for a viewer, but it does get very much into the subculture head-space of the 80's that Barry is as intrigued as he is critical of. The stoner may not 'get it', but as he says to him "it's your show". Indeed, it's hard to cover everything that goes on within the talk, and there is a lot of it. But it's never boring, and like Champlain himself, it's not easy to ignore. And when Bogosian goes into his climactic tirade on air, with the background panning around in a continuous 360 spin, it becomes intoxicating, and a reason why freedom of speech is so powerful.

Stone has been synonymous as a filmmaker of hot-button issues, who takes on subjects that were or still are controversial, and gives them a life-force that isn't always great, but is all his own. Here his skills and ambitions don't get in the way of Bogosian's- it's boosted, if anything, making an extremely skilled vision of what is essentially a near one-man show, which in and of itself is already well-written.