Cocaine Cowboys

This is 70s pop at its best, guys! What a gem! I love it! And Jack Palance as the evil rock band's manager is insane, he's so cool, man! And Andy Warhol playing himself, what a riot, I've never seen him do himself like that, he's cooler than cool! I believe the whole flick was filmed at Andy's compound in Montauk, Long Island, what a place, what a location! And the scenes in Manhattan that hold the story together, how funny. Great writing, cool camera, cool acting and very, very cool directing by Ulli Lommel, who's know to crank out one horror flick after the other, but this one, this is pure popism, no horror at all, and it shows that Lommel has real talent. The film also stars Tom Sullivan, a real life drug dealer who died age 23 in the gutter of Brooklyn after several failed attempts to reignite his "business" (that's what I read in "High Times" back in the early 80s). This film was shot right after Lommel's first Warhol production, "Blank Generation" another cool flick.

Genius. Moron. Is there a difference? This movie is a hideous waste of celluloid - or any other medium, for that matter. The story was not well thought out at all, as Lommel has admitted. Lommel claimed that this was a legitimate film and not a cover for a cocaine smuggling operation. After watching it, I think anyone would wonder if that could possibly have been the case. I think that any B-movie director who has ever walked up to someone and said, "I have an idea for a film, the story and script are contained in my hand-held cassette recorder and we should start filming next weekend at Andy Warhol's house," should be shot...and not with a camera.

I put off seeing this movie for years, given how Ulli Lommell's more recent movies have been uniformly awful. I finally saw the movie today, and realized I could have waited a lot longer. The screenplay is simply inadequate - after the movie sets things up in the first few minutes, there's hardly any more plot to unfold, and the movie is padded with endless scenes of little to no consequence. Another problem is that there is not one fully fleshed out character - the band members all act alike. The movie has some bizarre casting with Jack Palance as the band manager, and Andy Warhol playing himself, but that only adds a little interest. There are some decent songs on the soundtrack, but that only adds a little more interest. The end results are so misguided that one has to wonder if the filmmakers were on the white stuff themselves.

This late 70s pop flick has Warhol written all over it. Directed by his protégé Ulli Lommel, who later went on to become the infant terrible of Hollywood, after he spent almost ten years making twenty-one films with his former mentor and friend Rainer Werner Fassbinder, COCAINE COWBOYS rocks. The music is super cool, the story, featuring Hollywood legend jack Palance as controversial manager of a cocaine smuggling rock band, zips along like a comic strip of the 70s. Elliot Goldenthal, who later scored an Academny Award for his music for FRIDA, created an inspired score. The camera work by Jochen Breitenstein is flawless and reminds me of the films Peter Fonda made, such as EASY RIDER, which seems like a forerunner to COCAINE COWBOYS. Totally underrated so far, this film deserves a brand new transfer from the original 35mm negative to an HD master, so that the whole world may enjoy this gem. Warhol was right: Ulli Lommel has become a highly fought over director, with countless enemies and many more hard core fans. Yes, Warhol was right, when he picked Lommel in the late 70s as his soup du jour, his new pet artist.

I wish I would've lived in the 60s or 70s. Those two decades must've been off the hook! I'm giving this one a ten, a perfect ten! It has everything I like about independent films, It is off beat, cool, different, inventive, hilarious, wacky, funny, sexy, wild, surprising and totally entertaining! Jack Palance, yes, leadies and gentlemen, THAT Jack Palance, Hollywood legend (remember his Oscar ripe "Shayne"?) is insanely cool as "Raf", the rock band's wild and crazy manager. And Andy Warhol as the "detective" who spies around with his polaroid camera, is totally insane too, what a combination, Palance and Warhol, but it's these kinds of decision director Lommel made that make this film such an experience! It's only 85 minutes long, but those 86 minutes got it going, ladies and gentlemen. On top of it all a musical score performed by Tom Sullivan and his band, with a bunch of hot songs like "We're just Cocaine Cowboys". I love this film!