Cocaine Cowboys

'Cocaine Cowboys' is a curious movie directed by Ulli Lommel, who is also responsible for another obscure 70s rock-related film with an Andy Warhol cameo 'Blank Generation'. 'Blank Generation' has been unfairly forgotten and is really worth watching. 'Cocaine Cowboys' probably deserves its obscurity. Unless you're a massive Jack Palance or Warhol fan there's not much on offer here. The uncharismatic Tom Sullivan (who he?) plays the lead role, a rock singer, and also co-writes the forgettable songs. The band he fronts sounds dated even for the time, kinda Joe Cocker and the Grease Band meets Bad Company, but with sub-par material. No wonder he went on to nothing in particular.

The plot concerns a rock band who are also cocaine smugglers. They want to get out of the drug business, but must go through with one last deal. No surprise that it all goes wrong and that their Mob buddies want blood. Jack Palance plays their cigar-chomping manager. Andy Warhol plays himself and does very little. His involvement seems mainly for the benefit of promoting his 'Interview' magazine. Fair enough. But why Palance would agree to be involved in this b-grade bore is anybody's guess.

For 70s obsessives only.

This movie is awesome. I got it for a dollar at Fiesta. Its worth every cent and more. Andy Warhol's performance was subtle, yet captivating. Jack Palance was his usual bad-ass guru self and the soundtrack brought me back to those hazy nights in East Timor. If you know where I can get the soundtrack, please post where. This is one of the great overlooked films from the late 70's. It prefigures the post punk movement in its hedonistic display of fashion and drug consumption. Indeed, we are all just cocaine cowboys. The title of the movie is a summary of the times yet also an astute indictment. Andy Warhol is truly transcendent. His acne scars barely even show. If you say anything bad about this movie you don't actually know what you're talking about and you're an ignorant unsophisticated dilettante.

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 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.

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.