(whole lotta spoilers)
I found myself thinking of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” while taking yet another look at my favourite Brian De Palma film the other night. “Blow Out”, De Palma’s dazzling 1981 conspiracy thriller – part Antonioni hommage, part Hitchcock rip, all dazzling De Palma showcase – is, to me, essentially, a film about a man and how his tools first make and then unmake him.
Kubrick’s groundbreaking 1968 film is filled with memorable moments, but, it’s a key moment from “The Dawn of Man” sequence that popped into my mind. An ape, sits by himself, in an endless expanse of desert. Before him, the bare bones of a long since slaughtered boar. While studying the downed beast’s skeletal remains, the ape tilts his head left then right in a subtle suggestion of curiosity. Cue Richard Strauss’ pounding and triumphant, “Also Sprach Zarathustra”, as the ape picks up one of the larger bones of the beast and starts smacking it against the others. At first, his playful use of the bone, as a kind of tool, is purely accidental – it drops from his hand more than his hand directs it downward. But, before long, accidental and playful gives way to purposeful and savage. Realizing the awesome power of his discovery, the ape stretches his arm as far back as he can and then brings the bone down with maximum ferocity, over and over again – smashing the other bits of the boar skeleton to pieces.
Whether it is a bone used by an ape at the dawn of man or a professional reel to reel tape recorder and boom microphone used by an expert film soundman some six million years later, a tool can make the man and can unmake him, too.
“Blow Out” begins disguised as a slasher film. Via POV, we are the heavy breathing Jason clone stalking the outside of a college dorm as beautiful, scantily clad women dance and get off in their respective rooms. Cut to inside as the psycho – us – enters the shower room and pulls back the curtain on a young woman all lathered up and unaware. We raise the knife. Seeing us she screams.
Another cut – this one far more jarring – and we’re in the projection room of Independence Pictures Incorporated. Turns out, the slasher film we’ve been watching, “Co-Ed Frenzy” is their latest sleazo production. The boorish producer isn’t happy with the young woman’s scream. He needs a new one and he needs it fast.
Right off the bat, Jack Terry (John Travolta in a terrific performance), Indepence Pictures Incorporated’s sound man, has his competency questioned. Even though he had nothing to do with the scream – it was the girl’s own, and she was likely chosen by the oily producer himself – he gets the blame along with a lambasting for using a stock effect for the sound of wind through the trees.
Even though he’s working for a producer much more interested in getting laid than making a good film, Jack can’t escape the doubters who are not convinced that he has mastered the tools of his trade.
These tools – the mobile reel to reel tape recorder and long microphone being most prominent – define Jack. At one point, he literally identifies himself as a “professional sound man.” These tools help him pay the rent and put food on the table. However, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that these tools also represent Jack’s last chance at redemption. And, from the get go, his competency at utilizing them in an expert way is doubted. This, it turns out, is not only a repeated refrain in the film, but also a warning that Jack would do well to heed.
The plot really gets in motion a bit later. Jack is out in nature, with his mobile reel to reel tape recorder, listening for a better “wind through the trees” sound. Suddenly, with headphones on, he picks up the sound of squealing tires. Jack points his microphone towards the sound as a car comes careening down the road. One of its’ front tires suffers a blowout. The car skids and veers wildly to the left as it smashes through a wooden barrier and plunges straight down into the river below.
Jack drops his equipment and rushes to the scene. He dives into the water and goes under. He looks in through the front window and sees a man’s ghostly face start to leak blood from his nose and mouth. Too late to save him, Jack smashes the back window and pulls a woman out and swims her to shore.
Later, at a hospital, he is told that the dead man he saw in the car underwater was governor McRyan – the odds on favourite to win the next Presidential election. Not only that, but, when he tells one of McRyan’s people that he heard a bang before the blow out – suggesting it was no accident – he is doubted. Much to Terry’s frustration, not only can he not convince people in the make believe world of filmmaking that he knows what he’s doing, but, he can’t convince people in the real world, either.
Again, though he argues otherwise, his professionalism, his experience and his competency at using the tools of his trade are doubted and dismissed. On top of that, another of McRyan’s men tells him to forget about the girl, Sally (Nancy Allen playing naive, little girl lost). Though Terry initially resists, and, through resisting shows a belief in the truth that would make a journalist proud, he eventually caves and agrees not to mention the girl to anyone – most of all the press – in order to spare the governor’s family further pain and embarrassment.
Still dazed from the sedation she got at the hospital, Jack stashes Sally in a motel room. Outside, with a pencil sitting in for his boom microphone, his headphones on and his mobile reel to reel replaying the audio from the night of the “accident”, Jack relives the moment. As the audio plays, it conjures up images in his mind – images that he could not have possibly seen – the flash from the barrel of the gun and a close up image of the tire being penetrated by the bullet. Here, Jack is trying to confirm that he heard what he thought he heard. His reel-to-reel tape machine stands in for his memory and, essentially, records over it. For all intents and purposes, it has become his new memory of the “accident.” The tape also re-energizes him. It provides him with a new, much more meaningful purpose in life – a purpose that also gives him a chance to escape life in sleazy, grade z, horror film hell. Ironically, for Jack, anyway, his tape machine is a potential life saver.
Later on, we find out more about what’s motivating Jack to take on what looks like an almost impossible task. In a conversation with Sally, he reveals that he used to wire undercover cops. One night, he wired the force’s top undercover cop in order to expose a police captain in the shakedown of a mobster. All was going well, Jack’s mic and small tape recorder were recording the incriminating evidence clear as a bell. Jack was thrilled. Then, some static started interfering with the recording. Turned out, Jack didn’t account for the undercover cop sweating. The wire’s battery had shorted out and was burning a hole in his stomach. Tragedy followed, as the mobster caught on and killed the undercover cop.
What’s truly driving Jack is a desperate desire for redemption. And, for Jack, that redemption can only come from a re-confirmation of his skills in using the tools of his trade to uncover corruption – to fight the good fight.
An interesting counterpoint to Jack’s character is Manny Carp (Dennis Franz hitting the boozy low life bulls-eye). He’s a wino photographer with a rotten egg soul who specializes in snapping compromising pictures of powerful men with his comely hired help – Sally being his go to gal.
Manny, too, uses a tool to uncover corruption. But, whereas Jack seeks to use his tools for good, Manny is simply in it for the money. In a way, the film is also about how Jack is trying to keep himself from becoming Manny. By working at Independence Pictures Incorporated, Jack must know that he’s already halfway there.
Manny isn’t completely a lost cause. It turns he was there the night of the “accident”, too. Not only that, but he took photos and sold them to a Newsweek magazine double, “News Today.” Jack picks up a copy and, back in the offices of Independence Pictures, cuts Manny’s still frames out and shoots them, one by one, on a motion picture film camera in order to animate them. From there, he syncs up his original audio with Manny’s pictures and, just like that, Jack has worked his magic – using the tools of his trade – and has produced a zapruder-like strip of film with sound.
Running it on an editing machine, Jack sees what looks like a flash from the muzzle of a rifle coming from the bushes. It corresponds perfectly to what sounds like a gunshot on his original audio recording. Jack is electric with joy. It’s a brief reaction shot, but, for a fleeting moment, Jack is happy – just like he was happy in that unmarked police car as his wire was capturing a police captain’s attempt to shakedown a mobster. In both instances, he used his expertise, the tools that define him, to uncover an injustice of great importance. Redemption, on a grand scale, is within his grasp. He can almost hear it.
Unfortunately for Jack, there is one other man, with a decidedly different set of tools, who has been working overtime to make sure that his dream of redemption remains just that – a dream.
In a deeply creepy performance, John Lithgow plays Burke, a henchman who was originally hired to get some photos of McRyan with a floozy. Instead, he went full psycho and got McRyan killed. Now he’s busy getting rid of any loose ends.
Burke’s favourite tool – the one that defines him – is a very thin, taut wire that he pulls out of his wristwatch and uses to strangle his victims. Just like Jack gets a jolt every time he uses his tools to save the day, so, too, does Burke. Some people zig and some people zag.
Later, in an anxious moment, Jack realises that his zapruder-like film just won’t cut it.
Jack Terry
“Nobody will believe it. They’ll say I made it up in a lab and they’d be right.”
Ah, a man coming up against the limits of his abilities. His tools only took him so far. Now, he needs Sally to make one last visit to Manny’s hole in the wall of an apartment and get his original photos. She does. Jack syncs them up with his original audio and the effect is striking. Finally, he has the proof he needs. There is no way they won’t believe him now.
The thing about tools, however, is that they don’t discriminate. They are just dead objects designed for a specific purpose. Whether the person using the tool is good or bad is irrelevant. They work either way. And that’s where Burke comes back in.
Turns out TV Anchorman Frank Donahue is the one person who believes Jack or, at least, believes him enough to know that his story is ratings gold. Jack’s just waiting for a call back from him to make the final arrangements to appear on his show.
But, Burke has gained access to Jack’s phone line. After blocking the crucial call from Donahue, Burke dials up Sally and, posing as the eager TV Anchorman, sets up a meeting where she’ll hand over Jack’s evidence to him. And, yes, a small tape recorder can be seen recording Jack’s call with Donahue and recording his call with Sally. Burke uses Jack’s tools against him and the consequences prove tragic.
The final moments of “Blow Out” are remarkable. The pace is relentless. The images are hypnotic. The suspense is killer. And Jack’s actions are lethal.
Like Scottie climbing those steps of the bell tower for a second chance to save Madeleine, in Hitchcock’s brilliant and haunting, “Vertigo”, Jack Terry can’t help himself either. He wires up Sally for her meeting with Donahue just like he wired up that undercover cop. This time, though, Jack, like Scottie, is certain that the outcome will be different. This time, Jack is certain that he’ll use the tools of his trade successfully and triumphantly and that the long, numbing nightmare that he’s been living for the past two years will end. He’ll win the day. He’ll be the hero. A second chance.
When Jack kills Burke as the dazzling, multi-coloured Mummer’s parade fireworks display pops and whirrs all around them, it seems as though redemption has come at last. Then, he looks down and sees Sally, lying motionless – a bloodied slit marked across her throat. Not only is the nightmare not over, but it has darkened.
What has to be one of the saddest and most tragic final images in film history sees our traumatically numbed and thoroughly defeated protagonist holding his hands over his ears in a vain attempt to block out the sound of Sally’s last, desperate scream – now featured in “Co-ed Frenzy.” The producer got his wish. He got his scream.
Producer
Now that’s a scream!
By using Sally’s very real scream in a cheapo slasher film to satisfy the demands of his scuzzy producer boss, Jack has truly given up. He has given up on trying, on caring, on proving his self worth. The tools that made him have now unmade him. RIP Jack Terry.
