Before anything: I know this movie is awful. I mean, it’s just stupid. It’s stupid. But, as a cultural artifact, it is altogether fascinating and, I think, important, in that it is a time capsule not only of blue collar living in in forgotten crannies of urban 1978, but it represents a now extinguished brand of product that really doesn’t exist for this particular demographic.
This is a movie for a blue collar audience that revels in its blue collar universe. It does not aspire, in any way, to a white collar existence. (What’s targeted at trailer parks today? Keeping Up With The Kardashians?)
EWWBL presents a world completely isolated from a white collar/blue state way of life. Biker gangs, beer-in-cans, underground bare-knuckle fighting circuits, lawns with car parts, country music – and everyone is in on it and that’s all it is. It’s practically sci-fi, or, at least, some sort of opposite to Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song.
EWWBL takes advantage of this world of fantasy to support its paper-thin, almost stream-of-consciousness script. What is the relationship between Philo, Orville and Ma? Does Clyde actually understand Philo, like Chewie and Han? What exactly do all these people do for a living? How do they always go to the bar, but not pay for anything? How does the quasi-Nazi biker gang just “find them” when they are in Santa Fe and Denver? Same with the bumbling cops. Same with Philo and Sondra Locke – who looks a little bit like a strung-out Penthouse Pet and a little bit like Mom’s Apple Pie. Apparently, the state of Colorado has only one street, and everyone will eventually see one another on it.
Or maybe it does, and I just don’t know about it, because this isn’t my world?
By they way – the Orangutan is a frickin’ scream.
