If You Loved Rip Torn, You Have To See ‘Payday’

Between his adored stints on The Larry Sanders Show and 30 Rock, and unforgettable appearances in cult films ranging from The Man Who Fell To Earth to The Beastmaster to Freddy Got Fingered (there’s also the Men In Black series and his Oscar nomination for Cross Creek), many were sad to learn of Rip Torn’s passing last night at the age of 88. Ironically, it’s likely the majority of those mourning him have never seen him play the lead in a film ever. The good news is that’s easy to rectify as Payday, a 1973 film starring Torn as a self-destructive country singer touring the south in a Cadillac, is currently uploaded onto YouTube (and if that suddenly goes g’bye, you can buy it cheap as well).

The trailer for Payday is a trashy hoot if you haven’t seen the movie (“if you can’t smoke it, drink it, spend it or love it…forget it!”), and disturbingly glib if you have. While there’s plenty of smoking and drinking in the film, there’s rarely a moment where even half the people on screen are enjoying themselves. The spending comes in the form of a huffed “take care of it!” when a bill needs spending or an authority figure needs bribing. As for love, you don’t need decades of hindsight to know that you’re seeing cheap infidelity (if not blatant assault) any time Rip’s character, Maury Dann, or one of his bandmates takes someone back to their hotel room.

The movie wastes no time pulling back the curtain – aside from a boozy, barely-in-key rendition of Shel Silverstein’s “Country Girl” over the opening credits, we rarely see Dann on stage. Instead we see him carousing, handshaking, taking near suicidal lengths to stave off boredom, and threatening anyone who gets in the way of his next payday or even just makes him feel bad. A girlfriend who cared enough to make a scrapbook of Dann’s press clippings has to wake up next to him banging her inevitable replacement in the back of the Cadillac. The new girl then has to kill time discussing the pros and cons of non-stick pans with an oafish driver who’s willing to risk life and limb for Dann – not that Dann would need the help if he wasn’t picking fights. This is a guy who throws money out the window when he ditches you on the road, then has his driver peel back so he can take it back, hiss “you didn’t earn it,” and split.

What makes Payday striking is not only that it avoids glamorizing the desperation and the decadence of Dann’s life on the road, but that it equally eschews the sentimentality of “tragic artist” films like Crazy Heart, The Rose or A Star Is Born. Dann may be dependent on his entourage, but they’re not exploiting him – they’re just trying to keep him upright and out of jail. Torn does a fantastic job of showing the behaviors of a charismatic entertainer without playing to those watching the film – his cowardice and contempt are on full display when he’s cornered, and only a brief sequence of him songwriting alone in his room suggests even a glint of soul.

It’s possible his career was “about the music” once, but Dann’s songs are just a cog in the engine that feeds his lifestyle. He’s not on tour so much as on the run, with his metaphorical & literal crimes gaining on him. Current audiences may be confused about whether he’s supposed to be a big star or not – everyone seems to recognize him, but his life is such a dull back-road grind that only an aspiring songwriter whose alternative is dishwashing could want to join in (and he might regret it). Daryl Duke, who went on to direct the outstanding caper film The Silent Partner (see it before the deaths of Christopher Plummer or Elliott Gould earns it an essay similar to this) and the famous TV mini-series The Thorn Birds, tells the story so matter-of-factly it’s not surprising the film was sold as exploitation and made almost no impact upon release. But with our increased awareness of how even small-scale celebrity allows toxic figures to indulge their cruelest impulses, the film maintains a disturbing potency, as Torn’s boorish dynamism suggests why people find it so hard to turn away from monstrous figures.

Haing already played Henry Miller in a flop adaptation of Tropic Of Cancer and a voyeuristic psychiatrist in the X-rated Coming Apart before Payday‘s release, it’s not entirely surprising that Torn had to settle for supporting roles for the last forty-odd years of his career. Thankfully, Payday makes clear how commanding a presence he could be in a movie, even if Hollywood rarely risked bank on it.

Anthony Cohan-Miccio lives in LA, and at least means to be writing about music, movies and other pop-culture artifacts.

Stream Payday on YouTube