James Bridges directs John Travolta, Debra Winger and Scott Glenn in this drama about oil refinery workers who unwind in a country and western themed nightclub where a mechanical bull riding contest takes centre stage.

Based on a magazine article and seen (as many Travolta movies of this era were) as an attempt to recapture the Saturday Night Fever lightning in a bottle for a second time. It is a less spoken of phenomenon of the early Eighties how many mainstream studio movies were based on journalism. New American Cinema and New Journalism overlapped for a prolonged period and by the the time high concept started to bite the idea of boiling down the richness of alternative life stories into formulaic star vehicles became an often unremarked upon sub genre of it own. Artistically ambitious strippers nightly grind became Flashdance. There’s a training program called Top Gun and there might be a movie in it! And as much as the boiler plate scriptwriting process might try and smooth and corral these people’s tales into something mass market, the grit and residue of reality still clings somewhere to the final product’s heart.

Urban Cowboy is not a great movie but it has stuck with me over the past couple of weeks. Mainly Debra Winger’s complex and yet smoking hot performance. There’s a taunting sequence where she rides the mechanical bull, showing Travolta’s controlling cuck all the moves her new lover has taught her that might just be the sexiest scene of the entire Eighties. She is given a raw deal through the movie. Two volatile suitors to chose from, neither really worthy of her but one the less dangerous choice… the only man who there is a chance for change and growth. Hard to imagine a movie being made today where the happy ending feels like such a compromise. But I suspect the filmmakers only see her as a daffy trophy to be won, a feisty beauty to be tamed. Much of the shading and humanity is what Winger brings to the role.

All in all, Urban Cowboy is overlong. Travolta is miscast and the story often bends around what his fanbase want. It was his last hit before Look Who’s Talking. Glenn’s villain for example could have went another way entirely and if the script wasn’t stacked in the A-Lister’s favour then the better actor might have revealed himself to be a better man. Disco was silly enough but a gritty relationship drama about a couple mastering a mechanical bull feels almost spoof worthy. Maybe not entirely unintentionally it often feels like the bull symbolises Scott Glenn’s more confident, mature and masculine penis. Whatever goes on on the device is just a surrogacy for what the more experienced Buck wants to do with both halves of the couple away from the nightclub crowd. The C&W soundtrack kicks, it launched a musical sub genre all of it own, and the location filming lends this daft movie a grounding. I’m conflicted but I would watch again.

6

Perfect Double Bill: An Officer And A Gentleman (1982)

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