The cult rock ‘n’ roll weirdo road movie of your dreams, the wildly underseen and very funny CANDY MOUNTAIN somehow managed to be both a lark and a creative and thematic apotheosis for both of its co-directors, photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank and novelist and screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer. Mediocre musician and all-around jackass Julius (Kevin J. O’Connor) insinuates himself into a deal to track down legendary and reclusive guitar maker Elmore Silk, an oblique figure who has left a trail of disgruntled family members and forlorn ex-lovers in his wake. Julius finds that nothing about his assignment is easy as he loses vehicle after vehicle, drinks himself into a stupor, and meets innumerable deranged personalities (a great many of whom are played by notable musicians, including Tom Waits as a yuppie, Joe Strummer and Arto Lindsay as the world’s worst no wave band, and Dr. John as a wheelchair-bound psychopath) whom he invariably leaves frustrated, confused, or enraged.

Given that they were best known, respectively, for the photography book The Americans and the screenplay for TWO-LANE BLACKTOP, that Frank and Wurlitzer’s feature film collaboration would so greatly concern itself with America’s preoccupation with the road and wayward notions of freedom should come as no shock, nor should its deeply odd dead-end splendor, given the tremendous creative brain trust involved.

35mm from the Museum of FIne Arts, Houston

Includes the short film ENERGY AND HOW TO GET IT (Robert Frank, Rudy Wurlitzer, and Gary Hill, 1981) - 16mm - 28 min

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