4 ARTS Page 6 Friday, September 12, 1980 The Michigan Daily Antiwar film returns, By DENNIS HARVEY In 1971, Georgia governor Jimmy Carter requested a private screening of the antiwar film Johnny Got His Gun. After sitting through the movie with wife Rosalyn, producer Bruce Cam- pbell relates that Carter said: "Johnny Got His Gun should be shown to everyone in the government, the military, and the United Nations as required viewing." Nine years later, the ex-governor is in something of a better position to make that statement come true,*and Johnny's producer is thumping the film around the country in an attempt to revive the President's memory. Campbell is currently re-launching the movie for limited showings in the U.S., and is sending promotional kits to everyone of some influence in D.C.-particularly in the vicinity of the White House. Johnny Got His Gun will make an area appearance today at the Michigan Theatre, with showings at 4:00,7:00 and 9:00. Based on Dalton Trumbo's famed novel, the film has had a chequered career from conception, to the screen and into oblivion, and now back into the limelight again. THE MOVIE'S storyline centers on young WWI veteran Joe Bonham (Timothy Bottoms, making his debut) who has been mutilated beyond recognition by his combat experien- ce-all of his limbs are gone, and his hideous facial condition renders any communication with the outside world impossible. The film tracks Joe's thoughts through various fantasy sequences, toward the gradual realization on the part of his keepers that his mind still functions. Through all of this, the pervasive theme is of the utter uselessness and horror of using the young as pawns in the wars of the old. Jason Robards, Kathy Fields, The Ann Arbor Film Cooperative Presents at MLB 3: GENE WILDER and ZERO MOSTEL in The Producers at 7 & 10:20 and Rhinoceros at 8:40 Tomorrow: Alfred Hitchcock s FRENZY and FAMILY PLOT at MLB. Admission: $2.00 Diane Varsi and an intriguingly cast Donald Sutherland appear as figures in Joe's past and imagination. Trumbo published the book in 1939-derided by Hitler, it won the National Book Award and has since become standard reading in thousands of classrooms. The author took up screenwriting, and a decade later won further, somewhat less laudatory fame as one of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten. Barred from work, Trumbo went to Mexico in self-imposed exile. While there, he met the legendary director Luis Bunuel-their acquaintance resulted in plans for a Bunuel film of Johnny Got His Gun, but financial backing fell through and the project was shelved. In 1959, Trumbo was finally the first to "break the blacklist" stigma when Otto Preminger allowed Trumbo, sans pseudonyms, to claim his own screenplay on the credits of Exodus. SEVERAL YEARS LATER, enter Bruce Campbell, with only one major previous credit-Picasso Summer, a Ray Bradbury script-based European romance and a quiet flop. He met Trumbo in 1968; the film took three years to be realized,, with the author eventually directing it himself and a fair number of the cast and crew mem- bers working without pay, out of dedication to the project. Campbell was able to raise a scant $600,000 from the studio, and resorted to drumming up an additional $300,000 from "old lefties." He personally "put a half million into it, lost it all and went bankrupt," though not before the film had garnered general rave reviews and set a record by becoming the first movie to win three major awards at Cannes. That was in 1971, however, and in the depths of the Vietnam era no one particularly wanted to sit through this antiwar depressant. Campbell has since produced one film-a half hour comedy-travelogue called "The Funnier Side of Ancient Canada" with Steve Martin. Unfor- tunately, that was in 1974, and no one wanted to see Martin either, yet. After that further failure, the producer went into a hospital-"raving lunatic I tonighf was"-emerged, bought the complete rights to Johnny Got His Gun at an auc- tion for the ludicrous price of a grand $2500, and has since been devoting him- self to the film's revival. To that end, he has equipped himself with a 51-foot tractor-trailer truck, plastered with Johnny stills and Carter's quote, and has been taking the whole show on the road around northern California. Claiming the film is more timely than ever, "now that we're on the edge of the apocalypse," Campbell thinks "it could be a huge, huge success-if I could af- ford the promotion." Campbell married Trumbo's daughter, but he says "my only child is the motion picture. It's about the quin- tessance of life, whether man shoots himself or commits mass genocide." As for Carter, he says "I expect him to say something sooner or later"-though how the President will be able to reconcile his nine-year-old remark with his current defense policies is a question depressingly wor- thy of Johnny Got His Gun's own ironies. Taj Mahal: Learning to love the blues -4 By MARK COLEMAN Mention folk music to most people and they think of white folk music, the English tradition that travelled to America with the earliest colonists and grew along with the new country. After a surviving spurt of mass popularity in the early sixties, this music is preser- ved today in historically-minded musical establishments like the Ark here in Ann Arbor. But what of the black folk music tradition? The electrified forms of black traditional music (RandB, blues) have been incorporated into main- stream (white) music and hence are familiar to a wider audience than the accoustic, or "country blues" that fathered them. THAT'S WHERE Taj Mahal comes in. He is something of a one-man ar- chive of black traditional. Best known for his text book-accurate renditions of country blues, he performed two shows at Rick's Wednesday night accom- panying himself on an amplified ac- coustic guitar, then switching to piano and finally banjo. Opening his first set on guitar, Taj 4 4 Daily Photo by MAUREEN OMALLEY Noted blues and reggae singer Taj Mahal performed two solo concerts Wed-' nesday night to a packed Rick's American Cafe. TONIGHT Clint Eastwood is the HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER A ghost rider shoots up the gunfighters who threaten a town with destruction. Clint at his best as a fast shooting, strong, silent type who kills with smile and never loses control. Plus BETTY BOOP. 7:00 $ 9:05. Saturday: TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS Sunday: IPHEGENIA (at Lorch Hall) and Sunday: KING OF HEARTS (Mich. Theatre) CIN M OLD A&D (to us) CINEMA GU ILD LORCH HALL (to U of M) performed his most familiar works (country blues like "Ain't nobody's business" and everybody's favorite "Fishin' Blues." He captures the lazy backwoods ambience of this material perfectly, his raspily rich voice ex- pressing not just the dialect and inflec- tion but the feeling on the blues with convincing accuracy. Taj uses the solo space well, calling for audience participation frequently without a note of pandering. The audience loved hearing the songs Taj Mahal is readily associated with, but teacher that he is, Taj didn't miss the opportunity to acquaint the crowd with a number of musical styles. On the familiar blues "Paint My Mailbox Blue," for example, he grafted a singalong doo-wop chorus to the con- clusion without a note of incongruity. Continuing the "instruction" i musical roots, Taj played "Rockin' Pneumonia and Boogie-Woogie Flu" over a real boogie woogie piano figure, then a wild barrelhouse piano rendition of "Statesboro Blues" that both- thoroughly confused and delighted thm audience. The evening's only disap- pointment was the omittance of Taj's' later Carribean-flavored work, some of which would have lent itself beautifully to an a cappella rendition. I Taj said before the show, "I play black folk music. There's white music for white people and black music for black people." So it's ironic that Taj Mahal played in front of an all-white audience in Ann Arbor but it's impor- tant, too. It's a rare talent that can enlighten as well as entertain.