FM
Director-John A. Alonzo
Cast-Michael Brandon, Eileen Brennan, Cleavon Little
Country of Origin- U.S.
Distributor - Arrow
Number of discs – 1
Reviewed by - Bobby Morgan
Date- 07/18/2019
Chances are most of the people who read this review have never seen FM, but they’ve heard its soundtrack many times before. It’s the sort of perfectly amiable, easygoing comedy you’d expect from a major studio in the late 1970’s and as entertainingly middle-of-the-road as the catchy rock and pop hits the movie bombards us with from the moment the Universal Pictures logo materializes to the sounds of Steely Dan’s velvety-smooth title track.
The story focuses on the lovable misfits who staff the popular Los Angeles rock radio station QSKY, including station manager Jeff Dugan (Michael Brandon) and his merry band of music-loving disc jockeys – smoky-voiced hippie Mother (Eileen Brennan), aspiring TV host and hopeless romantic Eric Swan (Martin Mull), low-rated cowpoke Doc Holiday (Alex Karras), and forever confined to the overnight shift Prince of Darkness (Cleavon Little). The station’s ratings are strong and somehow they manage to endure without depending on advertising dollars, but now their management wants QSKY to start generating some ad revenue and they bring in new sales manager Regis Lamar (Tom Tarpey) to broker a deal with the United States Army to run recruitment spots on the air.
Dugan isn’t thrilled by the news but is willing to make a compromise as to how the ads are presented and when they’re run. When the management won’t meet his terms, the entire staff engages in a prolonged act of rebellion that involves taking over the station, assaulting police officers, and entertaining their supporters assembled outside with Queen’s “We Will Rock You”. Because that’s how you say “DAMN THE MAN!” in the late 70’s, I guess.
Watching FM for the first time in full (there were a few times in the late 90’s when I caught a minute or two or the end credits on Comedy Central) reminded me of when I was a teenager and I came across a huge box packed to the gills with my parents’ record collection. This happened a few years after they divorced, and I wasn’t surprised to lean their respective tastes in music couldn’t be any different. The two most important things I learned from going through that dusty mass of aged vinyl were that my dad won his copy of Aerosmith’s “Night in the Ruts” from a Richmond-area rock station that underwent multiple format changes over the years until it finally settled on modern rock, and my mom really loves Neil Diamond and Bread. It’s not that I don’t love Neil Diamond, but my own musical interests were far closer to my dad’s than my mom’s, even though emotionally I was much closer to her than to him.
That memory also sums up my feelings regarding FM: it wants to be both rebellious rock and bland, safe adult contemporary, but when you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. That would explain why the film has built a satisfactory cult following over the four decades since it flopped at the box office but could never be raucous audience favorite. FM isn’t a passionate of provocative cinematic art; it’s designed to appeal to every conceivable moviegoing demographic, right down to the shamelessly pandering PG rating. FM works best as the kind of pleasant little diversion you come across on TV late at night and stick with for a while when you’re just tired enough to find it an amusing and worthwhile viewing option. You could even put it on the background while you’re working on your income tax return or helping the kids do their homework.
FM may want to have its cake and eat it too, but at least the cake is a tasty recipe. The film was the only feature directed by the great cinematographer John A. Alonzo, whose gift for creating gorgeous visuals has graced the likes of Harold and Maude, Chinatown, Norma Rae, Scarface and Blue Thunder. A former bit player in television and the occasional theatrical release, Alonzo got his start shooting TV documentaries before moving on to fictional endeavors with Roger Corman’s Bloody Mama. His first major studio job was 1971’s Vanishing Point, which has an interesting connection to FM as both films featured Cleavon Little playing disc jockeys. After FM’s disappointing theatrical release, Alonzo directed only four made-for-TV movies between 1979 and 1980 before returning full time to cinematography. He passed away on March 13, 2001 at the age of 66.
To shoot FM, Alonzo brought in David Myers as his director of photography. Myers’ history with filming rock performances was extensive (his credits include Woodstock and Bob Dylan’s sprawling unreleased epic Renaldo & Clara), and he had previously worked with Alonzo on Mel Stuart’s Wattstax, a documentary about the 1972 Watts Summer Festival sponsored by Stax Records. Together they give FM a period-appropriate visual style that fully exploits the widescreen frame through fluid, crafty camerawork and provides production designer Lawrence G. Paull (Blade Runner) with plenty of room to fill the interior sets with little details that make QSKY feel like a real place and not a Hollywood soundstage (the film was shot on location in Los Angeles, but interiors and exteriors of the radio station appear to have been constructed on the famous Universal backlot). John Toll, the future Oscar-winning cinematographer of Braveheart, The Thin Red Line, and Iron Man 3, scored an early career credit as a camera operator.
The casting is also spot-on, with Michael Brandon (Captain America: The First Avenger) holding his own well as the charming QSKY station manager. The performance isn’t award-worthy, but Brandon makes the character a calming center for the chaos that unfolds in the third act and is highly believable in his interactions with his staff and the musicians and industry players who orbit around the station constantly. Martin Mull, in his feature acting debut, invests Eric Swan with a bit of the smarmy arrogance and barely simmering sadness of his Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman/Fernwood Tonight persona Barth Gimble and gets many of the film’s funniest moments. The rest of the characters feel underwritten, but Cleavon Little (Blazing Saddles), Eileen Brennan (Clue), Alex Karras (Webster), Cassie Yates (Rolling Thunder), and Tom Tarpey (9 to 5). Mercury Theater alum and Hitchcock colleague Norman Lloyd (Spellbound) puts in a late appearance as the station’s owner and a human “deus ex machina”, and anyone who’s ever seen National Lampoon’s Vacation or the underrated Moving Violations knows that when you cast James Keach (The Long Riders) as a self-righteous authority figure, comedy gold is guaranteed every time.
FM may be a hard movie to hate, but it’s almost undone by two nearly fatal flaws. First, there’s the cringeworthy lack of stability in the tone of the narrative. Blending genres is tough as hell to accomplish for any film that tries, but Alonzo and screenwriter Ezra Sacks (Wildcats) never seem to figure out how best to effectively marry the seriousness and levity. They would have been wise to make FM either a freewheeling comedy or a grounded drama because if you can’t strike a balance in the dueling tones, your only other option is to commit to one or the other. Otherwise, you get an end result that resembles a sandwich only Elvis Presley or a pregnant woman would eat.
The second has to do with the stakes at the heart of Dugan and his DJ’s battle with the station higher-ups. During my last two years of high school, I took a course in radio broadcasting and journalism. The school had its own low-wattage radio station and I learned a great deal about the creative and business sides of the industry. I even learned how to create promotional ads for the station on both computers and reel-to-reel tape recorders. Selling advertisements has always been important to generating revenue for any radio station and is crucial to keeping it up and running and its staff paid the salaries they deserve. Back in the 70’s, few could have predicted that one day satellite and digital radio networks would come to dominate the field and one of their reasons for being able to do so is their lack of dependence on advertising sales since their revenue is generated by monthly subscription fees.
The battle at the heart of FM’s plot never makes sense because it never makes a sense that a station like QSKY could not only function but come to be the most popular station in L.A. without having to resort to selling ad time during their broadcasts. Also, it seems downright absurd that the characters would risk both their jobs and freedom to take a stand against running army recruitment ads since their motivations aren’t political or personal. They just don’t want to do it because…. reasons. Whatever happened to picking your battles?
In the end, all I’m saying is it’s more than a little hypocritical to give us a movie about the cultural resistance against selling out to faceless commercialization when its end credits conclude with “When in Hollywood Visit Universal Studios”.
The upgraded transfer on Arrow Video’s Blu-ray release was sourced from a recent high-definition master prepared by Universal and is presented in 1080p resolution in the film’s original 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio. Picture quality is unquestionably a huge step up from previous VHS, laserdisc, and DVD transfers. The source elements used for the new HD scan are never specified, but outside of some flecks of dirt visible during the Universal logo at the beginning, they were obviously in great shape. The grain structure is organic and healthy (though it ends up all over the place in certain places during the finale), while the color timing remains natural and consistent despite the film not being a visual dazzler. Outside of a full-on 4K restoration (which I don’t think is necessary for this film), this is about as good as FM will ever look on video, an all-around terrific transfer.
On the audio front, Arrow gifts this release with two soundtracks, both in English: the first is an uncompressed 2.0 track in PCM stereo, the second an alternate DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix that was likely created for this Blu-ray. FM was originally mixed in Dolby Stereo – one of the earliest films to do so – but since many theaters were not equipped to properly exhibit its intended sound mix, they had to show it with a mono track instead. Both audio options have their virtues and flaws: the 2.0 track is a fine recreation of the original mix that has been present on nearly every home video release of FM and features perfectly audible dialogue and an solid arrangement across both channels for the wall-to-wall song selection and various live concert scenes, while the 5.1 track offers a more spacious presentation with a slightly lower volume level for every element of the mix that never requires manual adjustment between the music performances and the dialogue-heavy scenes. English subtitles have also been provided.
The first bonus feature comes with the film itself and it’s an isolated music and effects track in Dolby Digital 2.0 audio. From there, we get a trio of new interviews: “No Static at All” (25 minutes) sits down with star Michael Brandon for an in-depth discussion of the filming of FM from his perspective and a little reflection on its longevity; “Radio Chaos” (23 minutes) next finds screenwriter Ezra Sacks talking about his days working for a radio station that provided the inspiration for his script, coming up with the story and characters, and seeing his work make it to the big screen; and finally, “The Spirit of Radio” (23 minutes) brings in film and music critic Glenn Kenny to talk about the music of FM and the era it was inspired by and subsequently defined. Three still galleries (Production Stills, Posters Lobby Cards & Press, and Soundtrack Editions) and the original theatrical trailer (3 minutes). The Blu-ray also comes with reversible cover art and a collector’s booklet featuring a new essay about FM by Paul Corupe.
FM is a good film, laidback and enjoyable on its own terms, but also hopelessly confused about its tone and the necessity for some its third act plot mechanics. Regardless, it’s mostly fun, with some fine performances, excellent music performances from Jimmy Buffett and Linda Ronstadt, brief appearances from Tom Petty and REO Speedwagon, and a chill attitude that’s infectious even if you think too much about it. Arrow Video’s Blu-ray features the best home video transfer of the film to date and some informative supplements to make this release a definitive recommendation to its fan base.
