THE PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK
Directed by Jerry Schatzberg
Written by Joan Didion
Starring Al Pacino
Released in 1971
Directed by Jerry Schatzberg
Written by Joan Didion
Starring Al Pacino
Released in 1971
A decade ago everyone who meandered through my life over a fourteen-month period lived on painkillers: Vicodin, oxycodone, morphine, Darvocet, Tramadol, you name it. Unable to sleep, they would load up on benzo jellies or anything in the lam or pam family. In the morning they'd do a line of soda or some crushed up psych meds and repeat the waltz. Christ, what an awful way to live, I thought. And I was right.
The Panic in Needle Park (1971) shows us pain. Admittedly, if heroin wasn't fun, no one would ever do it. I have been told it is the psycho-physical equivalent of napalming yourself. I guess napalm must be fun, too, or no one would ever have used it.
A lot of people take painkillers even now. I prefer to think of these things as "painkillers" rather than referring to them by their clinical or street names because I think it's important to remember that the reason people take them is to alleviate pain. Sometimes that pain manifests in a physiological manner. Sometimes the pain shows itself to be neurological. It really doesn't matter, I suppose, because if you are the person suffering then you want it to stop. When it turns out the pain not only goes away but is replaced by a decided sense of pleasure, well, it can be asking a lot to encourage someone to resist it.
In Panic, director Jerry Schatzberg gives us no particular list of reasons why these characters--Bobby, Helen, Chico, Irene, and others--have taken on the lives of junkies. Because Bobby (played in pure beauty by Al Pacino) has a burglar brother, the suggestion seems to be that it runs in families, or maybe it's just something white people do to try to identify with African-Americans. The Joan Didion script comes off just that disengaged, although Pacino and the late Kiel Martin (as Chico) do appear to be having the times of their lives, at least until the addictions become overly pricey and the greed of the fix takes hold. It's at that point that the struggling artist Helen, portrayed by Kitty Winn (who regular viewers of anything 1970s-oriented will recognize from being under-utilized in all manner of work, despite her winning the Cannes festival for her role here), turns to prostitution to feed her habit, just as Bobby turns to making big scores that will free the two of them from this rotten existence, except that it never quite does, it never quite does. The cop keeps telling Helen that she will sooner or later rat out her boyfriend because that is what junkies do and we see it coming and the real shame is that neither the screenwriter nor director give us any real reason to care. Only the acting saves this film--well, that and a very brief appearance by Paul Sorvino, which is worth watching for.
But the movie does bring up an interesting point. I mean, does everybody eventually rat out their friends and do the friends learn to take that abuse in stride? This movie screams that the drugs ear us down so far that even a betrayal that lands a lover in stir for six months--that is, if the lover in turn rats out the person above him on the dope ladder--is just business as usual, perhaps not a welcome behavior but certainly not an unforgivable offense, either.
With so much emphasis on the techniques of shooting up, fading out, nodding off and stringing along, none of which have any glamour whatsoever, The Panic in Needle Park loses whatever good will it may have hoped to garner. If the subject is important enough to warrant this very serious film, then aren't the people affected by it--or their on-screen representatives--worth developing as individuals? The only thing we see are people helping one another score, or a woman freaking out because Bobby almost dies from an overdose while she's expecting company, or just how debased life is here in New York City.
My first thought about a soundtrack that this film could have sorely used might have included the Velvet Underground's "Heroin." That my memory reconnected that in this day of merging time zones and infinity of perception, a better mix would be The Brains' original "Money Changes Everything," especially with its lines: "And you say, well who can you trust? I'll tell you it's just no one else's money."
The Panic in Needle Park (1971) shows us pain. Admittedly, if heroin wasn't fun, no one would ever do it. I have been told it is the psycho-physical equivalent of napalming yourself. I guess napalm must be fun, too, or no one would ever have used it.
A lot of people take painkillers even now. I prefer to think of these things as "painkillers" rather than referring to them by their clinical or street names because I think it's important to remember that the reason people take them is to alleviate pain. Sometimes that pain manifests in a physiological manner. Sometimes the pain shows itself to be neurological. It really doesn't matter, I suppose, because if you are the person suffering then you want it to stop. When it turns out the pain not only goes away but is replaced by a decided sense of pleasure, well, it can be asking a lot to encourage someone to resist it.
In Panic, director Jerry Schatzberg gives us no particular list of reasons why these characters--Bobby, Helen, Chico, Irene, and others--have taken on the lives of junkies. Because Bobby (played in pure beauty by Al Pacino) has a burglar brother, the suggestion seems to be that it runs in families, or maybe it's just something white people do to try to identify with African-Americans. The Joan Didion script comes off just that disengaged, although Pacino and the late Kiel Martin (as Chico) do appear to be having the times of their lives, at least until the addictions become overly pricey and the greed of the fix takes hold. It's at that point that the struggling artist Helen, portrayed by Kitty Winn (who regular viewers of anything 1970s-oriented will recognize from being under-utilized in all manner of work, despite her winning the Cannes festival for her role here), turns to prostitution to feed her habit, just as Bobby turns to making big scores that will free the two of them from this rotten existence, except that it never quite does, it never quite does. The cop keeps telling Helen that she will sooner or later rat out her boyfriend because that is what junkies do and we see it coming and the real shame is that neither the screenwriter nor director give us any real reason to care. Only the acting saves this film--well, that and a very brief appearance by Paul Sorvino, which is worth watching for.
But the movie does bring up an interesting point. I mean, does everybody eventually rat out their friends and do the friends learn to take that abuse in stride? This movie screams that the drugs ear us down so far that even a betrayal that lands a lover in stir for six months--that is, if the lover in turn rats out the person above him on the dope ladder--is just business as usual, perhaps not a welcome behavior but certainly not an unforgivable offense, either.
With so much emphasis on the techniques of shooting up, fading out, nodding off and stringing along, none of which have any glamour whatsoever, The Panic in Needle Park loses whatever good will it may have hoped to garner. If the subject is important enough to warrant this very serious film, then aren't the people affected by it--or their on-screen representatives--worth developing as individuals? The only thing we see are people helping one another score, or a woman freaking out because Bobby almost dies from an overdose while she's expecting company, or just how debased life is here in New York City.
My first thought about a soundtrack that this film could have sorely used might have included the Velvet Underground's "Heroin." That my memory reconnected that in this day of merging time zones and infinity of perception, a better mix would be The Brains' original "Money Changes Everything," especially with its lines: "And you say, well who can you trust? I'll tell you it's just no one else's money."
