Drive in, turn off, tune out
Patrick Skene Catling
JOE BOB GOES TO THE DRIVE-IN by Joe Bob Briggs Penguin, .C5.99, pp.325 Joe Bob Briggs is the strangest contribu- tor to Penguin's new series of 'Originals', though this collection of his excruciatingly droll dispatches from the ultimate frontier of pop-culture garbage, the drive-in movie parks of Texas, is two removes from originality. These tongue-in-cheek pieces on Gothic soft porn were published first as weekly columns in the Dallas Times- Herald and then between hard covers by Delacorte Press of New York.
Two of the first three Originals, which were published in February, Blood and Water by Patrick McGrath and Jaguars Ripped My Flesh by Tim Cahill, were Imported from America. The third, In The Eyes of Mr Fury by Philip Ridley, was a domestic product, published for the first time, but unfortunately was the least well written. Aren't there enough talented ori- ginal young writers in Britain to sustain the series? Evidently not.
The books' most attractive novelty is their exterior design. The titles and au- thors' names are left off the front covers, maximising their pictorial impact. The images themselves are colourfully eye- catching, ranging from the elegantly macabre to the lurid. The pages inside give an impression of ephemeral urgency, being made of paper like the newsprint that soon turns yellow ochre and brittle at the edges. Originals are readily biodegradable and should be read fast.
Being (allegedly) a young native Texan, Joe Bob Briggs is unimpeded by shyness. He introduces himself, probably justly, as America's foremost expert on drive-ins, having seen 14,500 movies out under the stars like God intended, in the privacy of MY personal automobile'. According to the foremost expert, backed up by the Interna- tional Motion Picture Almanac, Texas has 223 drive-ins, more than any other state, and so it is 'the drive-in capital of the world'. New York is nowhere, on account of the lousy weather. Who could summa- rise the history of the form better than Joe Bob?
Glopola is the technical term for the drive-in monster of the Eighties. We're not talking mechanical monsters and gorillas (Thirties). We're not talking werewolf bullstuff (For- ties). We're not talking outer-space green- cheese eaters (Fifties). We're definitely not talking geeks and psychos like Bette Davis (Sixties). And we're not talking sickola sex maniacs that go around slashing nekkid girls into chicken fricassee (Seventies).
No, we're talking biology here. We're talking DNA. We're talking serious diseases. We're talking Glopola City.
He has the advantage of an up-to-date critical vocabulary and he is never afraid to look at the screen, even when strong girls barf (to barf, as defined in the new edition of the OED, means to vomit).
In a frank avowal of his 'Rules to Live By,' he declares:
I am opposed to power drills through the ear, machetes through the stomach, decapitations with barbed wire, flamethrower attacks, and mutilation with ball peen hammer, unless it's necessary to the plot.
In most drive-in movies, of course, a lot of stern measures must be taken. He concludes every review with the advice to 'check it out,' and makes an annual compa- rative assessment of the entire oeuvre for his Drive-In Academy Awards.
The categories for honours include some that have been neglected by Hollywood, such as 'Best Beast' (`The space herpy in Ice Pirates, the only sci-fi monster ever to spread a venereal disease by jumping out of a Thanksgiving turkey'), 'Best Nuclear- Waste Disposal Flick' (The Being, 'where Dorothy Malone's kid falls into the nuclear dump, turns into a glopola monster, and eats half of Idaho'), and — brace yourself — 'Best Psycho': John Diehl, hooker killer in Angel, who likes to make love to dead bodies and twist knives in bimbo stomachs and suck the yolk out of the bottom of eggs while he's looking at a picture of his mama and scrub himself raw with a brush and drool a lot and dress up like a Hare Krishna. He also does some weird stuff.
Even though he sets forth his code of 'Impeccable Drive-In Etiquette' ('Rule No. 3: When approaching another car, ALWAYS count the heads before opening the door'), Joe Bob, by conventional stan- dards, is a deplorable writer and this is a deplorable book. I love it. Check it out.
Postscript: A spokeswoman for Penguin Originals confesses that Joe Bob Briggs is the cover name of a Texan aesthetic freedom-fighter who wields feigned bigotry against the coarseness of some of his fellow citizens. The author is actually one John Bloom, a 36-year-old, Dallas-born former sports reporter. He no longer writes his Joe Bob drive-in movie reviews for the Dallas Times-Herald but they are still syndicated in 20 other papers; and his pseudo-redneck cabaret act, 'An Evening with Joe Bob Briggs,' is said to be enthusiastically re- ceived in the concert halls of American colleges.
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