Cover Me Babe (1970)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

One of my all time favorites.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Tonight, FMC showed Cover Me Babe – released in 1970, it's got Robert Forster as a student filmmaker, who's obsessed with the idea that "reality" might be more interesting than scripted productions. Especially seedy, sordid reality. He's inspired by the Lee Harvey Oswald shooting that was broadcast live on TV - his big idea is, essentially, reality TV! He tells his film teacher about how someday people's real lives will be filmed, and viewers will come to prefer it over anything scripted - very prophetic! A better movie than I expected, and apparently rarely seen, especially on TV - this version seemed uncut, with nudity intact.It's not worth any great expense or effort to seek, but fine as an easy diversion - interesting and prophetic, but by no mean a great movie. I can see why it was despised in 1970 - it's only value as a cinematic artifact is achieved by it being almost 40 years later now, and how eerily the film predicted the rise of "reality" entertainment. The very same things that Forster's lead character is hated for screening, those things now win awards and accolades and movie/TV career contracts. Forster's performance is metallic and makes him more unlikable than any film character I can think of outside the a-hole principal in Animal House - and at least HE was funny!So it's a curios at best, but with out-there and ultimately accurate ideas about media and pop culture, the kind of thing film buffs can appreciate. And (very) young Sondra Locke really isn't bad as one of Forster's long-suffering girlfriends, even tho there's never the slightest indication why she'd put up with his vidiot/savant personality and ways ------

Did you see Harrison Ford in this movie? Oh he is not in the credits, however...I believe that most extras and some "under-fives", meaning actors are just background or who have under five lines, rarely get credit on-screen.Look about 15 to 17 minutes into the movie.Check out the lifeguard giving mouth to mouth to the drowned child. All you see is a profile for just a second or so.Looks like Harrison Ford, huh?Cover Me Babe is a good mirror of how "deep" and pretentious many "creative" young people were in the late sixties, early 70's in America. (I was one of them and oh boy does it smart to see myself so well limned on-screen.) Also, great to see so many (now) well-known actors knocking out those lines with such flat lighting and coming off with less than star-quality. Reember Deniro in his b-movie, and how much better an actor he "became" with a great cameraman? Same here.

**SPOILERS** "Cover Me Babe" is one of those anti-establishment type 1970's films where it's main character takes himself, and his future in film, so lightly that it's a wonder that anyone, in the audience or in the movie, take him seriously at all.Tony Hall, Robert Foster, a college student film maker does everything he can to destroy his future career, if he had one to begin with, in film. Tony makes sure that if he would ever need to be financed by a film studios in or out of Hollywood to do a project they would slam the door in his face. Smug arrogant sarcastic and unfeeling Tony goes through the entire movie totally detached from his friends and fellow students as well as those in the film business like Hollywood press agent Paul Rogers, Jeff Corey. That by the time the movie is over Tony doesn't have a friend in the world and at the same time doesn't really seem to care. All Tony wants to do is do is "his thing" which is being snobbish and aloof like those in the establishment that he despises, and who he's rebelling against, and if nobody likes it let them take a long walk of a short plank. Robert Foster tries to be "Medium Cool" in "Cover Me Babe" but comes across totally obnoxious as the very overly conceited vain and pompous as Tony.Tony forces both his girlfriends Melsse & Sybil, Sandra Locke & Susanne Benton, to forcibly make love in movies that he was making with Jerry & Ronnie, Ken Kercheval & Floyd Murtux, who were also friends of his. Tony also doesn't get along with his film professor in college Will Ames, Robert S. Fields, Tony doesn't get along with anyone for that matter. Ames' is also in love with his girlfriend Meilssa and had an affair with her before she met Tony. It seemed to me that Prof. Ames had a grudging admiration of Tony's talents but Tony was so rude and uncivil to him that in the end Prof. Ames wanted nothing to do with him. Prof. Ames even wanted Tony thrown out of college when he found a film clip of a young couple making out, in a car at a local lovers lane, that Tony secretly filmed without their knowledge. Back at the college studio Tony has Meilsse almost raped on film in an "art movie" he had her "act" in. Later Tony had poor Ronnie, who was very shy with women,forced into a hard core sex scene with his, Tony's, other girlfriend Sybil. This action of Tony's part was so revolting that the cameraman, Sam Waterston, stopped shooting and walked off the set in disgust. Tony did show some talent when he touchingly filmed a derelict, Mike Kellin, at local park who spilled his guts out on how the world, and his ex-wife, treated him. That scene really hit me as well as it did Tony who was filming it. There was also a horrific scene, at a film exhibition in the college auditorium, that Tony shot of a man on a ledge of a high rise building being urged to jump by the people on the streets below, and then did. To the horror of those watching the film, to his death. It's been said that actor Al Pacino, who was a total unknown back then in 1970, was first offered the role of Tony Hall and for some reason didn't get the part. Not getting that part very probably saved Al Pacino's movie and acting career.

I saw "Cover Me Babe" in its brief first run in New York City. The film was rated "R" due to scenes of sexuality. To the best of my knowledge, if there was a "PG" rated version, it would have be the version edited for television. I interviewed Noel Black, and he told me that "Cover Me Babe" was televised although I did not pursue further information on the broadcast. This would have been in the late 70s. I wrote an article on Noel Black's films in the magazine, Velvet Light Trap, in 1973. The main problem Black had with this film was that he was contractually unable to change the screenplay to more accurately reflect the attitude and film-making style of a student film-maker in the early 70s. Black also noted that his original choice in the lead role was a then unknown Al Pacino. The box office performance of this film was so poor that it is unlikely to be seen again, except, possibly on the Fox Movie Channel.