WUSA

Plot synopsis:
Reinhart (Paul Newman) drifts into New Orleans and rescues Geraldine (Joanne Woodward), from a pimp's knife, buys her a steak and they shack up. He gets a job at WUSA, a right-wing radio station as a news, sports and weather reader. Their neighbor, Rainey (Anthony Perkins) is a do-gooder who is doing a survey of welfare applicants without knowing that his boss, Bingamon (Pat Hingle), works for WUSA and the whole study is intended to gather evidence needed to kick people off welfare, not help them as he supposes.Geraldine wants to be loved but Reinhart is inaccessible, burnt out. She mothers Rainey, a stuttering boy who reminds her of the boy she loved, the boy who shot himself.When Rainey finds out he's been duped he goes to WUSA and threatens the owner. He confronts Reinhart who tells him in two words to drop dead. Rainey gets a rifle and attempts an assassination of the radio station's owner at a rally festooned with red, white and blue bunting. Reinhart and his friends are onstage. One of them, knowing the police are coming, puts his stash of grass in Geraldine's purse. In the panic, Rainey is shot dead and Geraldine arrested for possession. There, in prison, she commits suicide. The news is delivered by Philomene (Cloris Leachman), Geraldine's friend.

Tags: allegory, violence, murder

Review:
This one of my favorite movies of all time with Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Antony Perkins, Cloris Leachman and Pat Hingle all at their best.
Reinhart (Newman), a man who's washed up as a musician becomes a "communicator" at WUSA, a right-wing radio station in New Orleans.
I'm part of a pattern in someone else's head." He's long past being thrilled.There are two important and tense scenes between Perkins, a do-gooder who lacks the basic confidence that gets Newman shacked up within minutes of his arrival in New Orleans.
Unfortunately, the character played by Perkins is much better at retaining his illusions with tragic consequences.This movie is about ideological exhaustion and the delusions of the ideologically pure, both left and right wing.What is so good about WUSA for me is that it's the only time, other than Hud, when Newman was an actor first, a star second.
The first is the radio host that invites all to drop what they are doing, go to the window, open it, and start screaming something like "I am fed up and I will no longer put up with this!" The second snippet is the last line delivered in the movie by the character interpreted by Paul Newman -- and I will not say what it says to avoid spoiling it.
So many movies wanted to deal with the politics of the time.
Like the previous reviewer, I, too, have been looking for this film for years and hope to see it on DVD one day soon.
He used to play saxophone but he couldn't make the scene so he's a "communicator" now, having gotten himself a job at WUSA, a right-wing radio station.He meets Geraldine (Joanne Woodward) who hasn't.
Other than that glitch the acting is superb and the dialog superlative.Perkins plays a creepy bleeding heart, appropriately named Rainey, with such authority that it's enough in itself to make you understand Reinhart's cynicism.
but there IS a solution to it." "Oh yeah?" responds Rainey, "and w-w-what would that be, Reinhart?" "Drop dead," says Reinhart, "DROP DEAD!" It's one of Reinhart's defining lines, the other being (in reaction to Geraldine's thrill that he's got a job at WUSA) "Yeah, great: I'm part of a pattern in someone else's head.")If you're interested in the extremes of political personality, this is one of the best.
Seeing it, I think I can understand why there aren't that many people supporting the movie over the years.
It takes over a half hour from the beginning for Newman to start working for the radio station, and not once during the almost two hour running time do we actually get to HEAR the broadcasts that have both attracted an audience as well as people condemning it.
The acting (particularly by Perkins) is good, and the movie is refreshingly downbeat, but overall I would only recommend the movie to those few viewers who are attracted to 1970s film cynicism - and even they might have issues with the movie..
This is one of the most important films of the '70, a political fiction of its time...
Although I think that Rosenberg was not the most indicate director for this film (Frankenheimer seems to me a most appropriate election, due to his asphyxiating atmospheres), the strong of the story and the interpretation of an extraordinary Anthony Perkins, among the others actors, gives its force to the movie.
Anthony Perkins is touching and vulnerable, his performance is so emotionally honest it's devastating to witness and his character would be at home in any of the best of Tennessee Williams' works - once more he proves that he deserves to be remembered for much more than just his masterpiece - that N.B.
The chemistry that comes with being married (as they are in real life) just comes right through the scene!Great movie!
"WUSA" is extremely difficult on us in so many ways that to reach a final conclusion on why we like it or feel it relevant is something that demands a lot from viewers.
You have a jaw dropping stellar cast (Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Anthony Perkins, Cloris Leachman, Laurence Harvey, Pat Hingle); a director who never extracted a bad performance with his films, the great Stuart Rosenberg ("Cool Hand Luke", "Voyage of the Damned", "Brubaker"); a story working with great basic elements involving the power of media, political and inner conflicts, rich vs.
In it, Newman plays the cynical and drunk Rheinhardt, a drifter who accepts a job at a radio station controlled by influential politicians whose motto seems quite familiar in our current times (Make this country Great Again).
The WUSA station is one with a point of view, says Hingle character and that distorted point of view destine to include only a certain parcel of New Orleans population and excludes the rest in the majority, it starts to raise some concerns on a fellow named Rainey (Perkins), an idealist survey worker trying to discover the welfare problems faced by the black communities of the place.
utopia) and their quarrels are meddled by Geraldine (Woodward), of whom Rheinhardt has a more intimate involvement, and one that seems to get a grip on this wild drunkard who fail to notice that his bosses are planning something bad as local politics in upcoming elections, and worst of all...his editorials during the radio program are the main force behind the power WASP's success.Such overview of the film seems attractive, specially for those who love those kind of movies about inner conflicts and different schools of thoughts.
Examples: the radio thing takes an awful lot of time to happen and when it does, it's a huge disappointment that the film never shows what kind of material Newman's character presents to his listeners except "the future of America is up to you".
Perkins with the survey thing occupied a good portion of the film and could have been trimmed down just as much as some of the most tender scenes between the main couple (great chemistry though).
But the film keeps it real: the cynic drowns himself under the liquor; the idealist finally does something after spending too much time on a lethargic state (but obviously a wrong act) and the mediator in between them couldn't find the strength in herself to join them, debate ideals and find possible solution to their problems and the ones from the community.
The cast gathering is fine, despite the lack of involvement we have with the characters they play (no one gets saved, they're all critical but substantially real); the ideas carry some relevance but most of it gets torn apart and lost along the way making the experience of seeing "WUSA" a weary endeavor.
Despite saying that, Anthony Perkins' character - an embodiment in many ways of the "liberal" stereotype - is not made particularly sympathetic.
Perkins comes across as if his Norman Bates persona has been relocated to late-sixties urban America and forcibly invested with a political conscience.Paul Newman, who shares perhaps too few scenes with his nemesis Perkins, is also rather good, as the wanderer with a certain cocksure touch, who easily becomes an on-air "communicator" for this WUSA radio station - which is involved in fraudulent dealings and far-right preachings.
His political views are ambiguous; his final speech indeed suggesting he has no real belief in the "new right".
He proves to be the adept survivor, in contrast to genuine ideologues of left or right, but he has no moderation instinct, and turns out somewhat troubled, baffled even, at the film's appropriately frazzled conclusion.Then there is Joanne Woodward; first film I have seen her in, and one of I gather, many, with Newman.
If she convinces as a 'realistic' character, it is albeit as one implicitly used to condemn the excesses of the New Right and the confrontational politics of the time.
Woodward is taken in, like the general audience as it were, by this superficial charm, and she ends up broken both by Newman's inconsistent, careless attitude and by the rupturing of the society depicted.The film does not go far enough with many of its themes, and I did expect rather more in the dramatic and comic departments - if melodrama is going to work it needs either grand force or a bathetic line in absurdity.
Loose ends were certainly left untied as regards Perkins' character.I did on the whole quite enjoy this, but it was not a particularly entertaining film: variable in its plotting, dialogue and tone.
Great Performances But It Just Goes Too Far. WUSA (1970) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Heavy-handled political drama about a radio host (Paul Newman) who gets a job in New Orleans and quickly starts a relationship up with a former prostitute (Joanne Woodward).
It doesn't take long for the host to realize that his radio station has some right-wing views and are using him to spread some not so innocent things.
All the time one man (Anthony Perkins) has been collection survey data on welfare but it turns out he too was just being used to try and get people kicked off the system.
WUSA has some terrific performances in it but the film is so over-the-top and melodramatic that you can't help but finally give up on it and especially once we hit the final twenty-minutes when everything pretty much gets thrown out the window.
I think the biggest problem with the screenplay is that we've basically got three different movies rolled into one and each story is pulling in a separate direction.
The one strong point are the terrific performances led by Newman playing one of the darkest and meanest characters in his career.
Just check out the scene where Newman is ripping into Perkins on his "good" heart and it's certainly a side of Newman that we didn't get to see him play too much.
Perkins too is very good in his part as is Hingle, Laurence Harvey, Bruce Cabot and Cloris Leachman.
Shockingly, I think the best portion of the film is the romance between Newman and Woodward.
Sad to say it was laid on a bit too thick by its players and director.Paul Newman who had a lot of faith in this project plays an itinerant disc jockey who both gets a job at this New Orleans based radio station WUSA and takes up with hooker Joanne Woodward, a girl whose heart really isn't in her work anyway.As station owner Pat Hingle says, "this is a station with a point of view" and Hingle expects that point to be emphasized at all times.
That's WUSA's point of view.Newman is not a terribly sympathetic figure here which is one of the reasons the film flattens out.
A whole lot like the characters with one exception in that other Louisiana based political drama, All The King's Men.One who doesn't is Anthony Perkins who plays this rather pitiable 'survey taker' whose job is really to foster racial discontent by getting minorities thrown off welfare.
Perkins is probably the character you most remember from WUSA.WUSA correctly predicted the advent of right wing talk radio about fifteen years before it became a fact.
They've even got a right wing political preacher played by Laurence Harvey as part of their family.
He should have adapted a more subtle approach to the part.I wish I could rate such a prescient film as WUSA a bit higher, but the heavy handed approach just gets in the way..
The swindling pastor Harvey amusingly notes, "Ministers run a terrible risk with neurotic old women," and guides Mr. Newman to work at right-wing radio station "WUSA".
The couple become acquainted with social worker Anthony Perkins (as Rainey), who unwittingly becomes involved in a welfare scheme.With good, almost prescient subject matter, writer Robert Stone's "A Hall of Mirrors" (1967) reads like it should have been a great counterculture film for 1970's #1 "Box Office Star" (then Newman's position, according to "Quigley Publications").
Things start off well, with great New Orleans locations; and, the film is littered with terrific supporting performances.
Hey Joe, loved seeing the (just deceased) Jimi Hendrix wall poster.***** WUSA (8/19/70) Stuart Rosenberg ~ Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Anthony Perkins, Laurence Harvey.
Newman and Woodward have great chemistry, however...if you have the patience.I suspect that the novel or story itself is to blame, as the survey business if poorly developed with odd tricks, like money that is never explained.
I wish I had liked the movie more, as I usually love Newman and Woodward.
Adapting his novel "A Hall of Mirrors", Robert Stone writes dialogue and situations which feel curiously dated or clichéd, like the leftover pickings from a movie made some twenty years prior; as a result, the characters fail to emerge.
Newman, at one point in his career, cited this picture as his very best, though he's not very good in it, and neither is co-star Joanne Woodward (working hard at feigning low-class).
The greatest compliment you can give an actor is to tell them they disappeared into the part." The Newmans (Paul and JoAnn Woodward) and Anthony Perkins vanished into their parts too.
One of my favorite Paul Newman movies.
This movie about a reactionary radio station wears its politically correct heart on its sleeve so passionately and takes itself so seriously, it becomes unintentionally funny.
The highlight is when Paul Newman, called upon to calm a right-wing rally that erupts into panic when gunfire rings out, instead delivers a sarcastic speech dripping with irony about how "we're OK" while people all around him are scrambling over each other, trying to get out; the only person who's listening is Joanne Woodward, who gazes at Newman in anguish.
When I finally tracked this movie down, 25 years after seeing it for the first time, I found that I still loved the story.
I wonder if a different score would have gotten the movie a little more respect.It's now almost 25 years since that re-viewing.
Being Paul Newman's favorite among his own vehicles (and which he also co-produced), calling it "the most significant film I've ever made and probably the best", I chose to watch WUSA on the third anniversary of his passing.
For this reason, I had long been intrigued by the movie but, given its relative obscurity, the opportunity never presented itself until the Olive Films DVD was released earlier his year: having made a Newman binge at the time of his demise, I would have gladly added this one too to my collection, were it not for the fact that the bare-bones edition was too heftily-priced for my wallet!
Incidentally the title should read W (as in Viva) USA (perhaps a nod to the same year's M*A*S*H, though it certainly did not duplicate that film's critical and commercial success!) which is obviously ironic, given the paranoid stance it takes at the attempt by a Southern radio station to brainwash the people to their own power-hungry ends.
Even so, this was just one of several thought-provoking but unremittingly cynical pictures to emerge around this time – ranging from THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962; with which it shares both co-star Laurence Harvey and the assassination-at-a-political-rally climax) to NETWORK (1976; which centered around the even-more powerful medium of television).Though direction (Rosenberg was recruited after his fortuitous collaboration with Newman on COOL HAND Luke {1967} and, despite WUSA's failure, would lend his services to two more of the star's efforts i.e. POCKET MONEY {1972} and THE DROWNING POOL {1975}), camera-work and editing (incidentally, the Preview Version ran for 3 hours and 10 minutes but, even as it stands now, the film is overlong – particularly the concluding after-rally scenes) make themselves felt throughout, WUSA mainly relies on the script and the acting to put its various points across.
With this in mind, the former is literary (Robert Stone adapted his own novel to the screen) if verging on the hysterical and the latter ably served by an excellent cast.Newman typically exudes cool amorality as the alcoholic drifter anti-hero who is appointed as d.j. of WUSA, though his supposedly subversive comments are basically limited to such subliminal messages as "The future of America is up to you" (in fact, the film was criticized for not really having the courage of its convictions by tiptoeing around its subject matter!) – he even takes to the mike at the rally in calming down the crowd, with his repeated but clearly sardonic assertion that "We {the Americans} are O.K." (his character's essential lack of commitment, which alienates the Joanne Woodward one and sends Anthony Perkins off the deep end, is rather baffling).
The drama between Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward carried this film for me until the arena scene.
Newman idealizing to the crowd during utter chaos is the most unlikely and disappointing scene I've ever seen in the movies.
To me, the best part of this movie was the expression in Paul Newman's eyes every time he looked at his on screen sweetie pie, real-life wife Joanne Woodward.
In WUSA, the seventh of ten films they starred in together, Paul plays a weary radio announcer who cares more about surviving than doing the right thing, and Joanne plays a hooker with a disfigured face.
The film suffers from conversations that sound like speeches, and heavy-handed direction....
Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Anthony Perkins and others populate a particularly depressing New Orleans in this sad movie.
Newman takes a job at a right wing radio station run by Pat Hingle while lost soul Woodward slowly slips away.
Perkins, an out and out madman, is, ironically, the only one onto what Hingle's radio station is all about.
Newman is great and Woodward is even better.
WUSA is radio station in the South where the drunk Newman gets a job.The film is intentionally claustrophobic with counter-culture elements spread throughout.The ending is rather ambivalent.