Candy Mountain
New York City, 1980s. A struggling, deadbeat musician named Julius has fallen on hard times. With no guitar, band or paying gigs, he cooks up a get-rich-quick scheme – to find the legendary, yet elusive guitar-maker Elmore Silk. Considered one of the greatest luthiers in the business, Silk’s disappearance from the scene has only made his work more coveted by musicians and executives looking to make a buck off his name. Julius agrees to track the man down and sets out on the road. Meant to be a simple journey upstate, Julius stumbles down a long, winding road full of dead-ends and wrong turns towards an eventual revelatory conclusion in the Canadian wilderness.
One of the great cult classics of the 1980s and starring character actors Kevin J O’Conner and Harris Yulin, the supporting cast features real-life music legends Tom Waits, Leon Redbone, Joe Strummer, Dr. John, David Johansen and more. “A wry, laid-back Heart of Darkness" (Chicago Reader), Candy Mountain combines the keen eye of legendary photographer Robert Frank with novelist/screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer’s mythic American prose to produce the quintessential road movie.
Cast
- Kevin J. O'Connor
- Harris Yulin
- Tom Waits
- Bulle Ogier
- Joe Strummer
- Arto Lindsay
- David Johansen
- David Margulies
- Leon Redbone
- "[T]his shaggy-dog hipster road film is Frank’s ultimate work...."
- "Ambling along like a wry, laid-back "Heart of Darkness," this likable and touching film makes good use of Frank's remarkable photographic eye and Wurlitzer's witty, acerbic, and quasi-mystical handling of myth that has served him well in his novels."
- "CANDY MOUNTAIN...seems to be a small, quirky film, but it easily assumes the weight, ambition and success that many larger films aim for and miss."
- "[A] comedy with blood on its mouth; a romance with a knife in its heart. It’s also an action movie about running nowhere, and a musical about the music no one hears. Writer-director Rudy Wurlitzer and co-director Robert Frank take these paradoxes and play with them gently, soberly, turning them into fierce poetry. … It’s almost a little masterpiece: morally brave, beautifully measured, funny, sad and powerful. With quiet skill, it tears open and subverts some glittery fantasies of the American dream."
- "The big surprise in CANDY MOUNTAIN is how much fun it is. Co-directors Robert Frank and Rudy Wurlizer take the dated road movie off its bricks, gussy it up and keep it chugging along. And you get sweeter on "Candy" with every passing mile."
- "Watching CANDY MOUNTAIN, we're lulled into a mood of uncertain but pleasurable anticipation. It's the kind of sensation that comes from not quite knowing where you are, or where you'll wind up next, like driving through unfamiliar territory without a map. This isn't an experience that we encounter much at the movies these days, and that's not meant as a criticism; it's high praise."
- "Beyond the film’s uniquely novelistic conceit and vignette-based structure, it offers gorgeous photography filled with deep saturated blacks, cool grays, and the wet oranges and browns of a northeastern autumn...Like Kerouac’s On the Road, the film keeps moving, searching for something inside and out. But more than a spiritual journey, Frank and Wurlitzer’s film is the odyssey of a loser—an ode to trouble and rock n’ roll’s attendant bad attitude. It is both gently pathetic and inspiringly fuck you, and, in Julius’s words, “alive and well and living at the edge of nowhere.”"
- "CANDY MOUNTAIN is a gem showcasing a neo-beat road trip, the 1980’s folk-rock music scene, and a group of unforgettable musicians...Frank meant for this film to reflect a growing commercialism in music and, in fact, the increasingly transactional nature of American life. Nobody rides for free. Nearly 40 years on, this is a fascinating artifact, as well as a unique cinematic experience."
- "Frank’s CANDY MOUNTAIN, the third of his collaborations with co-director and screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer, is as quirky and charming as its collective of rock icons. Redbone, John, Waits, Johansen and the like are not the arena-filling headliners known for bombast and pyrotechnics; like the film they cameo in, they’re known for their own engaging, idiosyncratic, and wholly charming styles. In CANDY MOUNTAIN, they fit right it, and it’s nice to see this nearly-lost cult classic get a little love in the 2020s with a lovely new digital remaster and theatrical re-release."
Awards & Recognition
Silver Seashell
San Sebastián International Film Festival
Locarno Film Festival
Int'l. Film Festival Rotterdam
London Film Festival
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