Payday

Daryl Duke's minor cult classic
documents, with unblinking candor, a brief tumultuous period in a singer's messy
existence. Payday ambles alongside
Torn's crooner as he promotes his latest single, goes hunting, cavalierly
trades in his brassy girlfriend for a ditzy young groupie who's far less
innocent than she pretends to be, and tries to bribe his way back into the
hearts of his neglected children. What begins as a smartly cynical
slice-of-life comedy/drama about the seamy underside of country music takes a
dark turn, as an accident leads to a grim reckoning for a man never more than a
few steps away from self-destruction. Payday's hard-living protagonist is a roughneck aggregation
of bad habits and character flaws, but since Torn plays him with irascible good-ol'-boy
charm, it's easy to feel a little sympathy for this handsome devil.

Payday's title quickly takes on a sneaky double meaning.
It's the title of one of Torn's homespun singles, but it also speaks to his
mercenary nature. There's a wonderful scene early on where he visits a tiny
radio station: Though Torn and the DJ publicly preserve the useful fiction that
they're simply old friends sharing a laugh, undercurrents of bribery, extortion,
and ugly manipulation course just beneath the surface. At best, they're dealing
in mutual exploitation. At worst, it's a double-sided Faustian bargain. In Payday, everyone
has their price, but Torn eventually learns the hard way that destiny
stubbornly refuses to be bought off.

Key features: A
relatively sparse, less-than-scintillating audio commentary from producer/music
mogul Saul Zaentz—who stresses the importance of verisimilitude in
capturing the film's music-world milieu—and an endearingly
enthusiastic/barely comprehensible Daryl Duke