Monday Night 1.27.03 -- Banned Film Series -- "Cocksucker Blues" by Robert Frank

Contents:
1. About this Monday
2. About "Cocksucker Blues" + Robert Frank

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1. About this Monday

When: 7:00 (Screening will begin 7:30)
What: Video Screening + Discussion
What: "Cocksucker Blues" by Robert Frank

Continuing an ongoing series of banned films, this Monday we will be screening "Cocksucker Blues," a much praised, little seen film made by Robert Frank during the Rolling Stones 1972 US tour. Frank's stark portrayal of the Stones' debaucheries has lost little of the brutal impact that caused it to be withdrawn from circulation by the Stones soon after its completion. Lecherous, star-studded, washed-out, alienated and unsettlingly disengaged, "Cocksucker Blues" remains perhaps the best document of 'life on the road' to date.

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2. About "Cocksucker Blues" + Robert Frank

1. Internet Movie Database entry for "Cocksucker Blues"
2. The "Cocksucker" lyrics
3. Excerpt from Robert Frank interview with BorderCrossings magazine
4. Some random plugs
5. Long entry on "CS Blues"
6. Links about Robert Frank

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1. Internet Movie Database entry for "Cocksucker Blues":
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0068389

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2. The "Cocksucker" lyrics:

From Keno's ROLLING STONES Web Site

(Click below to listen)

http://www.keno.org/stones_lyrics/Cocksuckerblues.htm

COCKSUCKER BLUES

This song was given to London/Decca Records in 1970 by the Stones for their final single that they owed the label. London/Decca refused to release it. It was released in 1983 in West Germany on the album The Rest of the Best as a bonus single, but then dropped from the album after just 4 weeks of it's release. Features only Mick and Keith, but there is a bootleg of the song out there with the entire band playing on it, recorded sometime around the mid 70s.

Vocal: Mick Jagger Acoustic Guitar: Keith Richards

Cocksucker Blues
(aka Schoolboy Blues)
(Jagger/Richards)

Well, I'm a lonesome schoolboy
And I just came into town
Yeah, I'm a lonesome schoolboy
And I just came into town
Well, I heard so much about London
I decided to check it out

Well, I wait in Leicester Square
With a come-hither look in my eye
Yeah, I'm leaning on Nelsons Column
But all I do is talk to the lions

Oh where can I get my cock sucked?
Where can I get my ass fucked?
I may have no money,
But I know where to put it every time

Well, I asked a young policeman
If he'd only lock me up for the night
Well, I've had pigs in the farmyard,
Some of them, some of them, they're alright
Well, he fucked me with his truncheon
And his helmet was way too tight

Oh where can I get my cock sucked?
Where can I get my ass fucked?
I ain't got no money,
But I know where to put it every time

I'm a lonesome schoolboy in your town
I'm a lonesome schoolboy

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3. Excerpt from Robert Frank interview with BorderCrossings magazine, 1997:

BC: I've got a question about Cocksucker Blues. Those scenes on the plane are pretty wild and it occurs to me that some of them were orchestrated. Were they set up or were you just present as a documentarian?

RF: They really didn't want me to make the film. They enjoyed having us around but not to film. I was with my friend Danny and he had good connections for dope, much better than they had. And at one point I said to him nothing ever happens on these plane trips. It would be nice to have something happen.

BC: So you were a director then, not just a shadow?

RF: That was one of the few things I said in all the time we spent on the plane. When the film came out the Stones agreed not to cut anything, although I had to cut some things with the officials from the record company. That's what adds up; your experiences. Making a film is an experience really; more so than going around photographing. Making a film is a real trip.

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4. Some random plugs:

"Because of a bizarre court order, Robert Frank's legendary Rolling Stones documentary is the most underground of all underground films: it literally can't be shown unless the director is present at the screening, and even then with much legal difficulty. This makes such screenings more precious than a layman's chance to see the insides of a Mormon church. No wonder the single showing of the film was a complete sellout at this year's San Francisco Film Festival. Incredibly, Cocksucker Blues lives up to all of the hype and anticipation. It may be the best movie ever made about rock and roll. The film offers an unflinching look at the side of rockstardom that was touched only glancingly in movies like "Don't Look Back"and "The Last Waltz." Many of the antics of the badboy Stones are not as shocking to us today as they may have been when the film was first made, but what's ultimately so special about this documentary is that it hasn't dated a day. Robert Frank has a knack for exposing the cheap and degrading dullness and the desparate boredom of the day-to-day touring life for all involved." - Film Threat Weekly

"According to Ginsberg in From New York to Nova Scotia, immediately after a private screening of Cocksucker Blues, Mick turned to Frank and told him, "It's a fucking good film, Robert, but if it shows in America we'll never be allowed in the country again." Jagger, I suspect, wasn't so much afraid of the film's lurid and potentially incriminating images -- the heroin use, Jagger masturbating, or even the extended sequence of questionably consensual group sex with a reluctant groupie at 30,000 feet (after all, this was rock and roll) -- what Mick probably found most disturbing was the bleak and accurate portrait of the obvious despair and loneliness of life on the road. Frank's obsession with pursuing truth destroyed the illusion of glamour for the world's most famous rock and roll band.

The Stones took Frank to court to prevent the film's distribution. It became, legally, a question of who owned the film, the artist who created it or the patron who paid for it. A split decision of sorts was finally worked out. The film, the judge decreed, could only be screened if Robert Frank himself was present in the audience. By then, the filmmaker was living a reclusive life in Nova Scotia. The film was effectively banned." - SFBG Film

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5. Long entry on “CS Blues”:

http://www.culturecourt.com/Ajo/media/CBlues.htm

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5. Links about Robert Frank

"RF: The Early Years"
http://photography.about.com/library/weekly/aa070300a.htm

"Route 66 Project"
http://www.yale.edu/amstud/r66/map.html

"Robert Frank + The Beats"
http://www.tamperefilmfestival.fi/2001/eng/beat.shtml

IMDB entry for Frank:
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Frank,+Robert+(I)

Quiz on RF:
http://www.library.arizona.edu/branches/ccp/education/guides/reframe/frank.html