Chatterbox Spiderwebs - CITIZENS BAND (1977)

Though it seems silly now (and probably did doubly back in the day), the trucker craze of the 70's was a real cultural force for its brief life, and a big part of it was the CB radio craze.  It was a goofy glimpse into the future, as people were jabbering with relative strangers just for the sake of human contact, and no movie plunged deeper into the phenomenon than Citizens Band, an early effort not only for director Jonathan Demme (the first big studio project after his three-movie stint under Roger Corman) but also for Risky Business writer/director Paul Brickman.  It's never seen any video releases past its initial, long-gone VHS issue, and while it may seem like the most dated thing ever in cocncept it stands as a fascinating cultural portrait and an effortless, insightful ensemble comedy, and its recent appearance in the roster of Amazon Instant Video may help its reputation some, even if to just preserve it as an encapsulation of a unique social bubble before it popped.

Playing the Altman gambit, Citizens Band follows a loose collection of people in a small Texas town all connected through their CB radios.  The closest thing to a main character is Spider (Paul Le Mat), the local CB coordinator and sporter of the finest flannel/light brown hair combo I've seen in a while.  Other characters spiderweb (heh) off him, like his alcoholic, crusty father Papa Thermodyne (Roberts Blossom, aka the old man from Home Alone) and his hard-ass gym teacher brother, Blood (Bruce McGill of The Insider, Matchstick Men and everything else).  His best bits are in the middle of the movie when he decides to "clean up the band" - he screws a big antenna to the top of his car and prowls around town looking for unlicensed, FCC-disapproved rogue chatterboxes, like a little kid skipping school to jabber about his secret identity as The Hustler.  He fancies himself not only a CB watchdog but a crusader for sanity and community standards - one of his biggest jobs is taking down a far-right nutjob jabbering about "commie peapickers".  Another memorable bust is his pursuit of The Priest, played with slimy superchurch cheese by Ed Begley, Jr., and it's the only time you'll hear a man use clergy axioms to argue against getting an FCC license.

We also see the trials of Chrome Angel (Charles Napier, The Silence of the Lambs and Fred Olen Ray's Deep Space across from Firefly's Ron Glass), a cattle trucker who starts the movie by nearly running his truck off the road when a 900-number-style sexy voice cuts into his transmissions.  Later on we meet a pair of women at a bus station who exchange stories of their husbands' infidelities, and they also exchange photos of their families.  Once they pull out pictures of their husbands, it turns out they're the same man - Chrome Angel - and he'd been stringing them along by taking trips and talking to them on his CB (and is currently bunking in a new trailer with a third wife, Hot Coffee).  Some of the most charming stuff in the movie involves the two women dealing with the situation, and growing friendlier with each other in the process.

All of this, as well as a number of funny throwaway jokes*, are woven together with an incessant stream of CB code chatter, with "10-4"'s flying left and right and goofy nicknames as anchors.  While it's never laugh-out-loud funny, it's consistently laid-back and puts a smile on my face, keeping with the movie's steady pace and patchwork feel.  It's kind of like switching channels, with a number of personal stories going on at once, none of them aware of the others.  If you don't like any of them the change-over is pretty quick, and none of the character sketches wear out their welcome.  While none of the stories totally converge, all the characters do meet each other in a community effort to solve a comedic crisis - the weird little CB kinship finally producing an objectively good result.  Much of the CB analysis painted the subculture in a poor light, giving insecure people a semi-anonymous platform to air dirty laundry and occasionally make threats.  The movie keeps a close watch on the emotional heart of its characters, and real drama creeps in as subplots come to their conclusions.  Jonathan Demme's direction is quite creative for such small-scale storytelling, with lots of interesting tricks, like vérité-style handheld work, fast dolly shots, double exposure montages and quirky transitions, keeping the energy high.  The opening credits are a treat, as the camera pans across the interiors of CB radios as odd-sounding channels whiz past.  Paul Brickman shows a real knack for characterization and naturally witty dialogue, things that came in very handy for Risky Business and kept it from becoming bogged down in 80's artsiness or sex-comedy clichés.  The actors are properly professional, putting fast character communication at top priority, an essential factor in ensemble flicks.  All of this has a compliment in the Texas landscape, dry, glowing and always inviting.

Citizens Band is a movie that is more relevant now than when it was released, as instant messaging and internet avatars have made the handle jabbering a major part of daily life in the Western World.  It may have been this prophetic quality that prompted its addition to the Amazon Instant Video roster, so you can see it (for $9.99) without having to gamble on the old VHS.  If you're a Jonathan Demme fan you'll want to see it anyways, so grab the nearest copy and breath in the smell of CB wiring - and look out for FCC crusaders.

~PNK

*My favorite is when Spider sneaks up on an old woman chattering to nobody in particular.  Stock war movie music plays as he crawls up to the exposed wire on the side of her house, and when he cuts it not only does the woman's voice cut out but so does the music, as if she had a record playing on her channel.