Search - Payday on DVD

Rip Torn is never better!

skipmccoy | Los Angeles, CA USA | 09/04/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This film is so great, but it's certainly not for all tastes. I saw it for the first time a few months ago(in a rare screening) and have recently acquired the video and watched it again. Rip Torn is so good as country-western singer Maury Dann. This character is just evil, but evil in the kind of way that one can be fascinated by him. It's a great story in which you spend about a day and half with Maury, his band and his manager. There's lots of enjoyable behind-the-scenes type stuff(some of it is quite disturbing). If your a fan of films that might offend your sensibilities a little and you don't mind characters that aren't necessarily folks you'd want to join up with, you will enjoy this film. I sincerely hope it finds lots of new fans on video-it has all the makings of a cult classic."

Second Rate Country Singer-First Rate Heel

prisrob | New EnglandUSA | 02/14/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

""Maury Dann, the second-rate country singer and first-rate heel played by Rip Torn." Ken Tucker

Payday is a film that left me feeling forlorn, a feeling of emptiness and what's next. Rip Torn played his character, Maury Dann, true to form. A country singer on his way down from never near the top. He cheats, wheedles, lies and moves on so easily without remorse, using whomever he needs to, I wonder what is the purpose of his life. It seems he has little regard for those who travel with him or might love him. His purpose is to make money to pay for the booze, women and song that make up his life. The surrounding players had little or no effect on me, but, of course, they made the film a whole. I can see in my mind's eye that this course of life goes on daily with hundreds of people moving through the country or rock scene. How sad a life, how very very sad.

"As a portrait of the music industry of that era -- Maury bribes DJs to play records and makes sure to get paid in cash after yowling tunes in tattered roadhouses -- the low-budget Payday is far superior to Robert Altman's overrated, condescending 1975 drama Nashville. Payday both loves its subject and never lets its antihero off the hook." Ken Tucker

Recommended. Best advice, view this film on a bright sunny day.
prisrob 02-14-08

Where the Rivers Flow North

Heartland
"

Maury Dann is a Golden God !

Comte de St. Germaine | Palo Alto, California United States | 04/29/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Incredibly good portrait of a mid-level country music star on a tour of the south. I mean if you're a musician and you've ever been on tour buy this. If nothing else the movie will crack you up. Maury Dann as played by Rip Torn is an irascible, dirty ... The beginning scene with the old time musicians (violinists, banjo players, guitars, etc.) in the hotel room is great in and of itself -- what follows only confirms this great scene. If you're a musician, if you like music, if you like movies, or you're a sociologist fascinated by the country music scene, you should check this movie out.
It's strange because i'm not a expert or nothing but, i think, in 100 years this movie will still be around. It is an expert, unflinching gaze at the degrading aspects of "celebrity."
Regarding the other reviewer's comment, I don't feel that Dann is evil -- the movie is much too realistic to fall into an easy moralistic framework. It almost runs like a documentary. You're here: buy it."

A true classic

a movie fan | Orangevale, CA USA | 10/22/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I had given up on ever seeing this on disc. It is one of the all-time great cult films - a nearly perfect depiction of a true psychopath. Torn pretty well conveys the psychopathic worldview in one line, "we only pass this way once, darlin', might as well pass in a Cadillac". It is a marvelous portrayal of a chronic, debauched user on the way downhill. Rip Torn is a great actor, and I think this is his masterpiece.
Widescreen films, BTW, don't need to be "matted" because they are already widescreen, so I would guess that this is another blind application of a matte to a FS film to pass it off as widescreen. I hope they don't do as bad a job as they did with Cable Hogue."