Cocksucker Blues

Directed by Robert Frank

At the USA Cinema 57

February 23

EVERYONE has been paying a shitload of attention lately to this 16-year-old film, and there are four basic reasons for the hoopla:

First of all, its title, Cocksucker Blues, is fun to say. It makes the girl at the ticket counter blush at you, and one finds it scrawled on the walls of the bathroom. It's also, I admit, fun to print in newspapers, especially considering that local papers chickened out this week and puzzled thousands with mysterious reviews of "CS Blues" (Caribou Shit? Carrot Sticks? Carbon Sulfate?).

Secondly, it's a film about the Rolling Stones, and as director Robert Frank admitted to me while signing promo posters in the lobby before the screening, "Anything concerning the Stones is by definition bound to create hype."

Thirdly, the promo people who are in charge of Frank's new film Candy Mountain have timed the showing of Cocksucker Blues to coincide with the release of the new film in an attempt to saturate Boston with a Robert Frank revival and, in doing so, gain a little extra publicity.

But most of all, everyone's excited about Cocksucker Blues because it's incredibly hard to get a ticket. Scalpers were selling them outside for 70 bucks. In fact, there are very few people in the world who have ever seen this film, because Mick Jagger, when he first saw it, threatened to sue Frank to keep it from being released.

It's a weird story. The Stones asked Frank to make a movie about their 1972 tour, and he followed the Stones around with 16mm and Super 8 cameras, shooting whatever happened to be taking place in cinema verite style. Unfortunately, what took place turned out to be some pretty rough stuff, including the band's drug use, and later, when Keith Richards got busted for heroin in Toronto, the Stones were afraid that the film might be used as evidence against him and threatened a court order against its release.

The final outcome of the resulting legal tangle was a bizarre out-of-court settlement by which Frank agreed that Cocksucker Blues would only be shown in one moviehouse on one night each year. This year, because Frank's new film is opening in Boston, that one screening occured at Cinema 57.

THE two questions on everyone's mind in the theater lobby were "How sleazy is it?" and "Is it any good?"

Well, if it's sleaze you're after, try these little morsels:

--Mick and the boys banging on drums and tambourines while some roadies toss a lauging naked girl around their private jet.

--Two unidentified bodies having sex on that jet.