Jimmy was a roadie for Blue Oyster Cult all his adult life who has painfully and wrongfully according to him been fired by the band and left by them somewhere in the wilds of Michigan. With nowhere else to go, he makes his way back home to Queens where he has not been since his father's death many, many years before. He has barely spoken with his mother in the interim and now he overstates his role with the band to her manager, writer, producer, etc. He tries to collect himself to deal with this massive setback, but he is not making the situation any better with angry calls to the band's actual manager.I think that roadie is one of the coolest jobs in the world next to rock star and Jimmy does as well. I, too, would have major problems dealing with his rude awakening after so many years and the loss of his livelihood and dream.
Out for some butter for his Mom's famous tuna melts, Jimmy runs into a high school classmate who is and was quite a butthead who is now married to Jimmy's first love, Nikki. Jimmy and Nikki wind up back in his boyhood room which is untouched by time and looks like a "rock and roll museum" according to Nikki.
Out of his vinyl record collection, Nikki pulls out Ratcity In Blue by, local 70s favorites, the Good Rats and they listen to a couple of tracks. This brings back memories of seeing the band every Saturday night with their friend Steph who passed away unbeknownst to Jimmy.
This movie is about real people, with lots of issues, who love music and are dealing with some very real problems. If you enjoy music, have been on the road with a band or thought about doing so (one of my life's regrets is turning down an offer to be a roadie) you will really like this movie.
Full disclosure I also own this "original" album with the cool pizza sleeve art, am a huge Good Rats fan and may have seen Steph, Nikki and Jimmy at one of those Saturday night shows back in the day. My heartfelt thanks go to Gerald and Michael Cuesta for a wonderful film and soundtrack including these New York music legends and a great version of Jackson Browne's Stay by Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows. Did they misspell "Peppi" Marchello in the closing thanks to him?
Jimmy Testagross (Ron Eldard) has been living his dream for over 20 years. He has been a roadie for Blue Oyster Cult. The key words are "has been." Blue Oyster Cult has quit filling large arenas and have cut back on equipment and personnel. Jimmy is a victim of that downsizing.
Since Jimmy doesn't have any other skill sets he limps back home to his mother.
He hasn't seen her or talked to her since his father died. She is developing Dementia. The band continues to tour in South America but Jimmy's repeated calls go unanswered.
After seeing what has happened to his mom he makes up a more successful Jimmy. He says he's become the band's manager, even produced and written some songs for them and is simply visiting before he must get on the road again because, "they are lost without him."
Downtrodden he walks into town to get a drink. There he becomes reacquainted with his longtime nemesis Randy Stevens (Bobby Cannavale) who has inherited his dad's car lot and married the girl, Nikki (Jill Hennessy) who Jimmy uses to pine for. I should say still pines for.
The problem is Jimmy never grew up. He still harbours the regrets and frustrations that he's carried with him. The road was the only thing that gave him a feeling of normal ... his only true home. Now he's forced to make a life changing decision either step up, tell the truth and take on the responsibility of his ailing mother or continue to live a lie.
This is a neat little drama filled with great music.I'll admit a bias here: I'm a small-town guy who headed to Hollywood to pursue my musical dreams. As it turns out, this movie had little to do with music and musicians--it had a lot to do with a man returning home to the neighborhood of his youth, lost, and in that it succeeded wonderfully.
It's no surprise some have labeled Roadie "slow" or "boring"--character studies eschew the busy-ness of plot-driven movies for the subtle, the understatement. There were many moments in the film where I expected it to decay into melodrama or the big message, and above all I applaud the writer(s) and director for avoiding that. This is Death of a Salesman type fare, a story about a man who thought he knew what his life was about suddenly faced with a new, harsh reality. For some, life plays out in big dramatic moments--cancer, heart attack, accident--but for many more it plays out in small pieces of entropy, and that's the case here.
Certainly my small town background and four musicians in a Ford Econline musical career played into my appreciation of Roadie. I realized many of my dreams on a small scale, and I appreciate that every day, but there is a bittersweet quality to what was left on the table, so to speak. I belief this movie can speak to anyone who's returned to the place of their childhood to find so many of the same dynamics are still in play. The same thing goes for anyone who set out believing they knew where they were going, only to find out one day the detours are too many to count, the triumphs counterweighted by lost opportunities, whether willingly set aside or forced to the side by "reality"--job, money, marriage, kids or even lack of skill/talent.
If you need the big message or the hopeful ending you will be disappointed. If you want grand language or symbolism, look elsewhere. In fact if you want that stuff go watch Crazy Heart, a film that had all the potential of Roadie and threw it away for fairy-tale land. The success of this film is it's simple honesty, one of the hardest things to pull off.
Finally, the music director nailed it--the soundtrack was eerily spot on, songs chosen not only for atmosphere but for message. I would have like the Jackson Browne version of The Load-Out, but Adam Duritz does all right.
Read Best Reviews of Roadie (2011) Here
Is this movie a musical tribute to roadies who vicariously act out their rock-n-roll fantasies through the live performances of their employers or is it a musical rebuke of all forms of career mediocrity that settle for a greasy hamburger without even looking at the gourmet steak menu? For me, it was both.Many scenes had the realistic look and feel of a low-budget documentary that exposes the dreary monotony of people talking a lot but saying very little. But other scenes played out more like attention-captivating music videos where the classic-rock song playing in the background was perfectly synchronized with the fleeting frames of film it was linked to in such a way as to reveal more in a few musical measures than even the most eloquently constructed lines of dialog could ever hope to express using the medium of the written-to-spoken word.
Thematic elements of Roadie dealt with connecting to people and places from one's past but despite being portrayed under the center-stage spotlight of honesty, these themes are never totally submerged in a bottomless pool of pessimism where hopelessness and despair become deadly poisons to those who dare to dream and dream to dare. Instead, I found a few rays of sunny optimism shining through the dark clouds of experiential adversity and disappointment as though to subtly suggest that just as wisdom is gained from taking an honest look at the many seeds of mistakes (erroneous judgment) sown in the gardens of the past so can wisdom be applied to improving the blossoming realization of the future by making better (wiser) choices in the decision-sprouting reality of the present moment!
Led Zeppelin said it better than I ever could in a line from the lyrics from their 1971 hit, Stairway to Heaven:
"There's still time to change the road you're on."Not exactly an uplifting movie, though there are a few great musical moments in Robin Trower and Blue Oyster Cult songs. This movie plays out the nightmarish scenario dreaded by all near-do-wells, coming home a failure. Other subject lines within the film include unrealized dreams, excessive drug usage and aging.
But actor ( ) cast as Jimmy Testagross delivers as the one-time roadie who's lost his job.
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