Apple Pie

While it's been difficult lately to find existing copies, any fan of Tony Azito will definitely appreciate his starring performance in this film! The first thing that came to my mind when viewing "Apple Pie" was Fellini's "Roma" with the various story-lines, song/dance numbers, theatrical scenes and such. And as mentioned in a previous review, the extended dance number at the end of the film is pretty incredible even by today's standards. Move over, "Slumdog Millionaire"! This film apparently had lots of play when it first came out (film festivals, midnight showings, etc.) years before "Flashdance" and many people felt that the big street dance scene at the end was a bit of a steal from "Apple Pie". Irene Cara (who sang the theme song for "Flashdance") was even one of the dancers in "Apple Pie"! Let's hope this once-forgotten gem makes it to NetFlix soon!

Having just purchased a copy of this forgotten little oddity on an obscure video label called North American Video (NA 1033) I figured to watch it right away. I had been admonished by the seller that this was an unusual movie. He wasn't kidding. After viewing it, there's no doubt it's "Independent Cinema". That's not a bad thing, but one must view this picture with an open mind if one is to derive any enjoyment from it. Any viewer expecting conventional plot devices is going to be in for a strange awakening because this movie has no real plot and has a kind of anarchic structure to all the activities that go on. What story there is revolves around Jacques Blinbaum (played by the rubber-limbed Tony Azito), who appears to be a gangster nicknamed The Falcon. His father is played by Brother Theodore at his most "normal" (I use the term loosely). Jacques then describes, in a fantasy-like way, his experiences beginning at age 17 where he gets the idea to fake his own kidnapping and extort money from his parents. There's a kind of surreal feel to this film and I watched it twice in one day because I thought it was interesting. APPLE PIE appears to have been filmed entirely on location in and around New York City. Whether one likes APPLE PIE or not, the ending is really cool! One last thing, the video box says "approx. 90 mins.", but it really runs only about 80 minutes.

I recently found a VHS copy of Apple Pie on the net and re-watched it. What a treat. I hadn't seen this film in over 20 years! I first saw it at the Deauville Film Festival in France the same year I saw Nashville and Love and Death there. It was a big hit and got a standing ovation the night I saw it.

The film is a kind of hodge-podge of ideas. It stars Tony Azito (who was a big deal in NY on Broadway and Off-Broadway. He died of AIDS a few years ago). It starts out with him as some sort of gangster who then tells the story (in flashback) of how, when he was a kid, he kidnapped himself and got a ransom from his parents. Then he becomes some kind of nighttime costumed prowler and then he winds up leading a huge dance sequence in the streets of New York (pre-Flashdance) to the music of Darryl Hall and John Oates! It all sounds kind of weird in the re-telling, but once you get the hang of it, it all makes sense. The whole film is a lie made up by the main character (Tony Azito), as a kind of manifestation of his own weirdness. Once you get that none of it is to be taken literally you start to understand it as some kind of fractured New York fairy tale.

This is what independent filmmaking was once all about.

I am a cinephile or a film critic. I had seen many so called film cult movies. This had never entered my list and would leave my interest as soon as I put the dot at the end of this long sentence; garbage.

If you're looking for something that makes sense, then you're in the wrong dingy ole New York "independent film" decaying movie house.

This rancid concoction - in the good sense - was put together in that odd space between the 1950's/60's beatnik/hippie NYC and the Trumpster heyday of the 1980's - the 1970's.

For you 21century youngin's you're gonna see absolutely appalling stuff you've never seen before - telephone booths, gigantic V-8 Cadillac high octane convertibles w. No seatbelts, a smoggy NYC skyscape w. A dirty old Brooklyn bridge and a soaring new Twin Towers - a New York where you didn't need permits to film on the streets, stray dogs who just pooped in the curbs, afternoon Discoteques, corded window blinds, aluminum trash cans, etc, etc.

The dialogue is xtreme-xtemporaneous stream-of-consciousness with some very witty throwaway lines: guy falls off a roof, gets a tear in his costume and expostulates: "Ya call this a jumpsuit?!".

What's the point? Well, as the deranged "hero" character played - and I do mean "played" - by the shockingly skeletal Chaplinesque, Gumby flexible Tony Azito - a/k/a "Jacques ... Jacques (the Ace) Blinbaum" - says to a mirrored sidewalk sculpture: "I wanted him to know self-indulgence has style" (of course we don't know who "he" is, but never mind, it's not important)

In a way this is an Andy Warhol knock off in spirit - sort of a Dollar Store Warhol -

So, "a cult classic"? Yeah, I see that for it :-) - and, btw, the dinner scene near the end is absolutely hilarious - is that a "spoiler"???

And, oh, all the girls are pretty!