Talk Radio (1988) ****

When I was a kid I listen to talk radio (yes, I was THAT kid). The guy I listened to was He Who Goes Bump in the Night, Jim White on KMOX out of St. Louis. I think I stumbled on the guy after a Cardinals game. Jim White had been on the air in St. Louis for years and his shows were usually open format. Most callers were congenial, but every once in awhile a tirade would start either from a caller or from the host himself. There was the occasional Nazi or someone without a clue. These are the people that listen to the radio late a night. Check out Coast to Coast AM if you don't believe me.

With Talk Radio we get to take a look at Barry Champlain (Eric Bogosian), a nigh time talk radio host who is no holds barred and tells it like it is even though most of his listeners don't like it. Most callers hate him. When he goes out in public his ridiculed. But his shows popular as hell. So popular he's about to go national. But is that what he really wants? National hatred.

Barry's main argument to people is to turn off the damn show. That may be what you and I have in mind. But you have to remember the old story about a car accident. It's disgusting, it's horrible, but you sure as hell can't look away. You may hate what he says, but you just can't not stop listening to him because you have to know what he's going to say next.

Oliver Stone directs this film base on Bogosian's play and the film does have some of Stones flourishes, but it's really a claustrophobic piece. By the end of the film you're ready to get the hell out of that studio. You feel as stuffy and confined as the characters and during the times you do get out it's not for a breath of fresh air or freedom, it's more of how the disease from the radio has spread. Excellent performances throughout featuring Bogosians best work to date.

So many years late and Jim White's retired from the night time airwaves and the Cardinals aren't on KMOX anymore. I'm sure there's another guy at night buy he probably isn't as abrasive as White. Talk radio today is more user friendly with hosts chanting the mantras of the demographic they're designed for. Talk radio is a time capsule of those days when guys said what they though on the radio, not what was expected of them.