Despite the presence of a rock icon making her film debut opposite the most popular actor on television, Light of Day<\/em> bombed badly at the box office. It seemed folks would happily flock to watch Michael J. Fox play a time-traveler or teenage werewolf, but nobody wanted to see him stretch as a depressed Ohio factory worker who plays guitar in a bar band on weekends. Light of Day<\/em> was never released on DVD, and the version currently available on Amazon Prime Video appears to be a full-frame VHS rip with the opening title card subtitled in Italian (\u201cLa Luce Del Giorno\u201d). An ignominious fate for a flawed but fascinating movie that accidentally inspired one of the best-selling albums of all time years before a frame of the film was even shot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Schrader first wrote the film in 1979 as a tale of two brothers. He sent the script to Bruce Springsteen, hoping he would agree to play the rocker role that was later reworked for Jett. Lots of filmmakers were trying to get Bruce onto the big screen back then. (I remember once reading Stephen King saying he hoped Springsteen would play Larry Underwood in George Romero\u2019s never-filmed adaptation of The Stand<\/em>, which kept me up all night imagining a full E Street rendition of \u201cBaby, Can You Dig Your Man.\u201d) Bruce passed on Schrader\u2019s offer, but the screenplay was sitting on his desk for so long he wound up swiping its original title, Born in the U.S.A.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n It might sound strange considering their divergent public personas, but Schrader and Springsteen have always shared simpatico sensibilities, wearing their small town, religious upbringings on their sleeves. The alienated loners driving aimlessly all night on albums like Darkness on the Edge of Town<\/em> and Nebraska<\/em> could easily be Paul Schrader protagonists, and the plot of Blue Collar<\/em> \u2013 in which three disenfranchised Detroit auto workers try to rob their own union \u2013 sounds like something out of a Springsteen song. (There\u2019s also a funny footnote about a seminal, widely bootlegged Springsteen concert at the Bottom Line during which, as a bit of stage patter, the star taunted the audience by repeatedly asking, \u201cYou talkin\u2019 to me?\u201d This show was attended by Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, shortly before they started shooting Schrader\u2019s script for Taxi Driver<\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Light of Day<\/em> is one of those movies with strong individual elements that never quite cohere. Fox and Jett play Joe and Patti Rasnick, a brother and sister trying to scrape by in a rust belt ravaged by Reaganomics. On weekends they\u2019re The Barbusters, rocking out in front of drunk, appreciative local crowds for a few blessed hours of relief from the day-to-day drudgery. Joe and Patti\u2019s mother Jeanette (Rowlands) is a pious woman with an iron will, working passive-aggressive insults into daily prayers and generally using her religion as a cudgel to control her kids. Patti has a five-year-old son from a father whose identity she won\u2019t divulge, mostly out of spite. She\u2019s a terrible mom, using the kid to help steal steaks from the supermarket and dragging him around to all sorts of unsavory dives in pursuit of her rock n\u2019 roll dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The story of two siblings using the arts as an escape from their fundamentalist family is obviously a personal one for Schrader, who fifteen or so years earlier had fled Grand Rapids, Michigan for Hollywood alongside his brother Leonard. But the central conflict between Patti and Jeanette is that they\u2019re both zealots. The mother is devoted to God while the daughter has given everything to rock n\u2019 roll. They hate each other because they\u2019re too much alike, each selfishly chasing her own concept of transcendence, leaving poor Joe to clean up the mess. When not playing referee to his mom and sister\u2019s arguments, Joe\u2019s an emotional janitor, stuck raising Patti\u2019s kid on his own after she runs off with a tacky heavy metal outfit called The Hunzz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He’s a nice guy but a boringly passive protagonist. The magnificently mulleted, hopelessly miscast Fox tries his darnedest to shake the baggage of Back to the Future<\/em> and Family Ties<\/em> \u2013 going to see this movie at 12 years old, I was delighted by the sight of Alex P. Keaton smoking cigarettes and saying the F-word \u2013 but there\u2019s just no buying the slight, urbane sitcom star as a rough-and-tumble, Penthouse<\/em>-reading factory guy, even if he wears a lot of dangly earrings and sleeveless shirts. Jett is far more credible, but tends to trip over some of the movie\u2019s more unfortunate monologues. Still, she has a powerfully feral screen presence. I recall Siskel and Ebert \u2013 two of the film\u2019s very few fans \u2013 raving about the violent potential with which Jett picks up a fork when Rowlands starts sniping at her during dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are a lot of nice gestures like that. I love how Patti unthinkingly throws her leather jacket on the couch upon coming home and Joe follows behind her, picking it up and hanging it on a chair. It\u2019s also refreshing to see a movie about workaday musicians where nobody\u2019s in any danger of becoming rich and famous, content to play gigs that don\u2019t pay the bills. The film features a ton of lived-in details about the struggles of small timers in the shallow end of the entertainment ecosystem, and Light of Day<\/em> is much better at depicting a milieu than at finding a story in there to tell. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One struggles throughout to accept that Fox, Jett, and Rowlands come from the same country, let alone the same gene pool. But there\u2019s a lovely performance from Spinal Tap\u2019s Michael McKean as the most easygoing of The Barbusters, and some touching work from former exorcist Jason Miller as Rowlands\u2019 henpecked husband. Keep an eye out for early appearances from Cherry Jones, Michael Rooker, and yes, that\u2019s Trent Reznor as part of the New Wave act being mocked by McKean and Fox in one of the film\u2019s beerier interludes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The air of authenticity is almost enough to overcome the casting issues, until a mid-movie cancer diagnosis flips the script to something more like Douglas Sirk by way of Springsteen, complete with hospital bed confessions and shocking revelations far too soap operatic for this modest slice of life. You can feel Schrader straining to come up with a big finish. But it\u2019s Bruce who comes through for him in the end, having offered a new title track as penance for stealing the film\u2019s original name. The hard-charging rocker is played live, during an onstage reconciliation between Joe and Patti, providing an emotional release that Schrader\u2019s screenplay hasn\u2019t entirely earned. Patti has a lot of speeches during the movie about how the power of rock n\u2019 roll can make this crummy life worth living. Yet it\u2019s only when Jett takes command of the mic that we understand why she\u2019s a believer.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Light of Day” is available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/light-of-day2.jpeg\")
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