The Defeated: Craig Zobel's GREAT WORLD OF SOUND

 Pat Healy, Kene Holliday, Rebecca Mader. Dir. Craig Zobel, Magnolia, 2007

I wish I could write a lede for this that starts out gushing about how Craig Zobel tells us stories of people and of lives we all know exist but know nothing of, even as they happen around us. I cannot lead with that because in June of 2004 I graduated 3rd out of 30 from a private broadcasting school in Cincinnati. It sounds like the kind of online, for-profit scam academy our former President once ran, but it's better than that. Mostly. Upon graduation, about 20 of 30 found jobs in radio&TV in the Greater Cincinnati area. How many continue to work in the industry today I couldn't say, but I know most of my classmates had jobs in production that pay shit and never quite lead to the air studios where the money is, that most had not one but four jobs, including as an instructor at our school, and if they managed to get on mic knew their top takehome with the big commercial chains would be about 37k.

The school trained warm bodies for the low end production jobs they didn't yet have robots to do. Some people who came out of our school caught on with national cable channels in production, made some decent money, but thw industry is a shell of itself in June '04 and whether many of those I graduated with survived or eventually decided selling satellite TV installation by phone paid better I have no idea.

I do know the bottom ten students never ought to have passed even one segment of our ten-month program of study, could never hope to work in the industry, and never dis, and graduated with us because their government loans came guaranteed only if they stayed enrolled. One woman worked very hard to be rated borderline-incompetent on her studio skills test during finals. She picked up a diploma, though. 

I didn't come with a government loan backing me and, seeing my intent, the guys at my school didn't sell me hard. They didn't need to. I'd succeed or fail based on my willingness, not their promises. 

Those bottom ten got sold pretty hard, I think. I know that when I graduated I never wanted to hear a guy in a suit use words like "passion" and "dreams" and "fun" and "dedication" in my presence again. Once enrolled, a fair amount of classtime devotes itself to visiting guys from the "home campus," who gave long pep talks about the fun-crazy world of broadcasting and loved to use all four of those words. I feel certain our final ten heard those four words, along with phrases like "this is where it can start," and "you can make it happen today" before they ever made it to class.

Watching Pat Healy's Martin and Kene Holliday's Clarence "auditioning local talent," aka suckering low-to-no ability musicians and singers into paying their company, Great World of Sound, $3000 to record their song "in a real Nashville recording studio" and press it as an edition of 1,000 cds the company will allegedly shop to radio, I had two simultaneous reactions: disturbed hilarity and disturbed empathy. 

The hilarity reminded me of televised auditions for AMERICAN IDOL - were we supposed to laugh at some people's illusions? Applaud their spirit and energy? Both?

If the auditioning musicians display hilariously questionable talent, their earnestness, their credulity and willingness to put faith - and checks for money most don't have - in Marty and Clarence's hands shamed me as my laughter faded. Though Marty and Clarence and the company's other sales associates in "the new Charlotte office" go on the road operating in good faith, Marty and Clarence soon understand they're scamming people. 

Marty lives with his girlfriend (LOST's Rebecca Mader) who supports them assembling mailorder ducks she and a partner sell at "craft fairs," and struggles with conscience. Clarence, a father of six who spent three years homeless in Houston, holds his nose and looks the other way for a better paycheck.

I understand both reactions. I live below the federal poverty guidelines. I have, and have had, issues. No one depends on me, though, not even a self employed girlfriend willing to put up with my BS if I just apply myself. If I walked away from a place like Great World of Sound because of my conscience, I could sustain that.

Other hand, my friend Danny used to work installing stadium seats in SEC and other stadia around the South. Danny's company bounced a payroll while he worked in Oxford, and Danny found himself stuck. Danny had hooked up with a local woman in a few short weeks, and stayed on, working as a custodian in the dorms on campus. When my girlfriend and I broke up, I stayed in Oxford because I had nowhere else to go. I had no options. No backup plan.

Things happen. Not everyone from a middle class family has a safety net. Not everyone who showed some attitude or talent in school got even close to getting their shot. Some people we went to school with got Fine Arts degrees from branch campuses and went to work managing Subways. Some got associates degrees from junior colleges and wish to god they got theirs in HVAC, those guys have good jobs. Some, for whatever reasons - life got in the way, we got in our own way - never made anything happen. 

We got tired. We realized that just because Aunt Millie liking our singing at 13 that didn't make us the next Beyonce. We may/may not keep trying, but we're basically done. We have no options, no backup plan.  

Pat Healy and Kene Holliday reminded me of all that, and more, as I watched GREAT WORLD OF SOUND. They reminded me of Danny and me, after our reason to be in Oxford, a relationship, ended. Whatever family resources we might have weren't available enough to make a change. Whatever promise or talent we possessed was enough to keep us living a redneck DOWN AND OUT IN LONDON AND PARIS. 

The "hopefuls" their characters sell on paying for pretty much nothing reminded me of  those broadcasting school pep talks and of the few weeks I spent in furniture sales, trying to convince working poor familes to apply for "in-store" financing so they could afford a $1200 wifi-enabled mattress set rather than the $310 model they could afford. Their "clients'" vulnerability, their complete willingness to believe anyone, anyone at all, thinks they're special, fucked with me. 

Toward the end, Healy has to make an unethical decision or risk sleeping on the street. It's a tough moment, but I watched it and replayed every story guys like Danny and I have told over the years, the things we've been willing to do to stay housed, the wrong choices, the lies. It hurt. 

Pat Healy has a genius for playing defeated men. The lube techs and copyshop attendants who are probably too intelligent for their position but can't turn off their minds long enough to be good at simple tasks. The men who find themselves married with a kid but realize they have no plan and no one to take an emergency call. The sorts of jobs available to them continue evaporating. People don't have to run far or fast to hit a dead end these days, and Healy portrays them with the kind of skill and pathos that makes cinephiles like me say "HOW THE HELL IS THIS GUY NOT A HUGE STAR BY NOW?"

Kene Holliday also commanded my attention and empathy. I've been homeless. I've had shit jobs which asked me to play fast&loose with the truth if it added to my commission. There's truth in his explosion at Healy.

"Man, how many jobs you got? How many kids you got? I got six. Oh, it wouldn't be fair to take her money...man, FUCK fair! If you was half as smart as you think you are they would keep your motherfuckin' ass in a zoo. I lived on the streets of Houston for three goddamn years, and fairness runs real thin real quick out there on the street, baby, FUCK fair. There ain't no fair, ain't no deserve, there is earn and there is TAKE, motherfucker. These people we see want to change they lives because of they talent, you think this motherfucking country runs on talent??"

Anyone who ever heard a variant of that speech knows they earned it, I hope. I did. Martin does. It drives him to the decision that turns GREAT WORLD OF SOUND, just for a long moment, from black comedy to tragedy. If Healy finds redemption shortly after, it's a brokered version. His future remains, as old punk band fIREHOSE put it, "scary." 

Not a false happy ending, it's almost not an ending at all, just a pause. Healy and Holliday play men with their lives on Pause as if there were no other roles to play. I can't imagine it pays well, but I am profoundly grateful to them for doing it.