Big Time

1988 concert video

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Rock 'n' roll superstar Tom Waits makes various audiences simultaneously guffaw and whimper by sharing alley cat anecdotes, malodorous circus tangos, wounded ballads, left-field historical tangents, and bastardized didactics. The groundlings shrug and scratch their balls. The previously initiated have their lobes stroked.

This isn't just a performance video. This is a religious experience. This is too fantastic for 95% of the world's population. It'd be like staring at the sun intentionally after cutting off your eyelids, the devil poking you in the backside with a foul-smelling pitchfork. That's likely why this has (absurdly) never been released on dvd. It's not enough that Tom Waits is one of the greatest songwriters in the history of recorded music. There's the presentation, too. Props (burning umbrellas, showers with floating bulbous bubbles, a swinging light, feathers) add drunken carnivalesque color, color that extends well outside the lines and obliterates boxes. The band, only occasionally emerging from the shadows, bleat and honk and bang and shuffle tightly and expertly, holding everything together like a rickety dilapidated train. They've done it all before, many times. The focus, of course, is on Waits. He's a chameleon; he's a box office ticket seller, a barker, a guy wanting to sell a watch, a demented preacher, a filthy old man, a stand-up comedian, a dreamer, a guy flipping playing cards into a hat, a janitor, a light operator, a wolf in another wolf's clothing, a lounge singer, and a bum. And he's a guy who can't stand chihuahuas. All of the demons inhabiting Tom's skull get their chance to rock the microphone, his twitching and contorting body their vessel, his pained face squeezing out the poetry. Absolutely stunning. And somebody needs to release it on dvd!

An anecdote: After Big Time came out, Waits said that he was really disappointed, heartbroken while watching it because he always expected he'd look like James Bond on the big screen. He doesn't. He's got more tricks than James Bond though. And a lot more watches.