Black Gate

I LOVE the movie, Eddie and the Cruisers. I’ve seen the flick, about a short-lived Jersey bar band, at least a dozen times. And it’s got a terrific soundtrack by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown band. I like Cafferty more than I do the much more famous Bruce Springsteen, who he kinda sounds like. To each their own.

Eddie and the Cruisers was the #110 box office film of 1983. With a budget of $5 million, its domestic gross was $4.7. It was Embassy Pictures’ first ever try at distribution, and they pulled it from theaters after only three weeks. Needless to say (though I’m saying it anyways…) there was no international release. Pretty damn poor choice by producer Martin Davidson, who admitted he selected them – knowing they had zero experience – because they offered the most money.

Then it ran on HBO in 1984 and became a cult classic. I was part of that happening. On the Dark Side had charted at #64 when the movie came out. The HBO success prompted a re-release and it hit #7 on the Billboard 100 – and #1 on the mainstream charts. For a movie that nobody saw in the theaters, for the next three+ decades, EVERYBODY knew Eddie and the Cruisers. It was only in the past ten-ish years that I have started running across folks who have never heard of it. Truly a cult classic.

It’s adapted from P.F. Kluge’s novel of the same name. Kluge also wrote Dog Day Afternoon, which became a smash hit movie in 1975 (it made about 25 times its budget at the box office). A few weeks ago, I finally decided to read the book. I finished it in two days – and I worked on both days.

This was my first Kluge. There’s a lot more to this book than there is in the movie. Keep in mind I love that flick, so I’m not disparaging it. But they massively changed the tone of the novel. There’s a very different vibe. And I get why: it wouldn’t become a hit movie, ‘as written.’ Unless I specify otherwise, I’m talking about the novel from here on in.

The book is told from Frank ‘Wordman’ Ridgeway’s point of view: Tom Berenger’s character in the movie. He and the other characters are far more developed, which is essential to the story.

First off: this is much darker than the film. There’s murder. There’s a world-weary cynicism to Frank which reminds me a little of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. As in the movie, time shifts between the present and the past. And that’s thematically at the center of Frank’s narration. That summer on the Jersey shore, was a moment. There was a road of fame and accomplishment and…a life, ahead, for each of them. But a flaming car crash (no bridge involved in the book) detoured all of the Cruisers to back roads and other paths. Not shiny (a little Firefly for you, as I’m immersed in that ongoing story), Hallmark ones, either.

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