52/72: BONE

 by Anthony King

Let's get boned.

What does it say about me that Bone is the Larry Cohen movie I've watched the most? I certainly wouldn't call it the “most watchable.” I certainly wouldn't call it the most straight-forward. I wouldn't even call it the most Larry Cohen film ever. As a debut feature film, though, I think it's one of the strongest. Ever. By the time Bone was released, Cohen was a seasoned writer, having begun his career in television in the '50s. He spent over a decade writing pulp crime and western stories, so when I look at Bone, I see a man who was tired of digestible pap for the masses (which wasn't all bad). It's a career trajectory to which we should all aspire.

Cohen had amassed a small Hollywood fortune by 1972, and he knew how to play the game. He knew how to cut corners. He knew how to save a buck (or a million). As evidence, Bone takes place in Cohen's actual home. While it takes most filmmakers several films, Cohen's first is a film school lesson in how to make a “uniquely you” movie on a budget. Bone is weird, interesting, it never stops moving, and it features tremendous performances.

The film opens with Bill Lennox (Andrew Duggan) filming a commercial for his used car lot. As the camera opens wide, though, we see Bill is standing in a junkyard. He begins to panic as there are flashes of dead bodies in broken down cars. We then cut to Bill and his wife, Bernadette (Joyce Van Patten) lounging by their pool when Bill discovers a rat in the filter. He calls the pool company, and while he's on the phone a strange black man shows up. The couple assumes Bone (Yaphet Kotto) is the exterminator but are quickly proven wrong when he demands money from them. Bone takes them back into the house and discovers Bill has been hiding the fact that they have no money and he has a secret bank account. Bone becomes a wedge between the two things start to crumble. Bone threatens Bernadette with violence if Bill doesn't go to the bank and return promptly with a large sum of money. Bill leaves Bernadette with Bone and goes on an adventure of his own, first going to the bank, then to a bar, then to a strange woman's house, then to his manager's. Meanwhile, Stockholm Syndrome begins to set in as Bone reveals more and more of Bill's lies to Bernadette and convinces her that Bill is worth more dead than alive. The three end up in the sand dunes and the story concludes with tragedy.

Bone is strange. It's not for the general movie-going populace. Or maybe it is. If it were released today it would be an A24 or Neon release. Like most of Cohen's films, Bone carries several social messages. It's a movie about race. It's a movie about grief (hello, A24!). It's a movie about wage disparity. It's a movie about marriage. By the end we feel like our hallucinogenic trip has reached its zenith. And then, like any good filmmaker, Cohen leaves us hanging to come down and recover on our own. The improvisational nature, the quick edits, the constant beating down of the sun, the palpable paranoia, the Looney Tunes characters leave us spinning – spiraling – asking, “What in the hell just happened?” And all in (near) real time.

Like Cohen, Kotto had spent most of his early career making one-off appearances in television shows. He'd also appeared in a small handful of films, but Bone was his first lead role. And what a role it was! Kotto's physical appearance is already half the character. His tall and wide stature, his deep and unmistakable voice, and those murderous eyes do half the work for the titular character. Yet Kotto has a unique charm about him that we don't necessarily blame Bernadette for falling for the character. Duggan plays the bumbling husband to a T. Bill is immediately afraid of Bone simply because their skin color is different, whereas Bernadette plays the racist stereotype of a white slave owner who wants to use her property for sexual pleasure. Van Patten is a twitchy, prissy, wealthy white woman not unlike those seen in Frank Perry's The Swimmer (1968; a tremendous double feature idea, by the way) who sees herself as above everyone surrounding her, not just those with different skin colors. These three characters are so distinctly-written and perfectly-acted, yet they go together like the Lament Configuration Box.

As I look at Larry Cohen's filmography, his two favorite films of mine are his two most out there films: Bone and God Told Me To (1976). Both are great examples of a creative genius finally getting to stretch a little (a lot; the most, actually).