WUSA was Paul Newman’s follow-up to the highly successful BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID and was a complete 180 compared to that film. It was also one of his biggest flops and today it’s easy to see why. The film was way ahead of its time not only in its portrayal of the nature of right wing radio but in it’s use of unsympathetic, self-centered, and amoral characters led by Newman who emerge unscathed while the inherently good characters played by Joanne Woodward and Anthony Perkins suffer for their goodness.
The script by Robert Stone of DOG SOLDIERS fame (made into the movie WHO’LL STOP THE RAIN? a few years later) brilliantly captures the apathy and the disillusionment of the country after the deaths of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy two years earlier. Unlike MAS*H which came out the same year, there is not an ounce of comedy in WUSA and that’s what makes it so difficult to accept. It’s cynical look at the effects of looking the other way was just too much for audiences in 1970. Today it looks like a prophetic period piece.
Paul Newman plays a drifter who winds up in New Orleans and gets a job at a right wing radio station appropriately called WUSA. He doesn’t believe the stuff they preach, it’s just a job to him, a way to keep him in drinking money. He takes up with down and out floozie Joanne Woodward and encounters Peace Corps dropout Anthony Perkins who doesn’t realize that’s he being used by the right wing powers that he despises. In addition to those three, WUSA has a strong supporting cast of capable players including Pat Hingle, Robert Quarry, Moses Gunn, and Laurence Harvey as a fake preacher.
In later years Newman felt that the film failed from lack of studio support and because it wasn’t political enough. He was half right. Paramount hated the movie and did little to promote WUSA but the film makes a powerful statement even if it’s a downbeat one. It’s much easier to appreciate the film today than when it came out 40 years ago. This is its first ever appearance on home video of any kind. Thanks to Olive Films for making it available since Paramount wouldn’t release it on their own.
The Capsule Critic 