Sweet and Lowdown (1999)
Let's Go to the Train Yard and Shoot Some Rats With the Second Greatest Jazz Guitarist in the World
Woody Allen’s 1999 mockumentary, Sweet and Lowdown is absurd and incredible. Sean Penn performs best, although he didn’t play guitar in the film. After studying film and art, revisiting this one, as I just did, felt particularly worthwhile.
Howard Alden wrote and played the guitar for the Django-sounding solos on the film, but he also coached Penn on how to appear to be playing the solos. As someone who has seen thousands of guitar solos up close and wondered how they were making that sound, I would say that Penn’s fake guitar playing holds up, if not on close inspection, at least on the screen from a distance. Lead guitar isn’t just about the fingerwork. It’s about confidence and leading the audience. He’s convincing as the second greatest guitarist in the world.
I’ve always thought back fondly on this movie, but my recent rewatch revealed something richer than my original impression from 1999. This movie is patently absurd and not a retelling of a real person’s story (I may or may not have thought this originally)! This may be the first time I’m reviewing one of the controversial director’s films, but hey, sometimes you gotta do that. As a fan of Sean Penn, I also found the performances from Uma Thurman compelling, but Samantha Morton, as the mute Hattie, truly steals the show as the real leading lady.
I’m adding this to my Boardwalk Empire category of gangster-related media, fascinated by the clothes and music of that era.
What I didn't catch in my first viewings was that the mockumentary element flew right over my head. In fact, I may have thought that Emmet Ray (Sean Penn) was a real guy whose exaggerated story was being told. Ray is a deeply flawed ‘artist’ who ranks himself the second best guitar player in the world (and the world’s fourth best poker player), behind his hero Django Reinhardt, at the prospect of seeing whom he faints in real life. This is ‘never meet your heroes’ taken to the extreme – imposter syndrome on steroids.
Allen originally pitched himself as Emmet Ray but appears as one of the documentary interviewers instead. Penn is at the top of his game here. While I recognize Woody Allen as a great director and Sean Penn as a great actor, I wouldn’t rank them as my favorites. Mystic River also features a great performance from Penn in my DVD catalog. Penn shines in this role as a well-coiffed jazz guitarist, hanging out with his Black friends after the show for late-night chili and jam sessions, smoking tea. Emmet Ray is a kleptomaniac who steals an ashtray from a friend’s house only to toss it into an alley on his sleepy walk home in his expensive suit.
While I somehow wish I had been in on the joke during my first viewings, the fantastical elements resonated with me this time. Michael Keaton (Batman, Mr. Mom) in Johnny Dangerously is a straight-up comedy and spoof set in that gangster time. The comedy in Sweet and Lowdown is all about the subtlety, even with the over-the-top performance from Uma Thurman as Ray’s wife, Blanche. Blanche is a flapper and socialite who is disloyal to Ray with Al Torrio, played by Anthony LaPaglia, at the climax of the film.
His first love interest, Hattie, is played brilliantly by my favorite actor in the film, Samantha Morton. Hattie is mute, and Allen suggested she watch Marx Brothers films to prepare, to see how the master Harpo could express so much with his body and face without saying a word. The best is when Ray gets himself worked up in a one-sided conversation, asking her questions while she subtly raises an eyebrow or stares down at the floor.
Hattie is a laundress, and she and Emmet do end up sleeping together. He constantly tells her that he can’t be tied down to one woman, but he just can’t resist her charm, and they eventually move in together. And she eats a lot of white bread sandwiches.
Ray and Hattie head west to Hollywood with his drummer to work as background musicians in film. On the way, he makes Hattie change the flat tire while he strums away on his guitar. They also hustle a local talent show and are driven out of town, forced to camp and eat more white bread sandwiches by the campfire. Emmet couldn’t dumb down his guitar playing for the crowd or hide his genius with the guitar in his hands.
When in Hollywood, Hattie, a mute, catches the eye of a director so fascinated by her beauty that he immediately casts her in a non-speaking role. The laundress is seen in a makeup chair with a team of hair and makeup artists and is doe-eyed about the whole thing. Her sexy leading man, a silver-haired George Clooney of his day, kisses her 30 times in her first scene, causing her to go into a ‘light coma’ for a few days. Emmet is so furious he brings the whole operation back to the East Coast.
Overspending leads to his manager putting him on a budget. He buys a car anyway and, in my favorite scene, doesn’t shy away from allowing Hattie to buy him the ‘kid gloves’ he had his eye on for his birthday, right after explaining the budget and fruitlessly turning lights off while telling Hattie she needs to go to a vet instead of a regular doctor. Emmet has really bad but typical artist habits.
Like all good comedy, classic comedy, or the genius of Allen’s films, there is an element of tragedy. Emmet ends up leaving Hattie in the middle of the night after a year or so because he can’t bear to be tied down. He left her with $500 in cash and departed at 4 in the morning.
Besides overspending on clothes and hotel rent, his favorite pastimes include going to the train yard to watch trains and shooting rats at the dump (he takes all his dates to these places, too). He starts the movie as a pimp with a stable of women and a damning business card. He gambles, drinks, and steals ashtrays while wearing his suspenders.
Everyone reveres his playing, and he knows it. He’s a headlining act that’s always late to the stage. As someone who works in the industry, I know that, in general, artists want to get paid, so this habit has faded in recent years, but I can confirm that artists are strange and different people. Perhaps they are on the spectrum or caught up in their own artistic genius, but some things never change.
The iconic poster for Sweet and Lowdown features Emmet Ray on a lunar set piece of his own design. It’s a great idea, actually, if you can pull it off. Because he is star caliber and knows it, he has someone custom-build a crescent moon with a chair to be lowered down onto the stage in front of his band. But the fatal flaw was that he got too nervous and drunk the night of the show to mount and ride the moon. Referencing the Marx Brothers’ once again, getting on the moon is quite a challenge; someone has to take his gun out of his pocket for safety as the thing swings around while he tries to get his footing and his guitar strapped on. They shoot it from the chair’s perspective, and you can see how wobbly and dangerous it actually is – physical comedy that rivals Keaton (Buster) and Chevy Chase pratfalls. A genuinely hilarious moment occurs as he finally gets on, is lofted behind the curtain, only to not be able to play guitar on the descent until he dismounts at the end to play his first note. Then – BOOM – the moon, sans Emmet, crashes on the stage, kicking up dust and forcing the drummer to move out of the way.
In the next scene, we see Emmet burning his prized moon in a 55-gallon drum and smashing it to pieces. “Sooner or later—everyone’s dreams go up in smoke.”
Emmet is charming, talented, egocentric, and attractive – a truly likable guy, but with flaws. He can't maintain a real relationship, spends money gambling on pool, expensive suits, and cars, and yes, was at the beginning of the film a pimp. But he’s one of my favorite characters on film. I want to be friends with the guy, go on a bender, and wake up in a hotel room in a strange city the next day with sleeping chorus girls all around us. When people are great, you want to be around them. That’s why rappers and celebrities always have an entourage, or in this day’s parlance, “their team,” following them around.
He talks about Django and spends days weeping while listening to his records and ignoring his wife, Blanche. Perhaps he knows he is as good as Django but looks up to the man so much that it paralyzes him. He’s forging his own path with his guitar but still feels inferior – perhaps his biggest flaw. Instead of the logical path to co-headline with Django and take over the world, he literally runs out of the theater when the stage manager plays a prank on him, telling him that Reinhardt was in the audience in the front row (he wasn’t). Ray pops out onto the theater’s roof and jumps onto the building next door, only to crash through the ceiling of a mob counterfeit money printing operation. The mob guys scatter, and Emmet’s financial troubles are alleviated! Talk about falling in it and coming out smelling like roses.
Blanche, a sometime published ‘writer’, is fascinated by Emmet’s talent and personality and is always analyzing him, much to his frustration. But she’s attracted to all of that and is a bit of a player/socialite herself. A Bonnie and Clyde shootout at the end of the movie, told through the interview portions, takes a couple of different routes.
There are also great cameos or small roles for actors who would later become more famous. Notably, John Waters plays a club manager who berates him for a no-show gig. Sweet and Lowdown features Woody Allen, Nat Hentoff, Daniel Okrent, and Douglas McGrath as the "talking head" commentators, blending real-world figures with the fictional story to sell the illusion that Emmet Ray was a real jazz guitarist. Familiar faces Anthony LaPaglia, Gretchen Mol, Brian Markinson, Kaili Vernoff, James Urbaniak, Tom Aldredge, and Tony Darrow all appear in the film. Sometimes, the dialogue or acting seems off, either over the top, purposely stunted, or like someone reading their sides off a napkin. This adds to the unreliable narrator feel of the film, told through the retelling of Emmet Ray’s story.
For example, Penn eats chili while telling a touching story about his first love, Hattie, to Blanche, as she needles him with details. But he looks like a complete fool with chili slopped all over his face. It’s kind of heartbreaking, but I urge you to please tell me if I am pouring my heart out and have food all over my face. If you know me, you know that both of these things are bound to happen.
Years after its release, Sweet and Lowdown's charm and insightful exploration of artistic ego and personal failings continue to ring true. The blend of real and fictional elements creates a lasting impression, leaving the viewer to ponder the nature of legend and storytelling. The tortured genius. All of the tropes of what makes an artist an artist (and could possibly be dealt with with lifestyle changes or therapy) are touched on. Life and art. Love and Hollywood. Music and life. Leave a mark, write songs, record them, and let your friends tell your stories after you are gone.