Film Screening: Big Time

Bluesy beatnik songsmith Tom Waits was touted as the next big thing when he and Springsteen both debuted in the early 1970s – but the next big thing turned out to be Bruce. Waits’ career followed a darker, weirder path, full of mournful tales of midnight barflies and lowlifes at the corner of Heart Attack and Vine. His droll Wolfman Jack style made him an apt player in several Jim Jarmusch films. In the mid-’80s Waits’ voice got raspier, his lyrics got more literary and his backing band became a clanky sonic junkyard on his brilliant trilogy of albums Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs and Franks Wild Years. Big Time (1988, rated PG) captures performances from his 1987 tour, which would be his last for two decades. With angular virtuosos like Mark Ribot on guitar and Ralph Carney on reeds, interspersed with Waits’ tall tales and surrealist Civil War jokes, it’s a trash-funk carnival and a visual epic as appealing as the Talking Heads’ concert film Stop Making Sense. Waits may never be the next big thing, but he'll always be big time.