by Jochen Markhorst
IV These are dangerous times
Shot down like a dog in broad daylight
‘Twas a matter of timing and the timing was right
You got unpaid debts and we’ve come to collect
We’re gon’ kill you with hatred and without any respect
We’ll mock you and shock you, we’ll grin in your face
We’ve already got someone here to take your place
It is a chilling scene in Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995), the wonderful biopic that was so undeservedly a flop, the second film in Stone’s presidential trilogy (following JFK, 1991, and preceding W., 2008). It is 21 November 1963. After his election defeat (to Kennedy, 1960) Nixon is working as a lawyer for Pepsi-Cola; he has just attended the annual Convention of the American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages in Dallas and, afterwards, has been invited to a party at the gaudy ranch of the Texan property tycoon Jack Jones. In a Godfather-esque setting, a dozen men break away from the crowd, gather in a dimly lit living room, and host Jones – a superbly cast Larry Hagman who only needs to slip into his familiar J.R. Ewing skin – makes it clear what they want:
JONES
Dick, these boys want you to run. [the “boys” mutter in unison] They’re serious. They can deliver the South and they can put Texas in your column. That would’ve done it in ’60.
NIXON
Only if Kennedy dumps Johnson.
JONES
That sonofabitch Kennedy is coming back down here tomorrow. Dick, we’re willing to put up a shitpot fulla money to get rid of him — more money’n you ever dreamed of.
NIXON
Nobody’s gonna beat Kennedy in ’64 with all the money in the world.
A beat.
CUBAN
Suppose Kennedy don’t run in ’64?
Nixon looks at him. A subconscious image again – something slimy, reptilian.
NIXON
Not a chance.
CUBAN
These are dangerous times, Mr. Nixon. Anything can happen.
Another pause. Nixon gathers together his papers and briefcase.
In the next scene, we see Nixon at Love Field, where his private plane is due to depart for New York. It is 22 November 1963. He watches as Air Force One arrives, and sees the crowd holding welcome signs reading “Dallas Loves JFK” and “We Love You Jackie”. Nixon watches with a pained expression. There is a sense of foreboding in the air.
Years later, 1972. Again that living room in the Texan ranch, again the same flashy, whisky-drinking, cigar-smoking businessmen; President Nixon (a magnificent performance by Anthony Hopkins) stands by the wall, near the fireplace, and crosses swords with the host, Jack Jones. The room is even darker than last time, the atmosphere more grim. The businessmen are not satisfied. Vietnam, Kissinger, China, Cuba… and what are we going to do about Allende? “We’re going to get rid of him,” says Nixon calmly, “he’s at the top of the list.” But Kissinger stays. And so does Castro.
An uncomfortable silence. Jones walks closer to Nixon.
JONES
Desi’s got a point. What the hell are we gonna do about the Communists right here in our backyard?!
NIXON
What do you mean, Jack?
JONES
I mean I got federal price controls on my oil. The ragheads are beating the shit out of me. And I got your EPA environment agency with its thumb so far up my ass it’s scratching my ear.
[…]
And now I have a federal judge ordering me to bus my kids halfway ‘cross town to go to school with some nigger kids. I think, Mr. President, you’re forgetting who put you where you are.
NIXON
The American people put me where I am.
Jones smirks. They all smirk. A dreadful moment.
JONES
Really? Well, that can be changed.
Dead silence. Nixon moves closer to Jones.
NIXON
Jack, I’ve learned that politics is the art of compromise. I learned it the hard way. I don’t know if you have. But I tell you what, Jack … If you don’t like it, there’s an election in November. You can take your money out into the open, give it to Wallace … How about it, Jack? Are you willing to do that? Give this country over to some poet-pansy socialist like George McGovern?
Nixon is right in Jones’s face now.
NIXON (CONT’D)
Because if you’re uncomfortable with the EPA up your ass, try the IRS …
JONES
Well, goddamn. Are you threatening me, Dick?
NIXON
[softly]
Presidents don’t threaten. They don’t have to.
[then]
Good day, gentlemen.
As he walks out with Haldeman, there is a stone silence.
George Wallace, the hero of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and, at one point, even Texas, is shot a few days later. Nixon is re-elected by a landslide and becomes the first Republican to win all the states in the South.
The sinister conspiracy scenes and the lurid undertone subtly convey what Dylan’s narrator expresses in words in this first verse. The sultry, menacing gaze of Larry ‘Jack Johnson’ Hagman, the evil smirks of the nameless businessmen, the cold, eerie, “reptilian” Cuban… it’s all there: hatred and disrespect, mockery and shock, the grinning faces. And we can just hear them thinking: “We’ve already got someone here to take your place.”
Dylan the songwriter has to make it – naturally – more explicit than a film director with excellent actors needs to. Which he seems to enjoy doing – since the twenty-first century, Dylan appears to have developed a Tarantino-esque penchant for explicit, bloody violence, a fondness that culminates here on Rough And Rowdy Ways: four pistols and two large knives in “I Contain Multitudes”; I’ll stuff your mouth with gold in “False Prophet”; show me your ribs – I’ll stick in the knife (“My Own Version Of You”); I take a sword, and hack off your arm (“Black Rider”); fight with a butcher’s hook (“Goodbye Jimmy Reed”); I’ll cut you up with a crooked knife (“Crossing The Rubicon”); wrath, rage, blood, hate, toxic, bleeding, killing, Armageddon, morgues en skeletons… And that’s not even all the horror elements, gory scenes and macabre settings in the nine songs leading up to the violence in “Murder Most Foul”.
“We’ll mock you and shock you,” says Dylan’s sardonic narrator. But who is he talking to?
To be continued. Next up Murder Most Foul part 5:
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon in both paperback and on Kindle:
- *Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue*
- Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
- Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
- Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
- Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
- Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
- Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
- John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
- Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s looking for the fuse
- Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
- Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s second Big Bang
- Time Out Of Mind: The Rise of an Old Master
- Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s late-career classic
- Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s other kind of music
- Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British masterpiece
- I Contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip
- Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways – Side B
- Bob Dylan’s High Water (for Charley Patton)
- Bob Dylan’s 1971
- Like A Rolling Stone b/w Gates Of Eden: Bob Dylan kicks open the door
- It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry b/w Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues – Bob Dylan’s melancholic blues
- Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side A
- Bob Dylan takes Highway 61 – Seven mercurial songs
- Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side C
