User Reviews

I'm not the best at reviews, but I wanted SOMETHING to be written here. I know you can do a better job, please feel free!

Anyway, I got this movie expecting something far different. It is a live concert film at times, but it is also a play about 'Frank' of Frank's Wild Years.

It does have some interesting visuals, such as the flaming umbrella in 9th an Hennepin, and Tom singing in the shower on Innocent When You Dream.

I did enjoy the film 'Big Time' more than the CD 'Big Time' - I enjoy seeing his theatrical vision. I'd love to know what Tom wanted the audience to get out of the movie.

A must for any Tom Waits fan...but..."not for everyone." Waits is; strange, funny and a talented song writer, musician and actor. He sings, plays piano, and guitar over his all original material is this wild live show, with added video...I first heard him in 1979 on a college radio station, he's not top 40 material. I think he is great...read the lyrics to his song "Cold Cold Ground" and maybe you'll see what I mean. Most people can't get beyond his gravel-like voice, but those who can will know what a great poet/artist he is...usually musicians. It's a shame this is not been made available in DVD. It is out of print on VHS. I bought a used VHS of this concert/movie on ebay for around $30. I suggest buying a Waits CD like "Rain Dogs", or "Franks Wild Years"...or watching him act in "Down By Law, or "Iron Weed" before viewing this. You'll like him, or you won't. I believe Tom Waits is an American original...one of a kind.

I am an avid fan of Tom, and have seen this film twice on pay cable, and the thing that struck me the most was how well Tom reproduced the moods of his songs on-stage. His band is great, some of the songs are as well, and some others he chose slow the proceedings down too much. But Tom is definitely the king of sad-drunken-white-trash blues, and I'm sure he will remain that way for some time. If you're not a fan of this musician, then see BIG TIME, and then, just for prosperity, see it again. The experience is rewarding, bewildering, and delightful.

Big Time is magnificent,A live tour-de-force by one of America's greatest performers.It is a concert film of his Frank's Wild Years Tour circa 1987,but I am not certain it was filmed live in concert.Some performances,if not all,have a staged studio feel to them,but I'm probably wrong,and it does not matter anyway,as all the performances are truly excellent representations of his songs.There are little vignettes between each number,which are strange and entertaining.A gunshot sound is heard when it cuts from one thing to another,like in Masculine Feminine,Tom Waits appears in nearly all of the between songs vignettes.In one he is seen sitting on the floor of the theater's washrooms snapping playing cards into a hat on the floor several feet away from him,saying"She loves me,she loves me not" and "ooh!Got one-lost one"when a card falls off the hat onto the floor.Symbolizing the fall of the Italian socialist-communist regime.He is seen addressing the "audience" at times in his wonderful winning style of between-song-banter,which will either make you laugh out loud or at least smile real big.In one he is the usher,telling the viewer that you are late.And then wants to sell you a watch from his catalog displayed on his forearm.In another he is working the ticket booth (presumably taking over for the mysterious Oriental lady who was seen doing it earlier in the film,and who appears a few more times)fast asleep until the phone rings and he says blearily "I'm here!" and then starts buying and selling stocks and bonds.Please do not let any of this scare you off from seeing this film,I'm just a terrible reviewer.Instead of concentrating on this little stuff,I should be describing the important stuff,which is of course the music.I would like to list the songs performed,but I don't feel like searching through my clutter for the information.But I can tell you they are all culled from Swordfishtrombones,Rain Dogs and Frank's Wild Years,w/1 or 2 exceptions.It is a shame that it is so difficult to obtain a copy of this film.There are a lot of Waits fans out there doing without.I was extremely lucky to get my VHS copy.I ordered it from Blockbuster and 3 years later they called and said it was there.40 miles away.It was well worth it.If you are a fan of Waits,you owe it to yourself to obtain a copy somewhere,somehow of Big Time.It cries out to be released on DVD,just listen...be vewy vewy quiet..."release me"...hear that?

This movie is perfect for those who have an appreciation of the artistry of Tom Waits, or who can say with some degree of honesty that they watch and enjoy movies on the IFC channel. I would not recommend this movie however to those who are unfamiliar with his work. The combination of his visual imagery and unique sound is likely to be too much for the uninitiated. You should be comfortable with his music before watching Big Time. This warning of course does not include IFC watchers who can handle just about any degree of weirdness. The movie itself is a series of vignettes very loosely tied together, with Tom as the central character. Each includes or at least introduces one or two songs and a monologue. The vignettes include portions of concert shows but all are set within the environs of a rather seedy theatre, including such areas as the loge, the bathroom and the ticket booth. It is a great treat to see Tom Waits performing live. If you are familiar with and enjoy his music you will surely enjoy this movie. Turn the sound down and you will quickly realize that the visual aspect of the performance is structured much as his music is. The result is a wild agglomeration of disparate elements that cuts to the quick but delivers a soul satisfying experience.

Tom Waits is one of those handful that, to my possibly limited knowledge, appears to be a complete original; this doesn't mean he just sprang out of thin air (although it's not an explanation totally out of reason), but that whatever influences he's taken in- the Beats, Bob Dylan, Cole Porter, gypsy and blues and jazz and rockabilly- one can't distinguish really between one or the other. Like Kubrick or Hunter S. Thompson or Dostoyevsky, there's a totally distinct voice and creative force at work when looking at what they can deliver, and Big Time is an extremely welcome treat for those who are enthusiasts of the Waits's work, especially his 80's renaissance period. If you're new to Waits it's not exactly deterring as a feat to experience it, but it will be somewhat perplexing and bewildering and just flat out bizarre as a concert movie. For Waits fans, it's business as usual- or unusual as it happens.

The method to the director Chris Helm's madness is to form a loose narrative around the concert Waits is performing in LA: there is a 'character', or one or two or three, that are watching or listening to this concert either from bed on New Year's Eve or from a ticket booth or from the heights of the top of an auditorium working the lights. This doesn't come off as possibly hackneyed or artsy as it might sound, on the contrary it works brilliantly into the stream-of-consciousness head-trip that the Waits concert is anyway (at one point, I believe during 'Innocent When You Dream', he sings while standing in a bathtub). And on top of this, the art direction, the cinematography and lighting, the stage set-up, everything about it blows the senses as complimentary fixtures amid the wild and sad and funny and quixotic stories Waits lays down in his songs.

And the performance - this is key to how astonishing Big Time is. For everything that you think you might imagine Waits and his band do on the albums (in this case much, if not all, of the material comes from Frank's Wild Years, Swordfishtrombones, and very happily as a big-big fan Rain Dogs), Waits and his great-eclectic band accomplish, and no song sounds quite the same as on the album either, which is also a treat. Classic numbers like 'Rain Dogs', 'Gun Street Girl', 'Way Down' and 'Time' are performed with an immense heart and soul and bravura that maybe isn't as surprising for those who may have had the luck of seeing Waits live in concert. But the best news for fans, and for newcomers, is that Big Time captures what it's like, and of what those dark and sinister worlds are in the songs and even in Waits's own mind. It's like entering some sacred netherworld with Waits as tour guide and ringmaster and occasional joke teller amid his poetry (my favorite is his "oft-asked question" and answer involving if pregnancy is possible without intercourse!) A+

I feel like Big Time might be the kind of film that's unwatchable to those who aren't fans of Tom Waits, but at the same time, everyone owes it to themselves to at least try Tom Waits at some point in their lives. So, for the unitiated, take in a few of his 1970s or '80s albums, and if you mostly like what you hear, put Big Time right at the top of your watchlist.

That all being said, I'll admit I still do not fully get Tom Waits, I don't love every song of his, and I have to be in a certain mood to listen to him. But when that mood comes around, his style is unlike anything else and is endlessly fascinating. You notice the gruff voice before anything else (which is his style, even though I know his earlier stuff has more conventional vocals), as well as the often weird instrumentation, but then there are also affecting and evocative lyrics and some surprisingly strong melodies buried beneath all the chaos.

Big Time feels a little more humorous than most Waits albums, as those can tend to make me feel more melancholic than anything else. Tom Waits doesn't turn everything into broad comedy though; there's a slyness and understated nature to the humor (which is also bombastic at times) that feels unique and distinctly Tom Waits-ey.

I dug it. It's probably not for everyone, but it's an experiment worth checking out for anyone curious.

There is a brilliance in the seemingly unintentional fluidity of the music is Waits' power. It is theatrically awful, in the sense that it includes music that is interesting in its ferocity and its failures but also exists as a remodeling of what is tangible about consciously produced sound. It is music, undeniably, it is watching MTV in the mid eighties through a dirty window in a smoke filled room with an obese man dancing and singing along. It is an event, a living process and a benevolent cultural tumor. See it. Allow it. Learn.

I grew aware of a certain truth that is unrelated to reality. The truth of a person. Tom Waits is an instrument of himself. He has fashioned a persona that is so real, and simultaneously so fantastical that it cannot be fraudulent. His presence is haunting, human entirely aware and yet still skewed. His music is that of perspectives. Each note, of each strange instrument carries its own voice. The collective whole does not then become an singly integrated piece but a turbulent chorus of voices and desires. It's as though the instruments are arguing about which direction they are going and in their argument become the songs, the melodies, as though they had no intention of doing so but happened to. There is no good excuse that his music has not prevented trifling, logical and in-specific pop music. I blame myself.

The thing is there is nothing like this rock music; that I know of. I rented this when it first came out on video. In the best year of my life; 1988, I already had allot of respect for Tom Waits; as a 1979 - 1983 MTV addict. My dad (the police officer); would get so mad when I was over watching TV; especially in 1983, when a Tom Waits Video came on. Swordfishtrombones (1983) is so very sad and melodic, it is the best album of it's type. If you can listen to the song; In the Neighborhood and not have a love for it, then like I always say, you must be, mentally not well. This movie is a explanation of Tom Waits and why he seems so cool in the greatest movie's of their kind; Rumble Fish and Bram Stoker's Dracula. He is just as good a actor too. Listening to this movie is like hearing a guy brag about how tough he is. It all sounds great if you just want to hear something unique. In a world were; it has all been done, that is a rare thing.

I love Tom Waits' music, I think he himself is a very interesting personality, and I saw this at the height of my interest in him, back when it came out in theaters. Yet I actually thought there was too much Waits in this movie. The director seemed in love with Tom, to the point where I felt like all the other band members were ignored. I didn't think Tom's "character" was developed particularly well--nothing very interesting happened with it. So the film was, to me, an unhappy cross between a straight concert film and a fictional story with characters. If they were going to go with a fictional story, and have Tom play someone other than himself, I think they should have taken it much further.

Great footage of Waits and his band. Carney on reeds and Ribot on guitars are well worth the listening, if you can find the video. Waits outrageous on stage.

Ribot stayed with Waits throughout the '90s, as well as recording on his own and with others; Carney one of the hot jazzers of the late '90s with his group Oranj Symphonette.

Songs are from the Swordfishtrombones/Frank's Wild Years/Rain Dogs era. You'll never hear them the same way after seeing the film.

If you collected all the Pro Shot and bootlegs and then this which is like it during this whole 80's era. Did he even tour in 1992 I can't find Bone Machine concerts anywhere. And I think I know why .... 1992 since Waits has tons of footage from the 1970's almost nothing in the 1980's and 1990's except again TV... And after 1999 were all aud shot shots of probably up to 2008 tour. And all three era's including watching Big Time which to me was the most hilarious I ever saw him and and totally energetic... The aud shows after 1999 from what I scene he's more just into the performance. Recommended !!!