26 REDS & A BOTTLE OF WINE

It’s easy to see why so many people find Prince so sexy. He has a sort of cartoonish brashness mixed with a “no one understands me” pout. Never was that more tangible or made more sense than in Purple Rain. A film that, after 20 years looks more naive than risqué.

Purple Rain is less a movie and more a document within the canon of Prince mythology. The entire enterprise seems to swim in his Baroque, almost foppish sensibility. In the films opening sequence Prince stands before a mirror, adorning himself in costume jewelry while gazing longingly into his own eyes. No one is an enamored with Prince as Prince is.
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This stands in sharp contrast to the films over main character; the Machiavellian Morris Day. A little boy Fauntleroy in wing tips. While not nearly as poutie. Morris is just as foppish and a scented handkerchief or a sniff box is never that far a stretch. Morris Day was famous for primping himself mid-song with a gold adorned mirror. But Morris Day routine is all act and he let’s you know it. He keeps saying “it’s just business”, and he means it. Morris Day knows you came here for the show. And damnit, you're gonna get a show. He's B.T. Barnum to Prince's Elephant Man. Morris is a showbiz character at heart. In one of the films worst scenes Morris and his manservant Jerome do a riff on the old “Who’s on First” Abbot and Costello act. It’s miserable but at least they’re willing to give it a shot. It's a movie after all, someone's gotta play the fool. In the world of Prince’s modern day Lord Byronism Prince is the Priest in the temple. The holy man. But it is Morris Day is king. After all, Morris Day lives in the city; Prince drives back out to his parents’ house. Morris Day has a old industrial park as a rehearsal space; The Revolution can only rehearse in the club. But most importantly, Morris Day controls the women, and he who controls the women controls the future. And so largely it’s the much more popular Morris Day who headline, leaving Prince mostly on the outs. The outs with his band, the outs with his family and the outs with his would-be girlfriend.

That’s how Prince likes it. His “no one understands me” routine only works if no one understands him. Women love this shit, by the way. It makes Prince both a wild and unstoppable sex machine and a virgin. In one scene he is gyrating on stage, fucking some invisible woman (your girlfriend). The next scene he’s in his parents’ basement with his weird porcelain ballerina collection. Then there is the scene where he takes Apollonia down to the river and she offered herself to be Baptist in the river. After Prince clowns her she asks, “How many women have you done this too?” The answer is probably dozens but there is some innocent about the way he teases her. He has a ‘chewing gum in the hair’ mentality. He seems to have no idea how to talk to women. Later when she says she wants to be a star, that she wants to “make it”, he asks: “Is that what turns you on? Making it?” I wasn’t sure Prince even got his own double meaning.

He may not know how to talk to them but he sure knows how to sing to them. Purple Rain may be the most over-wrought, pretentious and baroque albums ever produced. It drips with 19th century romanticism. At the films end, with his pirate suit open to the chest Prince screams “Tell me baby, what’s it gonna be/do you want him?/or do you want me?/cause I want you.” That’s fucking delicious ten girls cream their jeans on that one, easy. On his fourth full length Prince took to fine art the idea and notions he had toyed with on 1999. 1999 proved that moving across genres and away from standard funk/soul fare could sell records. The inevitable conclusion was to smash genres. Combining heavy metal, psychdelia, new wave and rock and roll. All through the lens of his new tortured soul personal. Prince was setting out to make himself a star.

And it worked, damnit, and at the very least every man in America should pray at the temple of Purple Rain. After all, the film is full of bold and ridiculous statements. Prince could have very easily come off looking like a puttz, but he doesn’t. He comes off looking like Prince, mission accomplished.