Candy Mountain (1987) review

A musician (Kevin J. O'Connor) - who just left his job in construction - has to hunt down a famous (but elusive) guitar maker named Elmore Silk (Harris Yulin), along the way meeting various people (Silk's brother, his former girlfriend), crashing his car, spending a night in a Canadian jail and hitchhiking.  I respect Frank (a photographer) and Wurlitzer (a novelist and screenwriter), but this is a really, really lazy road movie, and not all that well thought out - unlike similar movies from the 60's and 70's, it doesn't have that same bitter jaggedness to it: the Reagan-dominated 80's took the wind out of the radicals, I'm guessing.  As far as positives are concerned, there are some brief appearances by well-known musicians - including Arto Lindsay, Joe Strummer, David Johansen and Tom Waits - and an early screen role for the awesome Laurie Metcalf.