Have a Tantrum

If the people don’t do
What you want them to
Don’t stop
Don’t run
Have a tantrum

If the people say no
Don’t tell ‘em where to go
Let loose
It’s fun
Have a tantrum

You can do a lot
And you can get a lot
And you can get more than a lot
If you have a tantrum

You can be a lot
And you can have a lot
And you can have lots more and then some
If you have a tantrum

If the people don’t know
How far you’ll go
You can be
Number one
Have a tantrum

This Toni Basil-choreographed dance number is from the truly awful 1967 film The Cool Ones, in which girl singer Hallie Rogers meets boy singer Cliff Donner, etc. She’s actually not very good and there is zero chemistry between the supposed pop stars, who both lack the charisma to be believable as either washed out or on the way up. Roddy McDowall appears (end of sentence). The musical’s songs are as contrived as the emotions and situations they are pressed into service to illustrate.

The Cool Ones is a poor imitation of an already plastic genre, the highlights of which (Viva Las Vegas; Beach Blanket Bingo; Bye, Bye Birdie) fail to cohere as complete films, though portions of them still trigger the occasional rush of artificial sweetener they were manufactured to deliver.

Every childhood encounter I had with The Cool Ones seemed to occur at this exact sequence (which I have altered here to include the lyrics performed later in the film). My channel surf would halt at the sight of dancers writhing to the Hollywood session musician equivalent of a “groovy” sixties jam. And then I would be mesmerized, maybe even jumping up and twitching along in feet pajamas, freezing and thawing with the dancers on TV.

This number is followed by some inane plot, and then another performance of the tantrum at a night club wherein images of disasters (mostly found footage — the head-on collision of steam engines, a lion attacking the camera) are projected on a screen behind the singers. Then some other stuff occurs, the film gets deadly dull, and most likely my childhood channel surf resumed, which resulted in me never catching the film’s title. (It was also named Cool, Baby, Cool, so there’s that.)

You’ve gotta love Toni Basil (Antonia Basilotta), however, the woman behind so many of these glorious, thrashing sixties dance moves. She appears on 16mm accompanied by her own 1966 pop single “Breakaway” in the classic Bruce Conner experimental film of the same name. She assisted choreographer David Winters on Shindig! the pop music show where Teri Garr got her start. Basil and Garr both appeared in Viva Las Vegas wriggling behind Elvis and Ann Margret. (Toni’s crazed performance in Village of the Giants, a goofy flick wherein teens grow tall and do the jerk with abandon, might someday merit its own celebratory post.)

Given the current political reality, I find solace in even this most manufactured magic. The Tantrum’s lyrics provide ditsy advice on what to do when things don’t go your way.

(Maybe A tantrum is not the best reaction, given the current preponderance of really big babies who have demonstrated their eagerness to use really big toys to remake the global playpen to satisfy their petty desires.)

But THIS tantrum seems to me an appropriate response — though I’m pretty sure my body would communicate its displeasure immediately should I give into the urge to shake out my frustrations with such abandon. The exhilaration of movement, even its glorious memory, is enough to loose the cares of the world free from weary bones. Dance now — in SPITE of whatever comes next.