Juliette & the Licks w/the HollowPoints, River City Rebels
Sun May 22, El Corazón,
8 pm, $10/$12, all ages.

If it’s any consolation, Juliette Lewis must understand how ridiculous this all seems. An accomplished film actress hitting the road with her new band, she’s aware of the precedents. She knows the Brunos and Dogstars and however many Odd Foot of Grunts who prove conclusively that movie stars are more likely to become president—or at least governor of California—than credible rock stars.

The reason is simple: In rock, authenticity (or at least the appearance of it) is the holy grail, and no class of would-be rockers draws more suspicion than actors. Rewarded for their ability to manufacture earnestness on demand, actors raise nothing but red flags in the rock world, where their celebrated skills serve only to threaten their cred. This is especially true in our post-Madonna era, where posing is an art unto itself, and what separates poseurs from artists is keeping it real—an elusive quality in a time when artful reconfiguration of past innovation is rock’s stock in trade. Recharging old sounds with fresh life is the name of the game, and among those who’ve managed the trick—PJ Harvey and the Libertines for me, whoever for you—the common trait is commitment, some unique spirit able to reanimate the most familiar forms.

All of which puts Juliette Lewis in a less-than-felicitous position for embarking on the road to rock. Even for rockers without acting resumes, a facility for shape-shifting can be suspect—see Ryan Adams, whose ability to seemingly do everything makes one question his ability to accomplish anything. But to dismiss Lewis as merely assuming the role of Rock Singer is a mistake. If she’s doing any acting, it’s Method to the max: After getting her band up and running on the adamantly non-glamorous Vans Warped Tour—where a surname-free Juliette & the Licks paid dues, scored fans, and scorched doubters on the second stage—the band hit the studio, wrangling their on-the-road camaraderie into You’re Speaking My Language, the debut record starring a dozen chunks of raw Stoogey rock laced with the occasional alterna– power ballad. To quote the folks at Spin, It Does Not Suck—a fact Juliette & the Licks are ready to cram down the world’s throat on their nationwide club tour, which lands in Seattle this Sunday.

From the start, Lewis’ onstage theatrics have inspired fascinating buzz and alarming photographs, positing her onstage persona as an amalgamation of rock’s cockiest showfolk—Iggy meets Patti meets Axl meets Hedwig meets electroshock therapy. Reports from the road confirm one fact: As a performer, Juliette Lewis “goes there”—this isn’t another Darkness, rock-posturing with a wink. But does Juliette Lewis have what it takes to do the impossible, or at least unprecedented, and forge a viable post-Hollywood rock career? For clues, I turn to the evidence provided by Lewis’ key film roles.

Cape Fear (1991),
Husbands and Wives (1992)

In Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear, Lewis plays a blooming adolescent who sucks Robert DeNiro’s thumb and gets an Oscar nomination. In Woody Allen’s Husbands & Wives, Lewis plays a sexually progressive literary prodigy who entrances Woody Allen and deserved an Oscar nomination but didn’t get one. Both roles showcase the idiosyncratic sensuality that would serve as young Juliette’s calling card, as well as her inherent bad-assery, displayed through an uncanny ease at holding her own with cinematic giants. (That Lewis did her time with DeNiro and Allen right before each descended into complete ridiculousness—meeting the parents, marrying the daughters—only speaks to her good luck.) As for how these performances portend rock stardom, both are promising. Watching Cape Fear, where Lewis seemingly wanders out of nowhere to give a shockingly rich and unnerving performance, I was reminded of Elia Kazan’s East of Eden, where James Dean first worked his mythic-loner mystique—spinning something new and scary out of something ancient, and creating the template for the actor-so-awesome-he’s-treated-like-a-rock-star.

Natural Born Killers (1994),
Strange Days (1995)

In the opening scene of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, Juliette immediately establishes herself as a heaven-sent wet dream of the killer rocker girlfriend, moving fluidly from a spooky jukebox shuffle to kicking the ass of an entire truck stop over a soundtrack of L7’s “Shitlist.” Kathryn Bigelow’s futuristic thriller Strange Days makes the rock-chick connection even more explicit, as Juliette, cast as an edge-of-the-apocalypse nightclub singer, hits the stage with PJ Harvey’s “Hardly Wait” and “Rid Of Me.” As usual, Lewis exceeds expectations, tastefully underplaying Polly’s own vocal theatrics while offering hints of the Iggy-as-a-girl creation now leading the Licks.

Had Juliette Lewis carried on as simply an actress, she could naturally have joined the likes of Patricia Arquette and Jennifer Jason Leigh—actresses whose talents for grittier-than-thou roles have ghettoized each as a sort of dramatic masochist. Instead, Lewis shifted her hunger for raw experience in another direction, starting to work shit out with a scrappy band—but not before taking a film role that, in a way, portends most promisingly her burgeoning rock career.

The Other Sister (1999)

Two decades after Rain Man, playing retarded has established itself as an actor’s rite of passage. Unfortunately, it’s a fool’s errand, with the once-shocking character work—pigeon toes, googly eyes, clappy hands—now so familiar that even the greatest retarded performances can’t help smelling of shtick. Nevertheless, Juliette Lewis more than holds her own as The Other Sister’s Carla, a developmentally disabled young woman who finds love with an also-retarded Giovanni Ribisi. More than any other of her films, The Other Sister suggests that Lewis is ready to make good on her rock ambitions. Like fronting a rock band, playing retarded is something that, even if it’s done brilliantly, could still end up making you look like an idiot. Then as now, Juliette Lewis doesn’t give a shit, throwing herself wholeheartedly into the experience and dragging us along with her.