They
won’t tell you this at the Grand Ole Opry, but the commercial development of
Country music was greatly supported by goat . . . glands. “Dr.” J.R. Brinkley
was the man who recognized the untapped potential of both. Penny Lane (yes,
that is her given name) chronicles the up-and-down life of Brinkley, the
pioneering broadcaster and purported infertility specialist in the subtly
titled NUTS (trailer here), which screens during the
2016 San Francisco International Film Festival.
Brinkley’s
rise from mean circumstances was so unlikely, even Horatio Alger wouldn’t believe
it—perhaps with good reason. As the narrated passages of his authorized
biography explain, the young hayseed was laughed out of medical schools because
he was so scruffy. Yet, the diploma-ed-up Brinkley would eventually set up practice
in Milford, Kansas, where destiny was waiting for him. When a patient suffering
from “dysfunction” requested a little of vim and vigor from the Billy-goat they
could hear going about his business outside, Brinkley obliged, because why not?
When the man’s wife soon found herself in a family way, frustrated men from
around the country soon flocked to Milford for Brinkley’s gland transplant
surgery (it was really just a slice he was inserting, mind you).
Obviously,
the man who developed goat transplant surgery was no dummy, but Brinkley also recognized
the powerful possibilities of radio at a presciently early stage. He founded
the nation’s fourth radio station right there in Milford, making it a home for
all the “hillbilly” music proper stations would never play, as well as an
advertising venue for his assorted treatments and cures. Eventually, the FCC
shut him down, at much the same time the AMA revoked his license. Yet, a man
like Brinkley would not be deterred from such setbacks. He simply went down to
Mexico and founded XERA, the original “Border Blaster” that would become the
storied home of artists like the Carter Family and opened a new clinic a stone’s
throw away in Texas.
So did
the gland transplants actually work? Hell no, they didn’t, but Lane will
initially have viewers wondering. NUTS is
in fact a deliciously subversive film that sets up the Brinkley legend and then
knocks it down, using his own words (or those of his hand-selected biographer)
each time. Arguably, NUTS is also a
rather timely film, in an almost tragically bizarre way. Running as a populist candidate
that combined the worst of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, Brinkley ran a
nearly successful write-in campaign for Kanas governor based on demagogic class
warfare themes.
