To me, this movie is perfection.

As Good As It Gets

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I'm not a big fan of RIP TORN. I like identifiable actors who play themselves and show me a bit of myself in their performances rather than ones who are a bit too real.TORN plays Maury Dan, a real mean SOB country music singer. He is the sort of character whom podcasters like bill burr and joe rogan discuss with thinly masked reverence. He is a molester, murderer, hard drinker and does not care about anyone but himself.Cliff Emmich is his loyal driver/bodyguard who is even willing to go to jail for a murder committed by maury.Elayne Heilveil and Ahna Capri play the groupies who fight over him when he is on the road. In a really mean spirited but funny scene, TORN throws out capri out of his car for fighting with elayne. Then the car drives away, stops suddenly, reverses and torn throws out a wad of cash at Capri. Then the car drives away, only to stop again, reverse and this time torn steps out and retrieves the money from the ground and tells Capri - you didn't earn it. the scene might have inspired a similar one in THE DEER HUNTER.Apart from being a character study, PAYDAY is also a great road movie. This is a solid film with great shots of the outdoors and some powerful scenes. I really did not see the ending coming. It was quite spectacular. I suspect TORN is not too different in real life, compared to the character he played in this movie (watch his fight with Norman Mailer on Youtube).DARYL DUKE, the director, also made the fantastic THE SILENT PARTNER.

I remember watching this film late night in college on the movie channel Encore some 15 years ago. It is a great flick that captures what life on the road for a country western singer must have been like. As others have noted, it could serve as a biography for Johnny Cash and many others of that era who lived a life of pills, booze, and one-night stands with a little music sprinkled in between. Rip Torn is great in this movie, though it's hard now not to picture him as Arthur from the Larry Sanders Show. The one line from Torn's character that sticks with me even today is: "You only go through this life once. You might as well do it in a Cadillac." I'd love to see this movie again but I imagine it would be a hard find.

I saw this about 3 years ago - I got to admit I was slightly inebriated after a lot of alcohol, but still some of the scenes penetrated my mind clearly, with their pull-no-punches cynicism. Maury Dann (played by Rip Torn) was one of the most memorable crooks I've ever seen in film. This sombre character study from the 70's addresses the themes of power and using people, set in the world of country & western music. As Dann's world slowly but surely crumbles, we see glimpses of the past of this cynical singer star trying to hit it big and the bleak relationships around him.I agree with the previous writer, that the film is (sadly) largely unknown, despite a great script by the writer Don Carpenter and a staggering performance from Rip Torn.

This is another one of those brilliant character studies that proliferated film screens in the early 1970's. Rip Torn gives a superb performance as Maury Dann, a mercurial, drunken country/western singer whose life ultimately careens out-of-control during a road tour. Payday is probably the most accurate filmed depiction of a musician's life on the road that you'll ever see: endless drug abuse, random sex, sudden violence. It's all here in one well-written, astutely directed package. Sadly, Payday is seldom seen in revival houses or on television. This is a true gem worth finding.