Starring Kevin Bacon, Brad Renfo and Maximilian Schell Directed by Guy Ferland Rated PG-13, with profanity and sexual situations Running time 101 minutes Jack gives this film a rating of 7 out of 10

(Nov. 14, 1997) -- Kevin Bacon delivers one of his most memorable performances as a cynical early-rock deejay in Telling Lies in America, a coming-of-age drama whose other charms are modest.

The film is a long-developing personal project for writer-producer Joe Eszterhas, who more typically has delivered such flashy Hollywood material as Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge and the awful Showgirls.

Here, he turns to memories of his Hungarian immigrant adolescence in Cleveland, Ohio, for an early-1960s story of an eager youth who comes under the sway of a worldly, oh-so-cool rock radio deejay. The boy, of course, is patterned on himself, and it is easy to see why he would imagine a deejay as his muse, since Cleveland had been the original home base (a decade earlier) for Alan Freed, acknowledged as the first rock 'n' roll radio announcer.

Brad Renfro stars as Karchy Jones, part of the out crowd at snobby Cleveland Latin High. He lives with his father (Maximilian Schell), a former Hungarian professor who left behind communist repression for a new life. For now, though, that life means he is a janitor.

To help elevate his status at school (and with a girl he wants to date), Karchy enters his own name in a local "High School Hall of Fame" contest, conducted by deejay Billy Magic at WHK. When Magic names him a winner, Karchy is thrilled, though he also feels guilty for having forged dozens of signatures to send in all his votes himself.

Karchy doesn't know that Magic actually uses the contest, in whatever new city he is working in, to select a young assistant to be his radio station gofer. And, no, it is not as nice as you might assume: Magic purposely looks for the liars and overly ambitious schemers among the teen applicants; he grooms the "assistants" to be his personal bagmen, to accept the bribes that come his way to play certain records on the air. (This is the age of the infamous payola scandals of early rock.)

But Karchy is blind to Magic's nefarious side -- he is too enamored of his boss's flashy red Cadillac, the girls on his arm, his easygoing stud style, and the inordinately generous $100 he gives the boy each week.

Karchy also is unrealistic in romance, falling for a woman in her early 20s (Calista Flockhart) who works at a local egg market. That aspect of the tale quickly blows up in his face when he slips some Spanish fly in her drink, and it makes her sick instead of sexy. He spends much of the film trying to make up for that cruel faux pas.

His dream job at WHK also turns sour -- first as he observes his hero, Magic, sign one of his friends' musical groups to a highly suspect management contract; then as federal investigators begin to inquire into the deejay's payola practices.

Karchy has a lot of learning to do about the nature of "telling lies in America." Though Eszterhas' screenplay is clearly more heartfelt and real than most of his high-profile Hollywood pulp, he leans too much on stock characters and cliche situations for his immigrant story. The direction by Guy Ferland (of The Babysitter) is adequate, but not especially imaginative.

The period detail in Cleveland and a great early rock music score help lend authenticity. And Telling Lies in America generates its most obvious worth through the charismatic, charming con artistry of Kevin Bacon as the rock 'n' roll rogue, Billy Magic. Avoiding the temptation to play him as broad or flashy, Bacon goes for a restrained, somewhat mysterious laid-back approach. It was, after all, the age of co-o-o-ol, not hot.

Heck, Bacon even earns a music credit in the film, having composed the song Karchy's friends sing to get a recording contract. The song is called Medium Rare, but like everything else Bacon contributes to this film, it's really well done.