Friday, May 6, 2011

#84 Easy Rider (1969)


Plot summary (with spoilers): We begin with our heroes, hippie weirdos Wyatt and Billy, buying drugs in Mexico.  Wyatt's the more laid-back of the two, and he's making the transaction, speaking to the drug guy in Spanish, while Billy says "si, bueno" and giggles. Then, they've crossed the border in America, where they sell the drugs to Phil Spector outside of an airport.  Wyatt puts the money in a cylindrical tube and puts it inside his motorcycle.  
In a first of many many long shots, we see Billy and Wyatt driving their motorcycles along endless highways, while bitchin' classic rock plays on the soundtrack. While getting gas, they encounter a farmer and his family.  The farmer invites them to have lunch, and they do, explaining to him that they're driving to LA by way of New Orleans, with a stopover for Mardi Gras.  The farmer doesn't even know what "L. A." is, but is genial and friendly.  His wife is Native American and their kids are half white and half Native American. By which I mean, they cast three kids who are clearly white and three kids who are clearly Native American, which I'm pretty sure is not how genetics goes.  At any rate, the purpose of this lunch was so that Wyatt and Billy could tell us (through the farmer) where they're from and where they're headed, so now that that is done, lunch is over.  They hop back on their bikes and another classic tune starts up. Finally, it's nighttime, and they try to get a room at a hotel, but the owner won't even talk to them, on account of them being hippie freaks.  They wind up sleeping out in the desert by a warm fire, smoking their doobies and talking about how messed up society is, man. 
The next day.  More picturesque views of America, more classic rock.  They pick up a hitchhiker, who remains nameless.  That night, they huddle around the fire again and smoke out some more.  Billy asks the hitchhiker where he's from.  "It's hard to say". "Hard to say?! Ha, what's that mean, man?" "I have trouble pronouncing it." Christ, it's the Marx Brothers all of a sudden. But the guy says it so deadpan, it's pretty funny.  Billy laughs.  Wyatt asks the man if he ever wanted to be anyone else. "I've considered Porky Pig".  Totally deadpan and quite hilarious. 
The next day, they drop off the hitchhiker at his hippie commune, which is basically a couple of shitty looking tents and about twenty or so people running around playing guitars and putting flowers in their hair and letting the sun shine, the sun shine in.  Billy and Wyatt hang out with them for a while.  There's even a little theatre troupe of about five of them, who wear tights and sing songs.  There are a handful of children too, which makes me a little sad.  The hitchhiker explains to Billy and Wyatt that they've lived here for about a year.  They came here last summer, and everything was fine, but then when winter came and people were starving to death. They lost about half their numbers.  This year, they've resolved to plant crops and save them and live off them through the next winter.  Or you know, they could just move. Wyatt sees several dirty hippies pacing back and forth and throwing seeds onto the ground.  Billy points out that the dirt is sand, not soil, and nothing will ever grow.  Wyatt confidently (and stupidly) grins that he's sure they'll do just fine. Billy's kind of had enough of these weirdos, but Wyatt's taken a shine to one of the hippie chicks, and eventually he, Billy, and two girls wind up skinny dipping in some of the grossest, dirtiest water I've ever seen.  Which is fine by me, because it at least prevents us from seeing any nakedness from Peter Fonda or Dennis Hopper.  Afterwards, the hitchhiker gives Wyatt some acid or maybe LSD and tells him to take it when "the time is right."
Then they finally leave.  More classic rock.  More classic American scenery.  This movie is really two parts travelogue, 1 and a half parts music video, and one-half part actual movie. 
All of a sudden, we're watching a parade in a small town.  There's a marching band walking down the middle of the street, and Wyatt and Billy join them, driving their motorcycles.  They're promptly arrested.  The jail cell looks like an old English castle or something, with wrought iron bars and stone walls.  Billy yelps and cries out and finally wakes up another prisoner.  Jack Nicholson!  Thank God.  Save this movie, Jack! 
Jack's name is George in this movie, but we're calling him Jack anyway.  He's wearing a suit and complains about how he must've had a wild night last night if he wound up here.  Billy tells him to keep his mouth shut.  Jack yawns theatrically, and does that weird shit with his eyes.  I love you so much, Jack.  Finally, the cops come and offer Jack some coffee.  Billy asks the cop for a cigarette, but the cop says no until Jack tells him it's okay.  After the cop leaves, Jack tells them he's a regular at the jail, as he often gets drunk and blacks out, but he's also a lawyer for the ACLU and a respected person in town.  They ask him if he can get them out of jail.  "I suppose I can, as long as you haven't killed anybody. At least, nobody white." 
Cut to, them leaving the jail. Billy says "thanks, dude" and Jack doesn't know what that word is, so they explain it to him. Then they tell him they're going to Mardi Gras and invite him along. He mentions that one time a client told him about a brothel in New Orleans that he's always wanted to go to, but he's never managed to leave the state lines. He's down with it. Wyatt asks if he has a helmet.  He does.  
It's a large gold football helmet, and kind of a weak joke, but Jack sells it with That Look, and I giggle in spite of myself. 
So now it's time for Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, and Peter Fonda to smoke pot and improvise a scene around a campfire. Jack's character has never smoked pot before and resists at first until Wyatt does the smallest amount of arm-twisting. Billy says he saw movement in the sky, like maybe a spaceship or something, and Jack calmly explains that he saw a formation of about forty ships flying over Mexico the other night, and that this has been a fairly regular occurrence in America ever since the government fired radar beams at the moon in 1946. He goes on to explain that they are very advanced, with no racism or bigotry, no wars, no monetary system, and no leaders.  Everyone is free to live as they please. Wyatt doesn't believe him and wants to know why the aliens don't reveal themselves to us. Jack says that that's because our leaders prevent it, because they're scared of becoming obsolete. But fear not, because the Venutians have contacted people in all walks of life--
And here, Jack Nicholson completely breaks character and starts laughing.  And they left it in the movie. They cut to Dennis Hopper, who looks interested in what he's saying, and then cut back to Jack, who actually starts the line over again.  WTF.  
He talks more nonsense about how we'll all transcend one day, and finally everyone goes to bed. 
The three of them go to a diner the next morning, and are hassled by the locals who call them fags because of their hair and threaten to beat them up. Eventually, they leave without getting breakfast. One of the locals says he doubts they'll make it across the parish line. 
More scenery.  More classic rock.  Nighttime.  Campfire.  Am I watching Groundhog Day?  Billy wants to know what's wrong with America these days.  Jack says that the very people who praise America for its freedom are usually the ones who want to take it away from others, because true freedom scares them.  Damn, that's a pretty astute observation, made slightly ironic given that that line was probably written by Dennis Hopper, who eventually became a Republican. 
Later that night, the goons from the diner rush in and start beating Jack with baseball bats. Billy pulls a switchblade and frightens them off, somehow, even though there were three of them with bats. The scene is horribly edited, like most of this movie. Anyway, Jack's dead, and I'm bummed. 
In a weird voiceover/bad overdub, Billy convinces Wyatt to go with him to the brothel that Jack was talking about once they reach New Orleans, which they conveniently do immediately. They pair off with different women at the brothel, but Wyatt's feeling despondent about Jack and doesn't want to have sex with the girl.  They decide to go out to Bourbon Street and get their drink on.  The street looked about the same forty years ago as it did when I last saw it, and makes me nostalgic.  Eventually, it's morning, and they're drunkenly traipsing through a graveyard.  Wyatt decides the time is finally right, and produces the acid.  They all take it. 
Turns out, it's a very bad trip, and the weird jumpy editing finally pays off, with a great extended sequence of Wyatt screaming at a statue of the virgin Mary, one of the prostitutes exclaiming over and over that she doesn't want to die and then later declaring that she's already dead, the other prostitute naked and weeping and rolling in the dirt, etc. It's a pretty phenomenally creepy scene, coming way too late. After a few minutes it's over, and Billy and Wyatt hop on their bikes again. Billy says he can't wait till they get back home and they can retire with their drug money, but Wyatt says they "blew it".  No idea he's talking about, don't care. 
They're riding along on their bikes, and a truck with two rednecks in it see them up ahead. One redneck says to pull up along side Billy and "scare" him, by aiming a shotgun at him. They do so, and the redneck yells a Billy to get a haircut. Billy gives him the finger.  The redneck shoots him.  He falls off his bike and crashes. Wyatt stops and turns around and runs over to Billy, while the truck keeps driving.  Wyatt promises to get help, then jumps on his bike.  The redneck tells his friend to turn around. The truck turns around, heading towards Wyatt.  Wyatt rides his bike right by the truck without fear, even though he just saw them shoot his friend in cold blood.  They of course shoot him as well, and we're done.

Review: Well...it was an interesting idea.  There are a lot of good ideas here, and the story has an authenticity to it that's pretty hypnotic and inexplicably compelling at times. Most of the locals in the story aren't professional actors and it shows with their bad line deliveries, but you just accept it anyway, and convince yourself that that's just how those characters talk.  (Think the Native American secretary from Northern Exposure).  The improvised campfire scenes sometimes popped really well, and Jack was a total delight.  But, there was a lot there that felt overdone and self-indulgent, even given the ninety five minute running time.  Apparently, Dennis Hopper's original cut was a four hour epic, which would've been unwatchable. As it is, I barely made it. The editing is sometimes just shamefully bad, with cuts that make no sense at all and muddle the already anemic narrative , and lots of obvious overdubbing.  I got the feeling that maybe a lot of the time this was "guerrilla" filmmaking, without proper lighting or sound, and very few scripted lines.  It's oftentimes too much of a mess to take seriously, especially when it so desperately wants us to do so.  And the ending was just embarrassingly awful, and made zero sense with respect to how humans actually behave. It was also over-the-top earnest melodrama, where most of the movie up until that point played it cool.  All in all, this feels like a movie I should hate unreservedly, but somehow I can't quite. If it were forty five minutes, and I saw it in an art film appreciation class, I'd be all over that shit, trust me.  

Stars: Two and a half out of five.

No, man.

Next, my heart will go on and on and on, just as soon as I can find a damn copy of "Titanic" (stupid Very Long Wait), and then my first silent film ever; "Sunrise". 

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