Mark Jay Mirsky
GOING TO THE MOVIES
"The Great American Movie!" In search of that clich6-en–
crusted fountain I go searching to renew myself in the jungles of Holly–
wood cinema. Someone will capture it, the saga of innocence in
this
generation. Fielding left the stage for the novel, at this moment perhaps
a screenwriter of genius is abandoning the novel for the movie. At
this
moment, but not before, alas.
I was most disappointed by
Alice's Restaurant,
perhaps because
there
is
in the film a genuine, crazy American talent, the folksinger
Arlo Guthrie. The acting that goes on around his remarkable presence
seems forced, fake, staged. Indeed through most of the movie he seems
to
be looking at the audience out of the corner of his eye, slightly em–
barrassed by the proceedings. The song on which the film
is
based
is
a zany, shaggy-dog ballad, one that twangs with the flat, dry humor
of the Arkansas Traveler. Fragile stuff, like Richard Brautigan's
Trout
Fishing in America
and Ted Berrigan's poetry, but when successful it
turns the pinched cowboy-policeman I-could-care-Iess-face of
this
country to the mirror for a hard stare at caricature. The insane, me–
chanical seriousness of Authority going about its ludicrous business with
a straight face
is
a perfect target for that old Yankee strategem the put–
on. The song celebrates outfacing the system, letting it fuck itself up, just
giving it enough rope to hang itself. So a conviction for criminal littering
releases Arlo from his obligation to the Draft and while the average
teen-ager can't hope that
his
local board will be that joyously stupid,
the clear implication
is -
be oneself, long-haired, innocent of inhibition,
stoned and the neighborhood dragons may well bite their own
tails.
Insofar as the film follows the song it has resonance as a Hippie
folktale with its "don't throw me in dat briar patch" ending. Arthur
Penn could not resist throwing in all the junk and plastic props of a
second-rate potboiler. So we have love interest tacked on, the death of
a heroin addict, shmaltz of
his
burial, sentimental moralizing about
Alice and her husband and most painful, I imagine, for Arlo Guthrie,
a mawkish reenactment of his famous father's death.
This
final touch,
