PARTISAN REVIEW
115
while it inevitably jerks a few tears out, for who among us does not
reverence Woody Guthrie, is so crude in retrospect as to make me
bitterly resent liking anything in the movie. It is inevitable, however,
that a slickie like Arthur Penn has to exploit the artifacts of the younger
generation in order to translate them into box office material. In doing
so he destroys both the form and feeling of the original song.
Alice's Restaurant
hearkens us back to
Bonnie, and Clyde.
In
Bonnie
and Clyde
there was a wonderful attention to the details of the
De–
pression world, the scene on the Texas plains where Bonnie meets her
dried-up, shriveled kinsfolk, shivering in poverty, struck me as honest
and moving, but the casting of the two leads destroyed the intention to
create a believable milieu. Take a look at the faces of the real Bonnie
and Clyde in newspaper photos; they are lean, hungry Appalachians,
staring out with the mad intensity of Snopes or Flannery O'Connor
characters. The Bonnie and Clyde of Hollywood play at being bank
robbers, but the actual Bonnie and Clyde did something far more
pathetic - they played at being Hollywood.
Is
Easy Rider
slick? The mumbled dialogue, wildly varying film
quality, missing plot, rumors that many were high in the shooting of it,
all seem to disclaim this. Indeed its sloppiness is at times a virtue; we
enjoy for awhile the fallacy of imitative form, the confusion of the
filmmakers mirrors the confusion of their hash-brained world and we
live the fog they are recording. But, at last, enough; the dialogue
is
so
bad, jesus, Terry Southern should be ashamed of letting his name be
associated with it. And the plot, it's over in the first five minutes, the
bikers earning a fat wad by smuggling heroin. So why tack it on? Why
not just start by speeding Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper toward New
Orleans on a joy ride. This film is in rough shape though because it's
not a joy ride but a bad propaganda trip and it takes itself "real se–
rious." And it's full of shit.
I don't
think
I'm a prig. I'll go along with legalizing marijuana.
I'm curious about group sex. I know that cops can
be
"Pigs." I love
motorcycles and while the "freaks" with German helmets and chains
around their middles scare me, I have a lot of respect for the machinery
they build and ride. But
Easy Rider
cashes in on a simpleminded en–
dorsement of the "hip" side of these issues. A friend of mine argues
that Peter Fonda's stiffness
is
purposeful, but I'm
sorry,
I've seen
his
work before. A tight-mouthed, holier-than-thou, real cool expression on
his
puss right through the movie. 'J1he only moment he relaxes
is
when he shows the lawyer how to smoke a joint.
Easy Rider
borrows
everything from Fonda's expression. It reeks of piety: evil America won't
