If I had to choose a favourite era of American Film it would have to be the late sixties through the seventies. It was of course, a time of transition for movies and America as a whole. Confused and out of touch film executives found themselves with no choice but to put their faith in a new generation of artists if they hoped to remain viable. This gave birth to new contemporary cinema inspired by the great auteurs of Europe to be both personally and politically radical. For a brief time, the director was king and the mandate was to create great art, not just great box-office (although that was and always will be a factor).
Amongst this new found talent were producer Bert Schneider and producer/director Bob Rafelson who joined with the more experienced Steve Blauner in 1968 to form BBS productions. Rafelson and Schneider had scored with "The Monkees" TV show and it was this success that provided the momentum for them to form their own company. Over the next few years BBS would produce only seven films and the folks at Criterion have been ambitious enough to collect them all into one remarkable box-set. The films range from iconic classics to dated curiosities but all are worth at least a viewing.
The title of this post is a bit misleading. The set, which I purchased on Blu Ray, includes many worthwhile extras and I will be mentioning a few of them but overall this will be a discussion of the films, not the discs.
So without further rambling, The BBS Story.
HEAD (1968)
In what must have seemed a no-brainer the first film Rafelson/Schneider produced was a vehicle for The Monkees that Rafelson would direct as his first feature film. Rafelson wrote the script with an actor friend of his who'd been kicking around Hollywood for a while with little success named Jack Nicholson. For those who might not know, The Monkees were an ersatz pop band created for a TV show intended to cash in on The Beatles and their success in such film as "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help". The members were Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones, Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz, all likable young men and the show was surprisingly fun and creative and quite popular. The studio bosses must have been very happy at the prospect of a fun, frothy romp aimed at the lucrative youth market, particularly teenage girls. How shocked they must have been!
What they received was a genuinely subversive piece of free form psychedelia in which the members of The Monkees mocked themselves and their prefabricated celebrity in a series of stream of consciousness sketches. These included movie parody, commercial satire and fourth wall breaking non-sequiters tied together with some surprisingly strong music. Bizarre cameos include, Annette Funicello, Sonny Liston, wild man character actor Timothy Carey, blink-and-you'll-miss-them shots of Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper and Hollywood veteran Victor Mature as a kind of tanned, greasy haired god figure.
Needless to say, the film baffled studio execs and alienated it's intended audience. It exists today as a cult film and a genuine relic of it's era. So is it still worth watching? I would give it a qualified yes. As I stated before, it is an act of subversion and a much more radical piece of film than ever could have been expected of a Monkees vehicle. The members of the band equate themselves well, gleefully torpedoing their squeaky clean carefully marketed images and the songs, while dated, are quite listenable, written by the likes of Carole King and Harry Nilsson. The problem is it's not funny. This sort of loose collection of satirical and absurdist scenes would succeed wonderfully for artists as diverse as Luis Bunuel and the members of Monty Python but here it falls flat. The overall tone of "Head" is bitter and pretentious with no real joy or anarchic revelry.
An interesting cultural artifact with several reasons to recommend it "Head" is too inconsistent to be called a success. However, it did establish Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider as fearless young talent with a taste for pushing the boundaries of American film both thematically and aesthetically. Their next film would change everything.
EASY RIDER (1969)
Well you've all heard of "Easy Rider". It's one of the most important and influential films ever made. It's success led the way for a new cinema in America, a radical and politically committed cinema that spoke to a generation that old Hollywood could not and would not even try to understand. It mainstreamed methods and techniques inspired by the European art cinema of the day. It was a brave, original work of art that challenged and blew away all pre-conceieved notions of what a hit film had to be.
Why then, have I never been able to completely embrace it?
First things first. "Easy Rider" starred and was conceived by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. They wrote the screenplay with some assistance from the great Terry Southern (who provided the title) and Hopper directed. It told the story of Wyatt (also known as Captain America) and Billy, a couple of bikers who, after making a big drug score, take a road trip across the southwestern united states on their tricked out motorcycles. Along the way they have positive encounters with simple working people, hippies, artists and various other counterculture figures along with experiencing violent hatred and prejudice from small town bigots and rednecks.
The film was originally intended as a project for Roger Corman's AIP, where both actors had already scored some success with biker or drug films intended for the drive-in circuit. When Corman passed (one of the few times his commercial instincts failed him) it was snatched up by BBC who would produce with Columbia Pictures distributing. It was produced for a budget of around 400 thousand dollars and grossed in it's first run almost 20 million.
There is much to admire about "Easy Rider". The cinematography by Laszlo Kovacs is stunning. Virtuoso camera operation (often from a moving vehicle) combined with flawless composition gives the film a suitably iconic look and feel. The soundtrack is full of great songs by the likes of Steppenwolf, The Byrds, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan all utilized for maximum effect. It's perhaps the first mainstream film to directly portray the American counterculture of the time and at least try to understand where it was coming from. The acting is mostly hit and miss (more about that later) but it does contain at least one great star making performance from Jack Nicholson as small town lawyer George Hanson, who joins our heroes on the road. This is the birth of the Nicholson we all know and should love, sly, funny, charismatic, eccentric and perceptive. I think I'm right in saying that he's the character that most who watch the film can most successfully identify with. I know when I watch "Easy Rider" he's aways the part of the film I enjoy the most.
Getting back to my earlier question though, why don't I like this film all that much?
Here's the thing, I think I've stated pretty clearly what's good about the film and why it's important. None of this however, changes the fact that this is a haphazardly conceived film that dates very badly. The screenplay, such as it is, was largely improvised by the actors while stoned and it sounds like it, being often tedious and nonsensical, especially when they're trying to be profound. Neither main character is particularly interesting, Fonda says almost nothing while Hopper chatters continually somehow managing to say even less. The fact that the bikers are unashamedly portrayed as drug dealers is kind of brave on one level but plays into conservative stereotypes that link the counterculture inextricably with drug culture. The few female characters are vapid and readily available for casual sex confirming yet another negative stereotype, the "easy" hippie chick. The film makes a big deal about Fonda's character throwing away his watch symbolising their freedom even from time itself, but the Hopper character is constantly harping on the fact that they only have a few days to get to New Orleans fro Mardi Gars. Once they get to Mardi Gras we have to endure an unwatchable "acid trip" scene that's dull, pretentious and laughable at the same time. Lastly and most importantly, other than a disdain for the crudest forms of prejudice, this film has, despite it's reputation, zero political content. That needn't be a problem but this film was clearly meant to be a political statement of some kind. Beyond, "rednecks suck and hippies are incompetent" I have no idea what that could be.
Okay, perhaps I'm being too harsh. The fact is, the runaway success of "Easy Rider" was instrumental in ushering in this period of cinema I love so much. For that, at least, I will always be grateful and appreciative of Fonda, Hopper and BBS's achievement.
Next: BBS has it's first masterpiece, plus two minorpieces.
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