Nobody Blew It
I was (and am) very pleased with the Easy Rider Bluray that I bought a few months ago. It looks rich and alive and intensely celluloid-y (which is starting to become a welcome distinction). Under-30s who haven’t had the pleasure need to see it this way. The Bluray reminds (or instructs) that this 1969 film is not a dimissable (as David Thomson recently implied) but something that knows itself and the culture from whence it sprung, and which works according to its own mantra and ticker.
Last night EW’s Owen Gleiberman wrote arrestingly about Easy Rider’s director, Dennis Hopper, who died yesterday morning.
“Watch Easy Rider today, and you’ll see that every glinting panoramic shot, every toked-up dialogue rhythm, every situation and jagged dramatic back-alley dovetails as only the work of a born filmmaker can. Hopper, who was in his late teens when he made his screen debut in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), came of age in the outwardly strait-laced, buttoned-down Hollywood of the 1950s, but as a compatriot of the moody, emotionally voluptuous (and bisexual) James Dean , he was already writing the first chapter of the revolution that was to come.
“When he got the chance to make Easy Rider, he poured a decade’s worth of desire, liberation, nihilism, despair and hunger into it, and the freedom of the movie is there in every image. It’s there in the air of discovery that the characters breathe. As an artist, Hopper showed the instinctive sophistication to portray himself and Peter Fonda, the two scruffed-out hippie-biker antiheroes, not just as crusaders but as tragicomic fools.
“I first saw Easy Rider when I was 11 (it was the first adult movie I ever snuck into), and the end of the movie — that falling-away roadside-crash helicopter’s-eye death shot that you realize has already been glimpsed in an acid hallucination — spooked and possessed me like nothing I had ever seen. This wasn’t just a trendy youth-drug-culture movie. It was filmmaking on drugs.”
Um, it looks “celluloid-y?” Wouldn’t it be more simple to just by a spiffed up DVD instead of the BD? I just saw BUTCH CASSIDY & TSK on blu ray and still prefer my DVD edition. It looked too fake for me. Shudder to think how they’d muck up McCABE.
“It looks rich and alive and intensely celluloid-y (which is starting to become a welcome distinction)”
So glad you have seen the light. Welcome to the monastery. May the spirit of Glenn be with you always.
Triple H, you wrote that you “just saw BUTCH CASSIDY & TSK on blu ray and still prefer [your] DVD edition.” As well you should. BC/SK is one of those over-scrubbed, embarrassing Blu-ray anomalies like Patton that must be avoided at all costs. The thing is, there are maybe a dozen titles on Blu-ray that were mucked up like that (mostly from Universal and Fox, with the latter eventually figuring it out), but the other few thousand titles look markedly better and more filmic on Blu-ray than on their standard DVD counterparts. Nothing beats a good Blu-ray on a properly calibrated system. There really is no comparison. Check out the Blu-rays of Casablanca, City Girl, Repulsion, The Adventures of Robin Hood. You will change your tune.
David Thomson is a pinhead. How else to explain a whole book extolling the greatness of Nicole Kidman?
I dunno, I’m not a big fan of Thompson, but I’d be inclined to agree with him about Easy Rider. It has many beautiful shots of the open road, but as a dramatic film I think its almost entirely a dated relic of its time. Its too lead characters are so unlikely – Fond stiff, self-important and narcissistic, and Hopper a rampaging, grating drugged up id – that I am almost glad when the rednecks waste them at the end. Nicholson is the best thing in it, and I’d take Five Easy Pieces, or Punishment Park, or even Vanishing Point any day of the week over Easy Rider.
I’ve been watching Easy Rider since I was a kid, and I always thought it was rock and roll cool.
The more I learn about it and ponder the more I’m convinced, however, that much of its “greatness” was purely accidental.
As it turns out, the Mardi Gras acid trip stuff is legendarily effective. And yet it would seem that it was more of a happy accident. They let an intoxicated Hopper and Fonda dick around New Orleans for a few days with camera and some film. Somebody was able to cobble together something out of that. Blows my mind, man!
Sheldrake, I’ll take your word for it because I have not seen any of those titles on BD yet. I guess my problem is that from what I have seen, I am just not sold on BD yet. Also, I have this nagging feeling that newer films, like those made in the last 20 years or however long digital has been around are going to benefit more than, say, THE SEVENTH SEAL, for example.
I just don’t have a real problem with hte way standard DVDs look. Yes, I have seen films that look better on BD (2001 would be the prime example) but a lot of them have looked either so so or even worse.
the crux of it is that if someone buys a BD and is unhappy with the presentation, they’re out that cash. It seems like a needless thing to start upgrading to BD. I don’t know, I think I just answered my own questions.
HHH – I am being pretty picky about what I rebuy on BD so far – it has to be something that was an older release on DVD – and then usually I’ll read reviews first to see what the “experts” say about its picture quality etc.
Newer films definitely look better overall, but some of the older films look amazing too – Adventures of Robin Hood for example. I took a gander at The General, and given the age of the film etc, I was surprised how well it looks. Gonna have to watch the entire thing sooner than later.
The documentarian Les Blank shot some of that Mardi Gras footage. I have the old Signet paperback of the screenplay with stills, essays and interviews with Hopper and Fonda. Some funny stuff. They said that after they showed the film to Bob Dylan (who they call Mr. Zimmerman), he refused to give them permission to use his recordings in the film because he wanted the movie to have a happy ending (he wanted Fonda to crash into the truck and blow up the truck…dumbass). It’s also fun to read the scenes in the graveyard when they are tripping: ( BILLY: We’re all aglow….glow man glow!) Also whoever had the book before me underlined stuff in pen. Why? People used to do such stupid shit back in the day.
Hip Hop Homey, check out THE SEARCHERS on BD. It’s a revelation.
Prager…. I’ll trade/borrow your Easy Rider book for my Jaws Log (by Carl Gottlieb) and Close Encounters Diary (Bob Balaban). With a bonus Making of The Deep paperback!
“You can’t grow anything here. It’s sand, man.”
@GP: Not sure, but I think that the recollective abilities of PF and DH might’ve been impaired. “Dumbass” is not exactly the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Dylan.
Better yet……. Fonda jumps off his bike a split second before it hits the truck…. the collision causes the truck, (with the bike embedded in its grill) to run off the road and into a ditch….
Fonda lands on the soft grass, gets up and runs to Hopper, who’s clinging to life…. he then lights a doobie and lets the wounded Hopper take a toke… he then lifts Billy up and throws him over his shoulder…
“You’ll be alright, Billy….you just hang in there… there’s a hospital just down the road, and I know they serve hippies…”
As he starts to walk he sees a small trickle of gasoline running past his feet… He sees that it leads to the truck… one of the rednecks, injured and dazed, is moaning in pain…
Fonda takes the joint from Hopper’s mouth and tosses it to the ground, into the gas…. a flame races towards the truck….
Fonda turns, with Hopper over his shoulder, and walks away…. behind him the truck EXPLODES in a giant fireball…. the rednecks are heard screaming in agony…
“THEY blew it, man” says Fonda, who doesn’t turn to look back at the inferno….
THE END
“THEY blew it, man” says Fonda, who doesn’t turn to look back at the inferno….
Then Fonda turns around and watches a VW Bus painted with psychedelic colors drive up and stop right alongside them. Inside are Karen Black and Toni Basil. Toni Basil gets out of the passenger side and opens the back door and helps carry Hopper inside. Then they drive off.
THE END
This song is playing during the end credits:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqLRd4neGGE
Prager!
(btw… our pitch meeting got bumped back to 3 on Tuesday… remember, energy level HIGH)
“something that knows itself and the culture from whence it sprung”
Whence means ‘from what place’. Your use of the preposition ‘from’ is redundant. I wish they’d stop giving Eloi the keys to the blog.
BTW…. thanks for lodging that Friends and Lovers song in my brain for the rest of the day….
HHH – I am being pretty picky about what I rebuy on BD so far – it has to be something that was an older release on DVD – and then usually I’ll read reviews first to see what the “experts” say about its picture quality etc.
Newer films definitely look better overall, but some of the older films look amazing too – Adventures of Robin Hood for example. I took a gander at The General, and given the age of the film etc, I was surprised how well it looks. Gonna have to watch the entire thing sooner than later.
‘Easy Rider’ is so specific and of its time that I think it transcends being dated. I can understand thinking it is, but try contrasting it with ‘Billy Jack’ before you write it off completely.
Then who blew it?
Jane
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