7/30/15: Easy Riders and the Wild Side

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'70s films, adults only, Any Mathieu, auteur theory, best friends, Blue Summer, Bo White, Chris Jordan, Chuck Vincent, cinema, coming of age, Davey Jones, dramas, Easy Rider, Eric Edwards, erotica, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, grindhouse, Harding Harrison, high school grads, hippies, hitchhikers, horny teenagers, Jacqueline Carol, Jeff Allen, Joann Sterling, Larry Lima, Lilly Bi Peep, Mark Ubell, Melissa Evers, Mike Ledis, Movies, non-professional actors, porn, random adventures, Richard Billay, road movie, Robert McLane, set in 1970s, sex comedies, Shana McGran, soft-core, Stephen Colwell, summer vacation, Sylvia Bernstein, vans, writer-director-editor

Chances are, whether you’ve actually seen the film or not, you’re at least familiar with Dennis Hopper’s iconic, counter-culture ode to the death of the idealistic ’60s, Easy Rider (1969). Crisscrossing the U.S. on their choppers, trying to make some sense of the whole mess, Hopper and Peter Fonda rode right off the screen into our collective consciences via their unforgettable (and, oftentimes, extremely random) encounters with various flower children, rednecks, authority figures, hip cats and square losers. Nearly 50 years after its release, Easy Rider still manages to capture the imagination of anyone who realizes that America’s best stories are still the ones collected on her back-roads: the ways in which we all act and interact, on a personal-level, will always say more about us than any casual examination of current politics and social mores ever could.

While I’m willing to wager that most folks have heard of Easy Rider, I’m just as willing to wager that almost no one recalls adult film auteur Chuck Vincent’s Blue Summer (1973). What does one have to do with the other? Well, to put it bluntly, Blue Summer is the soft-core, sex comedy “reimagining” of Easy Rider. Okay, okay: maybe not the “official” reimagining…there are no coy taglines connecting these spiritual cousins, nor is there even an undue focus on motorcycles (although one does figure prominently in the narrative). The film’s don’t share plot points, per se, and there are no clever, specific allusions to Wyatt, Billy or any of the various people they run into.

Despite the aforementioned, however, Blue Summer actually owes quite a debt to Easy Rider: like the “original,” Blue Summer is all about the assorted adventures that a pair of young men have on the road, adventures that lead them towards not only a greater understanding of the world at large, but also the worlds that exist within them. Throughout the course of the film, our young heroes will deal with “May-December romances,” free-loving hippies, Bible-thumpin’ traveling evangelists, casual sex, genuine love, small-town lunkheads, mysterious bikers and a quirky cult who freely believes “what’s yours is theirs.” Indeed, with more emphasis on the narrative elements and less focus on the simulated intercourse, Blue Summer would actually be a pretty decent bit of coming-of-age fluff. Ah, the ’70s…you crazy, gonzo, amazing little decade, you!

Our intrepid teenage heroes, Tracy (Davey Jones but not THAT Davey Jones) and Gene (Bo White) have decided to have one, last summer adventure before their lifelong friendship is tested when they both go off to far-flung universities. Loading their trusty van (the Meat Wagon) with enough cases of beer to get good, ol’ Bluto Blutarsky blasted, the duo decides to head out for scenic Stony Lake. The only things on the agenda? Why, drinking, driving, having fun, seeing the sights, keeping their minds off college and getting laid, obviously!

As Tracy and Gene travel the back-ways of America, they have a series of encounters that include a couple of thieving hitchhikers (Lilly Bi Peep, Joann Sterling), a stone-faced biker (Jeff Allen), a begging evangelist (Robert McLane), a hippy cultist and his free-loving acolytes (Larry Lima, Any Mathieu, Shana McGran), a middle-aged, married woman (Jacqueline Carol), a town-lush/nympho (Melissa Evers) and her group of redneck admirers and a mysterious no-named diver who seems to be the epitome of the ’70s “manic pixie girl” (Chris Jordan). Along the way, they go from silly, constantly giggling knuckleheads to…well, slightly less giggly, decidedly more grounded knuckleheads. The final shot/sentiment is a real corker: no much how much fun they’ve had, no matter how many different women they’ve “bedded,” the end of the trip signifies, for better or worse, the ends of their adolescent lives: from this point, they’re grownups…and nothing will ever be that awesome again.

Lest any gentle reader think I’m attempting to give writer/director/editor Vincent (who alternated between his real name and pseudonym Mark Ubell) more credit than even he probably felt he deserved, let’s be clear: Blue Summer is very much a soft-core, ’70s sex comedy, with all of the pluses and minuses that the descriptor carries. There’s plenty of nudity (although, as with most films like this, by and large of the female variety), simulated sex and non-professional acting (the rednecks, in particular, could only be called “actors” by an extremely loose application of the term), along with some appropriately ludicrous dialogue, line-delivery and general production issues (the lighting, in particular, is never great).

Now, however, to paraphrase the late, great Roger Ebert: let me get my other notebook. While Blue Summer is easily recognizable for what it is, it also has more heart, imagination and restraint than most of its peers. While there’s never much empty space between the assorted sex scenes, these “in-between” scenes are really where the film sets itself apart from the usual rabble. The subplot with the “mystical” biker never makes sense but does payoff in a nicely kickass (if pathetically sloppy) fight sequence, while the vignette involving the preacher features a really nice, subtle dig at the concept of passing the collection plate, especially where holy-rollers are involved.

The bit with the hitchhikers has a genuinely funny payoff, as does the one involving the cultists (the image of the snoozing hippies laying in the middle of the open field is a great punchline): there’s also some really nice points being made about the concept of sharing your earthly possessions with others (those who have the possessions do the “sharing,” while those without merely do the “suggesting”), as well as the concept of anonymous sex with strangers (“Miss No-Name” doesn’t feel obliged to introduce herself to Gene since “he won’t remember her name, anyway”…he doesn’t disagree, indicating that she’s probably right).

One of the film’s most surprising moments, however, comes after Tracy’s “nooner” with Margaret, the middle-aged, married woman. After having sex, she fixes him lunch in a manner that might best be described as ‘maternal.’ As Tracy eats, he goes on and on about how much he likes Margaret, rebuffing any and all attempts by her to trivialize their encounter. Just as Tracy seems to have convinced Margaret to overcome her reservations and meet with him again, however, her teenage son comes in from swimming, oblivious to what has just transpired between his mom and her young visitor. As Tracy watches the young man, who just so happens to be his age, the eagerness and intensity goes out of his face: both Margaret and Tracy look ashamed and he quickly takes his leave, never looking back.

It’s an intensely sad, mature moment in a film that certainly didn’t require it but benefits immensely from its inclusion, none the less. During moments like this, it’s easy to see Vincent as fighting a two-front war: on the one hand, he needs to deliver a soft-core porn flick, with all of the requisite trappings. On the other hand, he also wants to deliver something a little more substantial, something with enough blood flow to use more than one organ at a time. It’s a constant battle and one that’s not always won: the fact that Vincent fights it at all, however, gives him a leg up, in my book.

Ultimately, despite how fun and “innocent” Blue Summer actually is (all of the sex in the film is extremely positive: no one is ever forced, at any point, and both men and women seem to be having an equally good time), there’s no skirting the issue of its genetic makeup: this is a silly, ’70s sex comedy, full of simulated intercourse, full frontal female nudity and wacky antics, through and through. Deep down, however, it’s impossible to miss the film’s bigger, underlying themes: it might be a “dirty” movie but it’s not a stupid one. If you’re a fan of the sub-genre or just want to see what a “porn-lite” version of Easy Rider might look like, jump in the van, pop the top on a cold one and let Blue Summer take the wheel.

You know that old chestnut, “they just don’t make ’em like this anymore?” Well, they really don’t make ’em like this anymore. But they used to. If you think about it, that’s kind of amazing all by itself.

5/27/14: A Real Leap of Faith

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'70s-era, Ahom Aquarian, based on a book, based on a true story, California in the '70s, cinema, communes, counterculture, cult, cults, documentaries, documentary, Father Yod, film reviews, films, freak-folk musicians, hippies, Hollywood CA, Isis Aquarian, Jim Baker, Jodi Wille, John Lennon, Makushla, Maria Demopoulos, meditation, Mother Ahom, Movies, polygamy, ritual magic, sex magic, Source Family, the Sacred Herb, The Source Family, the Source Restaurant, the Sunset Strip, utopian communities, utopian societies, Yahowa 13

I’ve always been fascinated by cults, probably because I’ve never actually believed in any one thing (or person) enough to blindly follow it off a cliff. I’m also staunchly and proudly anti-authority, so giving one guy (and let’s be honest: for various reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with religion, the leaders of these things are usually dudes) complete control over my life seems…well, like about as much fun as getting devoured by ants, to be honest. Cults are fascinating things, however, because regardless of my personal belief in them, plenty of other folks do believe in them. As I like to say: live and let live…provided, of course, that the other person is just as willing to live and let live in return. The inherent problem with almost all cults (or call them “Utopian communities,” if that makes you feel better) is that they usually end up butting heads with “polite” society, usually in some pretty violent ways. I’m sure we’re all familiar with Manson and his “family,” but the Branch Davidian and People’s Temple cults are probably better examples: I think that most cults start from a (relatively speaking) “normal” mindset but I’ll never be convinced that ol’ Charlie didn’t have his trajectory plotted out from day one.

The Source Family, a fascinating product of the hodge-podge mindset of ’70s-era Los Angeles, was a cult: I don’t really think there can be much beating around the bush on that one. As led by Father Yod (formerly Jim Baker), the “Family” exhibited all of the classic signs, including the liquidation of all members’ personal assets, in service of the group; communal living in (progressively smaller and smaller) compounds; polygamy and relationship management (Yod would often “assign” wives to men, regardless of previous arrangements/relationships/desires) and an often adversarial relationship with the outside world that involved run-ins with law enforcement and strained community ties. As seen in The Source Family (2012), a documentary about Father Yod’s group put together by surviving members of the Family, however, there was a lot more to them than just their similarity to more infamous cults. In the end, a lot of this had to do with the fascinating, polarizing figure that was Jim Baker…aka Father Yod.

Regardless of what he ended up doing with the cult, Baker was a pretty interesting fellow: before he was Father Yod, he’d been a top-notch fighter pilot, fitness guru and successful restaurateur. He was a hunky ladies’ man who once killed two men with his bare hands and robbed at least one, if not more, banks. After falling in with the “peace and love” movement, in his early 40s, Baker opened The Source Restaurant in sunny Hollywood, CA. The Source would go on to some notoriety as the favorite hang-out of various little-known celebrities like Steve McQueen, John Lennon, Goldie Hawn, Joni Mitchell and the members of Yes: you know, no big deal. At one point, according to the documentary, the Source Restaurant made more money per square inch than any restaurant in the United States. Let that sink in for just a minute, ladies and gentlemen. This guy, at least on the outside, was not your typical cult leader.

Baker assembled the Source Family teaching from a number of popular California trends/customs of the time, including health food, hedonism, drug use and Eastern and Western mysticism: in many ways, the Source Family’s tenets were kind of a “greatest hits set,” as it were, although Baker, now rechristened Father Yod, was always the de facto center of the organization. Yod would marry 19-year-old Robin, who would become Mother Ahom Aquarion (all member of the group legally changed their last names to Aquarian, making this sort of like a nutty, ultra-official version of the Ramones…which is kinda cool, if you think about it) and the two would lead their group through a number of changes, not the least of which was the eventual introduction of polygamy into the Source Family, along with concepts like “ritual magic” and “sex magic.” Yod would end up with thirteen wives, much to the consternation of Mother Ahom, and the group would begin to seem, quite suddenly, like a more traditional cult. After being “forced” from their longtime home in California, the group picked up stakes and moved to Kauai, Hawaii, where things would remain less than ideal. Once Father Yod died (in a very strange incident that, depending on who you ask, either sounds an awful lot like suicide or a colossally stupid decision), the group would continue on, for a time, under the tutelage of Makushla, one of Yod’s thirteen wives. Upon dissolving, the members would go on to do everything from award-winning stem cell research to continuing the work of their freak-folk band, Yahowa 13. Some would stay with the group, such as Isis Aquarian, while others would look back fondly, from a great distance. Unlike the People’s Temple, however, there was no great flame-out, no mass “exodus”: things just seemed to sort of peter out after Baker’s death. For all intents and purposes, the Source Family was a fascinating, ultimately unsuccessful experiment in creating a true counter-culture society.

As a documentary, The Source Family is utterly enthralling: I was pretty much glued to the screen from the first word to the last (the opening is particularly great, featuring a slow-zoom in on a portrait of Yod that ends with a close-up on his intense eyes). It’s a fast-paced, very informative film that’s filled with one neat factoid after another: cult actor Bud Cort was once a member, in good standing, of the Source Family…famous rock photographer Ron Raffaeli discusses how he was asked to join the group but was too busy and thought they were a little too weird…a member describes how he knelt and kissed Yod’s feet the first time he met him, to which Yod, impressed, responded “Far fucking out.” The Source Family was certainly an imposing, photogenic group and plenty of photos from the era bear this out: there’s something rather majestic (if not slightly nuts) about the sight of Father Yod, looking like Rick Rubin as a spiritual guru, leading his huge “family” around on the streets of Hollywood in the ’70s. There’s a nutty energy to everything that’s absolutely a product of the ’70s: it’s impossible to imagine stuff like this happening anywhere but Hollywood, at that time.

I was genuinely surprised by the musical aspect of the Family: I’d never heard of their band before (or the group itself, to be honest) but it’s impossible not to see how influential their sound has been to modern musicians. Hell, you could actually make a case for the entire freak-folk subgenre springing directly from Yahowa 13: even Billy Corgan thinks they were unbelievably influential and who are we to disagree with the Great Pumpkin? One of my favorite parts of the film is the bit where they discuss Yod and the band playing various gigs at area high school lunch hours. The footage of one of these gigs is absolutely priceless: watching Yod and crew freak the fuck out on stage, before a massive crowd of bored teenagers, all while Yod delivers a nearly non-stop “sermon,” may be one of the highlights of my last decade of movie-watching…no joke. The only thing I could think while watching this was: “When would something like this have ever been acceptable? Trying doing this nowadays and see how fast the proverbial shit would hit the fan…I’m guessing almost immediately.

Ultimately, even though I don’t think Baker was anything more than a kooky, ultra-wealthy guy who saw a sure-fire thing and grabbed it with both hands, I had a blast actually watching the documentary. Truth be told, I’d love to see a fictionalized version of this same story: hell, give it to David O. Russell, since his American Hustle-mode would be perfect for this story. This definitely isn’t an unbiased account of the events: while the film does include plenty of commentary from detractors (mostly pretty gentle, bemused kind of reflections, although the bit where one of Baker’s former co-workers scoffs at his desire to be called Father Yod is pretty snarky), it also tends to gloss over lots of problem areas.

I’m troubled, to say the least, about actions like marrying off the underage girls to Family members, in order to circumvent local rape laws: that doesn’t sound kosher, to say the very least. The “family engineering” aspect is also pretty horrible, since that’s what religious fundamentalists use to swap partners around among families, “rewarding” faithful men with more (or different) wives. There is some discussion about how much control the women had over this but it’s also explicitly stated that Yod would often “ask” members to participate in this: since no one refused him, this would be the same thing as requiring it, no? Same thing goes for the groups use of ritual and sex magic: from the outside, it seems kind of easy to assume that Yod’s ritualistic sex with various women and girls (underage or not) had less to do with helping them achieve personal nirvana than with helping him get off. We could always give him the benefit of the doubt but, to be honest, the documentary does a pretty good of muddying up this issue, as it is. Suffice to say that it’s a lot easier to buy Baker as a bored, opportunistic hedonist who stumbled into a pretty great way to run out the last years of his life than it is to buy him as a misunderstood religious guru.

Ultimately, The Source Family is a fascinating, fast-paced and well-made (if obviously biased) account of the life of a true outsider. Hell, when was the last time you heard a religious leader referred to as a perfect combination of Lenny Bruce and Krishnamurti? If Baker often seemed like an all too earthly figure, there’s certainly something other-worldly about his bigger-than-life persona. I might not have been converted to the cause, but The Source Family gave me a pretty great insight into a fascinating time in our history, a time when utopia seemed just around the corner and the possibilities were endless. Baker might not have been able to keep his dreams (or himself) aloft but there’s no denying that the guy lived life on his own terms. For better or worse, there’s something kind of inspirational about that.

3/15/14: Just a Couple Good Old Boys

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actor-director, Altamont, America, American Dream, Best Original Screenplay nominee, Best Supporting Actor nominee, bikers, Billy, Bob Dylan, Born to Be Wild, buddy films, Captain America, Charles Manson, cinema, classic movies, counter-culture films, counterculture, Dennis Hopper, directorial debut, Easy Rider, end of an era, film reviews, films, friendship, hippies, Hoyt Axton, Jack Nicholson, Luke Askew, Mardi Gras, motorcycles, Movies, Oscar nominee, Palme d'Or nominee, Peter Fonda, Phil Spector, rednecks, road movie, road trips, Sharon Tate, Steppenwolf, the American Dream, the Manson Family, The Pusher, Wyatt

When, exactly, did the Summer of Love go up in flames? Conventional wisdom usually points to Altamont, in December 1969, as the point where the promise of free love and hippy Utopianism soured. For my money, though, I always pinpointed Sharon Tate’s murder, on August 9th of the same year, as the real tipping point. Even though the Woodstock festival (usually seen as the pinnacle of “hippyism”) would follow Tate’s murder by less than a week, I always viewed that as sneaking one last one in before Manson and his followers nailed down the coffin lid. By the time the Mason family had cemented their terrible legacy, it was pretty apparent that the shiny red apple of peace, love and harmony contained more than its fair share of rot. While Altamont may have slammed the door shut, it had begun to close long before then. In fact, some folks could see the end way before then: when Dennis Hopper’s now-iconic Easy Rider was first released, in May 1969, who could know that the man would seem like Nostradamus a mere seven months later?

Easy Rider is many things: a buddy film…a road movie…a counter-culture landmark…a return to the sensibilities of On the Road at a time when that attitude seemed not only passe but quaint…a drug movie…a critique of the fractured America of the ’60s…More than anything, however, Easy Rider serves as a death knell, a dire warning from one of the original “freak-flag-flyers” that times were changing and that the peace-and-love hippies were about to be swept from the Earth in the same way that the dinosaurs once were. You could stay the same, he posited, but you would die: that was a given. You could, of course, leave behind your ideals and survive by evolving into something else entirely, something colder, more calculating, less romantic. But isn’t this, in the end, the same sort of death as offered in the first option? Above all else, however, Hopper was making concrete the words of Bob Dylan, albeit casting them in a much darker light than Dylan originally intended: the times, indeed, were a changin’.

As a film, Easy Rider has a pretty simple structure: it’s essentially a series of vignettes featuring Billy (Dennis Hopper) and Wyatt (Peter Fonda), usually addressed as “Captain America.” As the two men travel around the back-roads of America, they meet with an odd assortment of characters, including a hitchhiker (Luke Askew) and his hippy commune, a drunken lawyer (Jack Nicholson), lots of rednecks and some good, old-fashioned, middle-American squares. They sell cocaine to Phil Spector (not the “person” of Phil Spector but the actual man: he’s billed as “The Connection” and wears one seriously yellow suit, complete with matching gloves and glasses), visit a whorehouse in New Orleans and leave a diner one step ahead of an angry mob of rednecks and small-town cops.

For the most parts, events in the film fall into a pretty basic formula: the duo rides to a new place, Billy acts like a square, the Captain tells him to chill out, there’s a musical interlude and the whole thing repeats. Each interlude, however, serves as a way for Hopper (who also wrote the screenplay, with Fonda) to dig a little deeper into the whole notion of the “American Dream.” The opening pre-credits drug-dealing sequence begins with Steppenwolf’s version of “The Pusher,” before their iconic “Born to Be Wild” slams us right into the credits. It’s a subtle way to establish Billy and the Captain’s manifesto (they do whatever they want, man), while also commenting on changes in the pop culture zeitgeist: “The Pusher” was written by Hoyt Axton, a popular folk singer in the early ’60s but it was Steppenwolf’s cover, not the original, that Hopper used. As one of the “heavier” new bands to emerge in the late ’60s, Steppenwolf was a good representation of the direction music was taking, at the time, away from the folk and early rock of the ’60s and into the hard rock and metal of the ’70s. Steppenwolf was pushing Axton out, just as the darker mid-late ’60s was crowding out the peace and optimism of the earlier part of the decade.

They end up on the hitchhiker’s commune but don’t get to stay long: the hippies end up picking on and ostracizing Billy, leading us to the notion that maybe these “peaceniks” aren’t quite as nice as they first seem. Although he couldn’t have known it at the time, Hopper was prophesying what would happen with the Manson family: the hippy exterior concealed a dangerous, deranged interior. Lest it be thought that Hopper is unduly picking on the counterculture (which is rather absurd, since he’s been a genuine, card-carrying member of the counterculture for his entire life/career), we also get scenes like the ones where Billy and the Captain get arrested for “parading without a permit” in a small town and are, essentially, chased out of a diner by a group of locals (including the sheriff) that are a few pitchforks away from the mob in Frankenstein. If the counterculture isn’t necessarily who they say they are, then the average middle-American “square” is exactly what they seem to be: small-minded, suspicious, frightened and utterly resentful of the “freedom” that Billy and the Captain represent. That these small-town folk and rednecks will, ultimately, end up being the undoing of Billy, the Captain and George (Nicholson) is certainly telling: although the counterculture has begun to collapse from the inside, its greatest threat still comes from the outside – the world at large.

All of these events eventually culminate in a truly apocalyptic ending for Billy and the Captain (and poor George, of course), although it’s a finale that would probably only provoke a shrug from the kinds of people who helped perpetrate it: those long-haired, weird bastards got what was coming to them. While the finale few moments of Easy Rider holds the answer to Billy and the Captain’s fates, it’s a moment just before that actually spells everything out for an entire generation. After finally achieving their “goal” of visiting New Orleans for Mardi Gras and surviving everything that came before, Billy is absolutely triumphant: they’re both “rich” now, thanks to the opening drug deal and have finally “made it.” “That’s what you do, man,” he tells the Captain, “you go for the big money.” The Captain’s response, however, takes the wind out of not only Billy’s sails but our own, as well: “We blew it, man.” By compromising their principles and losing sight of the “big picture” (changing the world for the better), Billy and the Captain (along with the entire “Free Love” movement) have truly “blown it.” The true extent wouldn’t be felt for some time, of course, but the writing was on the wall: whatever moment might have existed was now past and the movement would continue to spin out into irrelevance.

As a pivotal moment in the history of the counterculture, Easy Rider, much like Kerouac’s On the Road, cannot be easily discounted. Although certain elements have, by necessity, become dated, the overall themes and angles of the film hold up surprisingly well. As a film, Easy Rider is quite good, with sterling performances from Hopper, Fonda and Nicholson, along with some excellent cinematography that is reminiscent of the same year’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It’s always a hoot to see Hopper play the “straight” guy, particularly with the decades of crazy characters that would come after this. Nicholson, in particular, is excellent, providing yet another example of why he became one of the most beloved actors of all time. There’s a sense of playfulness that easily recalls Depp’s work in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, although Nicholson owned this type of role for some time before Depp wandered down Jump Street.

If there can be any complaints, it would have to be that the film definitely becomes formulaic well before the ending, although the final 15 minutes are still some of the most powerful film moments ever. Even though the film seems a bit dated now (the commune scene, in particular, is of its era, complete with a truly bizarre mime performance and some really hippy-dippy philosophizing), it’s held up much better than similar films of the era, such as Fonda’s ultra-silly The Trip from a few years earlier. In the end, Easy Rider exists as both a fascinating curio of a forgotten era and a timely reminder that we must be ever vigilant, if we hope to truly change the world. As Sisyphus knew, the moment you quit pushing forward and forging new ground is the moment where the boulder begins to slide back down the hill. In the ’60s, the hippies managed to push the rock quite a ways up the hill. The tragedy, of course, is that it crushed them all on the way back down.