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films that don't tell you where they're going...Easy Rider

208.253.11.77

Posted by petew on June 14, 1999 at 19:56:15

was it the summer of love (67)? or the year before? Well anyway I remember how I felt: dazed. stunned. I remember comming out of the movie house in South Laguna Beach, out of the darkness into that flat, smoggy southern california late afternoon light, when the sun doesn't so much as set as it's eaten up by the acidic brown haze hovering just out of reach over everything.

I'm still stunned by that movie. And really, it's not much of a movie, but it hangs with me all this time, and I think about it often. I was totaly surprised by the ending, even though we all saw it comming. What made it different is how Hopper and Fonda just let it end, without explaining things or hinting at what happens next. Deal with it.

So if you haven't seen it I'm gonna maybe ruin it for you by trying to explain it to me. I'd say go see it but the time is past. It won't have the power of the summer of love, the free acid, the war, the beats, the angles, the pranksters, the hairs vs the squares...seems so long ago.

Fonda points out his spurs, which he wares throughout to indicate it's a western. So what I'm supposta think? It's more like Wall Street than--oh I don't know--what was that Paul Newman movie where he plays the half-breed just trying to move on? You know the one: "Hey... hombre. You have put a hole in me." "Shoot de woman? You want me to shoot de nice, soft woman?" (now that was a great western).

Captain America is corporate america. Billy is John Q Public--the average citizen, voter, working for wages with the promise of a better dream. Just follow me Billy, I'll take you there. Corporate america is looking short-term, for the big deal, maximum profits, anything to make a buck and damm the morality. Follow me billy, we're free, answer to none, responsible only to the green triangle eye. Let's go. See our country. How's it work. Who's there. Who's winning. Who's ahead. Then: "we blew it." Don't follow me billy, I'm lost, I have no reason past the quarterly earnings. I care nothing about family, community, sharing myself with others. I don't know you and I don't want to know you. What can you do for me?

The closing shot of the smoke and flame as seen from the helicopter leaving the embassy building in Siagon. Don't follow me Gen. Thieu.
(the collective unconsciousness fortells the future--all you have to do is listen)
sing along with the firesign theater:

oh blinding light
oh light that blinds
i cannot see
watch out
for
me

captain america is beaten by the duck hunter, right at the point of his epiphany. Hey Johnson, hey MacNamara, didn't you watch the movie? the common man with the common sense. he knows everything, sees everything, lets it go until the time for bs is over. then he takes action, and fades back into life. King George III is beaten by a squirrel hunter lurking in the woods. Captain america is beaten by a rice farmer stooped in the muck. The power of money vs the power of life.

Yea, I think this movie is stuck in time, but it's one I could see again every once in a while. It's dense with metaphor, it's more than it seems. It doesn't tell a story, it foretells a fate. Our fate. We could get blowed up (we're talking parts per million here). By the time you realize the path you're on has no heart, it's ready to jump up and kill you. All paths lead nowhere: into the brush. The world is an unfathomable mystery. The only thing that matters is finding a path with heart and traversing it's full length, looking, looking, breathlessly...

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Kimber Kable

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