Camera And Action, page 40
15. Rossell, "Arlo Guthrie's 'Alice's Restaurant,"' 17.
16. Zimmerman, "Alice's Restaurant's Children," 106.
17. Time estimated some 300,000 young people in America had actually dropped out of their middle-class environment while many others entertained aspects of the burgeoning counterculture during the summer of 1967. Though this group was small on all counts, the counter
culture phenomenon extended past sheer numbers and went widely and deeply enough to be tagged a subculture or, as Time put it, a "permutation of the middle-class American ethos from which it evolved." "The Hippies: Philosophy of a Subculture," Time 90.1 (7 July 1967): 18.
18. Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995), 139, 145, 1, 142. See also Brent Ortega Murphy and Jeffery Scott Harder, "1960s Counterculture and the Legacy of American Myth: A Study of Three Films," Canadian Review ofAmerican Studies 23.2 (Winter 1993): 57.
19. Advertisements for Alice's Restaurant in Village Voice 14.44 (14 Aug. 1969): 26 and 37, and (21 Aug. 1969): 38.
20. Edwin Miller, "Spotlight! The Hollywood Scene," Seventeen (Feb. 1969): 54.
21. Susan Braudy, "Kids are Groovy, But Adults Are Not," The New York Times Student Weekly (9 Sep. 1969): Special News Report Section II.
22. Ibid.
23. Herbert I. London, Closing the Circle: A Cultural History of the Rock Revolution (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1984), 76.
24. Braudy, "Kids are Groovy."
25. Philip French, "Alice's Restaurant," Sight and Sound 39 (Winter 1969-1970): 44.
26. Zimmerman, "Alice's Restaurant's Children," 101.
27. Miller, "Spotlight! The Hollywood Scene," 54.
28. Ibid.
29. London, Closing the Circle, 73.
30. When guitars went electric and music went industrial, the two types of music became antithetical. Bob Dylan, the early guru of the folk movement, was booed offstage when he walked on with his electric guitar. On the other hand, one promoter was forced to close a rock show in Detroit because Peter, Paul, and Mary were part of the show. The schism between rocker and folk singer marked splits in advocacy in the larger society at the time. Ibid., 76.
31. French, "Alice's Restaurant," 44.
32. Advertisements for Alice's Restaurant in Village Voice, 38.
33. The film added to his fame already established through the twenty-five to thirty concerts a year, at a minimum of $6,000 a concert. Arlo had also already amassed wealth with his 260-acre spread in Massachusetts. A second home and fame awarded through music and film by the end of the decade made Arlo's famous refrain, "you can get anything you want" a bit more sinister. Zimmerman, "Alice's Restaurant's Children," 101-106.
34. Miller, "Spotlight! The Hollywood Scene," 42.
35. The Free Print Shop provided the space for the main means of communication. A well-known example of communal publication is Kaliflower, a small magazine that was circulated every Thursday to three hundred people. The Shop organized messengers to hand-deliver the publication by posting it on a plywood board situated in a designated communal space. Any free messages or free ads for the deliverer were attached to a bamboo rod on the board. The messengers typically returned from their intercommunal travels with stories and information for the content of future publications on intercommunal life. Kaliflower functioned as an important means of intercommunal communication and also a mode of developing newsworthy stories, feeding subsequent publications. When the members felt the publication "compromised ideals of staying small, local and anonymous," the staff suspended its production. "Diggers" (Mar. 1967-Mar. 1969 MS 4008 The Friends of Perfection Collections), donated by Sutter Street Commune, known also as the Scott Street Commune. In Folder 1, Special Collections at North Baker Research Library, California Historical Society, San Francisco, CA.
36. Kaliflower 1.4 (15 May 1969) MS4008, Box 1, Folder 1, Special Collections at North Baker Research Library, California Historical Society, San Francisco, CA.
37. "Miscellaneous File," MS3159/6 (n.d.), Special Collections at North Baker Research Library, California Historical Society, San Francisco, CA.
38. "Miscellaneous File," MS3159/5, Special Collections at North Baker Research Library, California Historical Society, San Francisco, CA. These words come from the Manifesto of "The Resurgence Youth Movement of California," reissued in 1967 from the originally published one in 1964 in Manhattan.
39. Stan Smith, "Hippy Identity Within Self," Utah Daily Chronicle, 2 Oct. 1967, p. 4.
40. Communication Company Folder, M53159/3, Special Collections at North Baker Research Library, California Historical Society, San Francisco, CA.
41. "Miscellaneous File," MS3159/5 (15 Mar. 1968), and Free City News in Folder MS3159/4 (1967-1968), Special Collections at North Baker Research Library, California Historical Society, San Francisco, CA.
42. Murphy and Harder, "1960s Counterculture," 9.
43. Zimmerman, "Alice's Restaurant's Children," 104.
44. George W. Favre, "Hippiedom and the Neighbors," Christian Science Monitor 7 (Nov. 1967).
45. Smith, "Hippy Identity Within Self," 4.
46. Free City News (1967' 1968), MS3159/4, Special Collections at North Baker Research Library, California Historical Society, San Francisco, CA (quoted as appeared, all in capital letters).
47. "Time to Forget," Digger Papers (Mar. 1967-Mar. 12, 1969), Folder MS 3159/1, Special Collections at North Baker Research Library, California Historical Society, San Francisco, CA.
48. Paul Warshow, "Easy Rider," Sight and Sound 39.1 (Winter 1969/1970): 35.
49. Kaliflower 1.4 (15 May 1969), MS4008, Box 1, Folder 1, Special Collections at North Baker Research Library, California Historical Society, San Francisco, CA.
50. Gelatt, "SR Goes to the Movies," 35.
51. Zimmerman "Alice's Restaurant's Children," 104.
52. Farber, "End of the Road?" 10.
53. Favre, "Hippiedom and the Neighbors."
54. "The Hippies: Philosophy of a Subculture," 20.
55. Favre, "Hippiedom and the Neighbors."
56. As Pierre Bordieu has pointed out, "most of the types of discourse which have been or are produced in support of the `people' come from producers occupying dominated positions in the field of production. And ... the more-or-less idealized `people' is often a refuge against failure or exclusion." Idealizing the free spirit mocked class struggle because rebellion took place in culture through lifestyle instead of politics and resistance. Thus when counterculture discourse replaced work with freedom, peace, and love, it earned "symbolic capital" that mocked "the people" not for bigotry but for their social value. Pierre Bordieu, "The Uses of the `People,"' In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, trans. Matthews Adamson (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 151.
57. Barea, Letter to the Editor, New York Times.
58. Zimmerman, "Alice's Restaurant's Children," 102.
59. Stephen Mintz and Randy Roberts, Hollywood's America: United States History Through Its Films (St. James, NY: Brandywine Press, 1993), 268. Because the counterculture was largely a white, middle- and upper-middleclass phenomenon, its kind of grassroots differed from the middle-class world long represented by such directors as Frank Capra. Capra's characters created a middle-class world that validated the importance of America. Their belief that "America is the last, best hope of mankind" is exactly the premise that films like Alice's Restaurant question but do not replace. The Capra world "celebrate [d] the characteristic institutions of ... marriage, the family, the neighborhood, the small business" in middle-class style. Therefore, the form of "populism" that hippie ethos imparts aligns itself more with the Steinbeck types of "little guy" than with the independent American seeking legitimacy. Capra's senators, career girls, and other libertarians "distrust power" but seek to "preserve the basic integrity of their political and social institutions." Certainly there is an antimaterialism strain in Capra's films that the counterculture shares, but the end result of that argument is the opposite of the anti-middle class themes that run through counterculture ethos. Contrary to Alice's Restaurant, Capra's characters offer "a way of looking at middle-class life which does not make it seem banal, sterile, and purposeless, and which invests it with vitality and style." John Raeburn, "Introduction," in Frank Capra: The Man and His Films, ed. Richard Glatzer and John Raeburn (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1975), ix, xi, xiii.
60. "The Current Cinema," The New Yorker (9 Sep. 1969): 96.
61. Zimmerman, "Alice's Restaurant's Children," 102, 106.
62. The second part of this sentence refers to Fredric Jameson, "Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture," in Signatures of the Visible (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), 24-25; and Frederic Jameson, GeopoliticalAesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), xii - xiv.
63. Murphy and Harder, "1960s Counterculture."
64. Herndon, "Alice's Restaurant."
65. Bordieu, "The Uses of the `People."' Popular uses of the people are most profitable in the political world because politicians and others can show the "history of struggles within progressive parties or workers' unions." In academic discourse the idea of "workerism" has maintained a symbolic effect that confirms the value of experience. Thus, when political activists (many of whom were students of intellectuals) formed organizations such as the SDS spoke to and for the working class they assumed the right to. In Bordieu's words, intellectuals "set themselves up as holders of a sort of pre-emptive right over the `people."' Intellectual refinement also allows laying claim as protectors while concealing the "break with the `people' that is implied by gaining access to the role of spokesperson." Ibid., 152. Like the intellectual, the counterculturalists "always presuppose a certain cultural capital." Their task was to de-anesthetize the broad middle class, but to do so meant to de-value their experience and especially the importance of work. Repression would hardly resonate from self-proclaimed revolutionaries whose struggle seemed more rhetorical than everyday. Ibid., 155, 151-154.
66. Madsen, "Reaching the Tribes."
67. Thomas Frank, Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 15, 108.
68. As Fredric Jameson has argued, "The commodity production of contemporary or mass culture has nothing whatsoever to do, and nothing in common, with older forms of popular or folk art." Jameson, "Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture," 15.
69. Zimmerman, Alice's Restaurant's Children," 101106.
70. Claudia Dreifus, "Arlo Guthrie," Progressive 57.2 (Feb. 1993): 32.
71. Jack Slater, "Alice' Still Food for Thought," Los Angeles Times, 1 July 1981. Slater's comments pertained to the many enthusiastic responses about what the movie meant from the audience who was discussing the film and sharing memories about it. The film was shown at the Royal in Los Angeles for the Common Cause 1981 Summer Film Festival.
72. Barbara Bannon, Sundance Film Festival Catalogue. The film played Monday Jan. 24, 1993, at 9:30PM at Park City Library Center.
73. McCormick, "Alice's Restaurant," 55.
74. Brandy, "Kids Are Groovy," Section II.
75. Zimmerman, "Alice's Restaurant's Children," 104, 106.
76. Ibid., 104.
77. Rossell, "Arlo Guthrie's 'Alice's Restaurant."'
78. Zimmerman, "Alice's Restaurant's Children," 106.
79. People Magazine (Sep. 26, 1994).
80. Michael Quinn, Alice's Church," Time 139.9 (2 Mar. 1992): 37.
81. Ned Zenman and Lucy Howard, "Arlo Go Home," Newsweek 119.7 (17 Feb. 1992): 8.
82. Warshow, "Easy Rider," 35.
Chapter V
1. Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drug-and-Rock `n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (New York: Touchstone Book Published by Simon and Schuster, 1998), 42.
2. Production notes, Core Collection, Margaret Herrick Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library, Beverly Hills, CA.
3. Hollywood Reporter, 9 Nov. 1990.
4. For an example of how viewers identified with the Western, see Jane Tompkins, West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
5. Emanuel Levy, AllAbout Oscar: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards (New York and London: Continuum, 2003), 186, 188. For many years, Westerns provided "the `bread and butter"' of filmmaking. During the golden 1950s, the genre produced over 30 percent of Hollywood production. Yet, not one of the "a-grade" pictures won an Oscar. In fact, only three out of seventy-four Best Picture awards have gone to Westerns. Neither Howard Hawks nor John Ford, masters of the trade, even received nominations for what are now considered masterpieces: Red River (1948) and Stagecoach (1959), respectively. Westerns that satirized the genre (Blazing Saddles, 1974) or reexamined its merit (Unforgiven, 1992) drew Academy interest. The Academy's preference for the more personal, biographical, and social-problem pictures rather than the Western (a white Protestant narrative) has dominated Academy standards and taste for artistic achievement. As John Ford once said, "I don't think a lot about honors, but I think it's demeaning to the Westerns that I have received honors for other films and none for my Westerns," in Ibid., 186.
6. Lee Clarke Mitchell, Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), especially chapter 1. The West has long been a location and an idea in American popular culture. On physical terms the components that shaped the West in the imaginations of many included land ownership, conservation, adventure, economy, extraction, openness, and especially modernization, with its freeways, sprawling cities, and fashion malls. In ideological terms, the West has been a region for arguing and living rugged individualism, connecting oneself in general to an aesthetics that combines veneration of the landscape with entertainment and identity.
7. An early script has a helicopter chasing the two characters, but they successfully evade it. The script also begins with the story of Wyatt and Billy working a local circus. The opening scene shows them getting paid for their last performance and then quitting "to prepare for their long journey." Script #27 in Easy Rider File, Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library, Beverly Hills, CA.
8. Charles A. Reich, The Greening ofAmerica: How the Youth Revolution Is Trying to Make America Livable (New York: Random House, 1970), 64, 68, 71.
9. Ray-Ban sunglasses were a popular brand sported in the sunglasses craze at the time. For the theme of search for America see the production notes and press book, Core Collection, Margaret Herrick Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library, Beverly Hills, CA.
10. "Hippie?" The Haight-Ashbury Maverick 1.8 (1967): 2 (reel #8, University of Utah).
11. Fredric Jameson, Signatures ofthe Visible (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), 9.
12. Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 15.
13. Script #27 in Easy Rider File, Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library, Beverly Hills, CA.
14. For an earlier version of this essay, see Elaine M. Bapis, "Easy Rider (1969): Landscaping the Modern Western," in The Landscape of Hollywood Westerns: Ecocriticism in an American Film Genre, ed. Deborah A. Carmichael (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2006).
15. Tom Milne, "Easy Rider," Sight and Sound 38.4 (Autumn 1969): 211. Similar to what Walter Benjamin argued about the panorama, this film displaced temporal and spatial properties by offering the urban spectator an illusion of travel. As Benjamin remarked, "The city-dweller ... attempts to introduce the countryside into the city. In the panoramas the city dilates to become landscape...." Likewise the film brought the rugged outdoors into the city and thus restructured the relation of the viewer to both landscapes and time. Quoted in Anne Friedberg, "The Mobilized and Virtual Gaze in Modernity: Flaneur/ Laneuse," in The Visual Culture Reader, ed. Nicholas Mir- zoeff (London, New York: Routledge, 1998), 259.
16.' "A Summer of Love," (n.d.) file MS3159, no. 5, Special Collections at North Baker Research Library, California Historical Society, San Francisco, CA.
17. Milne, "Easy Rider," 211.
18. Quoted in Paul Warshow, "`Easy Rider,"' Sight and Sound 39, no.1 (Winter 1969/1970): 36.
19. Ibid., 36-37.
20. "Movies," Playboy 16.9 (Sep. 1969): 42.
21. Stephen Farber, "End of the Road?" Film Quarterly 23.2 (Winter 1969-1970): 7. Variety also picked up on this notion early in the film's career when it noted, "Peter Fonda has come to bear much the same relationship to the motorcycle picture that John Wayne has to the Western - the rugged, handsome, prototype hero...." "Easy Rider" Variety 254.18 (14 May 1969). See, too, William Wolf, "New Films," Cue 38 (19 July 1969): 72.
22. Paul E. Martin, "Happier Now," Letter to the Editor, The New York Times (23 Nov. 1969).
23. Script #27 is more literal. One of the teenage girls challenges the deputy's treatment of the three bikers. "You probably don't realize that Jefferson Davis had long hair and Robert E. Lee and Daniel Boon" (68, 69). A second man decries the association and distinguishes between historically revered characters and the counterculture representatives on the bike: "Don't you mention their names in the same breath with a bunch of dirty Yankee queers" (79). Script #27 in Easy Rider File, Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library, Beverly Hills, CA. The total sum of the scenes left out equals the impact and value of hair at the time as a tool of negotiation and resistance; hence, the importance of cultural signifiers as historical explanations.
24. "Acid, Pot Users Describe Psychedelic Trips," The Daily Utah Chronicle 76 (29 Sep. 1967): front page. David L. Westby, Clouded Vision: The Student Movement in the United States in the 1960s (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1976). Charles Perry, et al., "Summer of Love," Edging West 8 (July/Aug. 1996): 40-43. Dennis M. Cox, subscriptions manager of Edging West, hung out in the Haight at age 17 during the famous Summer of Love.
