Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of a scene from the Dennis Hopper film, Flashback.
DVD Review
Flashback, Dennis Hopper, Kiefer Sutherland, Carol Kane, 1990
Okay, blame it on Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters (including “beatnik” bus driver/holdover Neal Cassady). Or blame it on a recently re-read of Tom Wolfe’s classic The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test that pays “homage” to Kesey, his Pranksters, their psychedelically-painted bus Further, and their various adventures and misadventures. Or, better, blame it on Jack Kerouac and that self-same Cassady for his On The Road. Whatever it is I am in a kind of “back to the future” 1960s counter-cultural mood today. And what figure, at least in some senses, represented an aspect of that scene better than the late Dennis Hopper’s character in the classic Easy Rider. And with that introduction/justification as a prompt out of the way other Hopper efforts have come to mind, including this 1990 send-up of some of the iconic figures of the 1960s, whether they deserved that status or not. Or whether they deserved the sent-up either, come to think of it.
In the character of 1960s radical icon Huey Walker, as played by Hopper, we have a prima facie case for not, self-admittedly, deserving that status. It seems that fugitive from the law Huey needs an angle to get his (probably) massive memoir published but needs a publicity hook to stir memories (and sales). So naturally he “snitches” on himself. The plot centers gearing up the ante on that publicity in the process of law enforcement (FBI and local) trying to move Huey from point A to point B, by train no less. To give Huey his just desserts and to cap off a fanciful recapture of the fugitive radical up steps a child of the 1960s children (admirers of Huey) turned renegade FBI Agent Borden (aka Free, played by Sutherland) who, however, in end, after myriad hi-jinks, comical or otherwise, finds his way back to his DNA core. Its in the genes, right?
Along the way we are also treated to send-ups of everything the 1960s stood for, from those gaudy buses to the antics or some rueful then middle- aged “liberation fighters”, at least according to the story writers. We are also treated to a very fetching Carol Kane as Earth Mother-last of the hippie remnant- who is holding out in…Oregon (must be something in the water. Kesey slipped back there after his legal hassles were over). The rest of the plot you can see for yourselves. And you should, if only to see Dennis Hopper playing….Dennis Hopper in mid-life. He carries this thing.
Note: This space usually preaches ‘high Trotskyism” and I would be remiss if I didn’t make at least one political counter-point to round out this review on this commercially-driven comedic effort. The 1960s had more than it far share of Huey Walker figures, like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and other leading Yippies, who started out with serious standard left-wing politics and a political compass and moved, sometimes ahead of the crowd , and sometimes by being pushed from behind to a more theatrical sense of politics (to be kind). The kind highlighted in Flashback.
Well, we were young then and made every political mistake in the book, except that those “mistakes” we made even from today’s vantage point, were nothing compared to the actions of the “monsters” (led by Johnson/Nixon) that we were fighting back then. And fighting for our very lives. Against a very vicious and vindictive FBI (to name only the most well-known law enforcement agency in the mix. There were plenty of others.) The work of ConIntelPro, central to the physical liquidation of the Black Panthers and other black liberation fighters should be etched in every leftist’s brain, for eternity. In the end the bourgeoisie got off easy, and got to keep its system. We, on the other are still rolling the rock up the hill. And know who, and who was not “on the side of the angels,” then and now.
I want to finish with the one truism that struck me from the film, although I am sure that the story writers did not intend it as such. Huey, as he is in the process of “bonding” with “Free” lets the cat out of the bag- being a fugitive sucks. Not as much as being a class-war prisoner behind bars like Marilyn Buck, David Gilbert, Mumia Abu-Jamal and others today or in exile like Assata Shakur, is but it still sucks. Why? As Huey candidly stated (and as many real life political fugitives, including ex- Weather Underground leaders Professor Bill Ayers , ya, that Bill Ayers, and Professor Bernadine Dorhn can testify to) you are literally on the run, can’t make lasting friends, have to look over you shoulder constantly and, most importantly, are out of the political loop. You are down there with Huey, half-forgotten in the mist of time. And while one cannot reasonably call those who were involved in the production of what is essentially a commercial comic look at past times (and sometimes a very funny look, at that) that little point needs to be made here.
DVD Review
Flashback, Dennis Hopper, Kiefer Sutherland, Carol Kane, 1990
Okay, blame it on Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters (including “beatnik” bus driver/holdover Neal Cassady). Or blame it on a recently re-read of Tom Wolfe’s classic The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test that pays “homage” to Kesey, his Pranksters, their psychedelically-painted bus Further, and their various adventures and misadventures. Or, better, blame it on Jack Kerouac and that self-same Cassady for his On The Road. Whatever it is I am in a kind of “back to the future” 1960s counter-cultural mood today. And what figure, at least in some senses, represented an aspect of that scene better than the late Dennis Hopper’s character in the classic Easy Rider. And with that introduction/justification as a prompt out of the way other Hopper efforts have come to mind, including this 1990 send-up of some of the iconic figures of the 1960s, whether they deserved that status or not. Or whether they deserved the sent-up either, come to think of it.
In the character of 1960s radical icon Huey Walker, as played by Hopper, we have a prima facie case for not, self-admittedly, deserving that status. It seems that fugitive from the law Huey needs an angle to get his (probably) massive memoir published but needs a publicity hook to stir memories (and sales). So naturally he “snitches” on himself. The plot centers gearing up the ante on that publicity in the process of law enforcement (FBI and local) trying to move Huey from point A to point B, by train no less. To give Huey his just desserts and to cap off a fanciful recapture of the fugitive radical up steps a child of the 1960s children (admirers of Huey) turned renegade FBI Agent Borden (aka Free, played by Sutherland) who, however, in end, after myriad hi-jinks, comical or otherwise, finds his way back to his DNA core. Its in the genes, right?
Along the way we are also treated to send-ups of everything the 1960s stood for, from those gaudy buses to the antics or some rueful then middle- aged “liberation fighters”, at least according to the story writers. We are also treated to a very fetching Carol Kane as Earth Mother-last of the hippie remnant- who is holding out in…Oregon (must be something in the water. Kesey slipped back there after his legal hassles were over). The rest of the plot you can see for yourselves. And you should, if only to see Dennis Hopper playing….Dennis Hopper in mid-life. He carries this thing.
Note: This space usually preaches ‘high Trotskyism” and I would be remiss if I didn’t make at least one political counter-point to round out this review on this commercially-driven comedic effort. The 1960s had more than it far share of Huey Walker figures, like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and other leading Yippies, who started out with serious standard left-wing politics and a political compass and moved, sometimes ahead of the crowd , and sometimes by being pushed from behind to a more theatrical sense of politics (to be kind). The kind highlighted in Flashback.
Well, we were young then and made every political mistake in the book, except that those “mistakes” we made even from today’s vantage point, were nothing compared to the actions of the “monsters” (led by Johnson/Nixon) that we were fighting back then. And fighting for our very lives. Against a very vicious and vindictive FBI (to name only the most well-known law enforcement agency in the mix. There were plenty of others.) The work of ConIntelPro, central to the physical liquidation of the Black Panthers and other black liberation fighters should be etched in every leftist’s brain, for eternity. In the end the bourgeoisie got off easy, and got to keep its system. We, on the other are still rolling the rock up the hill. And know who, and who was not “on the side of the angels,” then and now.
I want to finish with the one truism that struck me from the film, although I am sure that the story writers did not intend it as such. Huey, as he is in the process of “bonding” with “Free” lets the cat out of the bag- being a fugitive sucks. Not as much as being a class-war prisoner behind bars like Marilyn Buck, David Gilbert, Mumia Abu-Jamal and others today or in exile like Assata Shakur, is but it still sucks. Why? As Huey candidly stated (and as many real life political fugitives, including ex- Weather Underground leaders Professor Bill Ayers , ya, that Bill Ayers, and Professor Bernadine Dorhn can testify to) you are literally on the run, can’t make lasting friends, have to look over you shoulder constantly and, most importantly, are out of the political loop. You are down there with Huey, half-forgotten in the mist of time. And while one cannot reasonably call those who were involved in the production of what is essentially a commercial comic look at past times (and sometimes a very funny look, at that) that little point needs to be made here.
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