Philip Baker Hall in Zabriskie Point

I've always been fascinated by the movie Zabriskie Point. Even with a simple story, there is so much going on, so many ways to appreciate it; I don't think it counts as a cult movie - not a big enough cult - but the appeal of the film stretches so wide for me, is so multi-layered, that I certainly can be said to have a cult relationship to it. 

Some of these aspects: the film boasts... 

...a great soundtrack: there are inspired juxtapositions of the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, Roscoe Holcomb and Patti Page that show a very interesting take on "American music" (Yes, yes, the Stones are not American, but the music they are inspired by is). The Pink Floyd tracks that bookend the film, "Heart Beat, Pig Meat" and the explosion scene (which is the music that the film is supposed to close on, though some versions throw in a terribly misplaced Roy Orbison track the studio insisted upon) are some of my favourite of their Saucerful of Secrets years, trippy abstractions that defy easy categorization. Any film that ranges from music like that to "The Tennessee Waltz" in one soundtrack is all right with me. And the famous, lovely Jerry Garcia-scored "hippies making love in the desert" set-piece is actually meant to be understood as an acid trip; if you watch carefully, you'll see the leads sharing some blotter before it all starts. It's still one of my favourite filmic representations of sex - sex as polymorphous, polyamorous play - even if you sense that Antonioni is getting a bit misty-eyed for the American youth movement. Apparently he and John Fahey came to blows in a discussion of politics and Fahey lost the privilege of scoring this segment himself, though his "Dance of Death" still appears, later in the film. 

...a weird backstory on the cast: Mark Frechette, for example - the youngest guy in the top picture, about to try to cadge a sandwich  - was a member of the Mel Lyman "cult" (Lyman, who was affiliated with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, was tagged "the East Coast Charles Manson" by Rolling Stone). After briefly acting in two other Italian-made films, one of which, a WWI movie directed by Francesco Rosi called Many Wars Ago, I highly recommend - he ended up robbing a bank (apparently hoping to finance an American film adaptation of Crime and Punishment with the money) and dying in prison at age 27. Fellow Lyman enthusiast Daria Halprin, briefly married to Dennis Hopper (and later a yoga teacher) appeared with Frechette on Dick Cavett to tell people not to waste their time on the movie. Which Cavett is duly amused by. Nothing against the actual name actor who appears in the film, Rod Taylor, but personally I love that Antonioni fills the screen with faces you've never seen before, non-professionals and first-timers and Lyman cultists. Not a boring face in the film, except maybe Rod Taylor's (though he's meant to be boring, so...). 

There's also a singular backstory on the film's director, Michelangelo Antonioni, who, having begun as a revered European arthouse filmmaker, had had a huge hit with Blow Up - y'know, mimes playing tennis, the Yardbirds, David Hemmings as a photographer in swingin' London - which is actually vastly less kind to the youth culture it depicts, Antonioni seeming full of judgment about his characters' shallowness and stupidity (it's been awhile since I watched it but I don't remember him seeming exactly fond of the scene, which hostility gets less convincing when you see, for example, how wrong he gets the behaviour of a rock concert audience in the Yardbirds scene. I'm with the Guardian reviewer in thinking Zabriskie Point the superior film). Blow Up was such a hit that Antonioni got bankrolled to come to America and make a movie there for MGM, back in the days when studios actually took risks (sometimes without realizing how big those risks were). Properly understood, Zabriskie Point offers a European perception of America, which you kind of need to bear in mind, especially since Antonioni seems to fall completely in love with the American youth movement, making an unabashedly sentimental film. This rubbed viewers wrong, at the time, but if you're watching it with an awareness of what it is (and better still, an appreciation of other Antonioni's), if you're thoughtful enough in your film viewing to be able to step back and observe how the film is shot through (figuratively) rose-coloured lenses, you'll be fascinated.

...which will be only aided by the astonishing, sumptuous visuals. Apparently the documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself, which I have never seen, comments at some length on Zabriskie Point's representation of LA; I can't speak to that. But the film - intended, I am sure, as an acid-trip movie - has some very striking imagery, from the playful dogfight between the car and plane in the desert to the aforesaid lovemaking and building-exploding tableaus to what feels like documentary-style footage of the radical student movement and campus protests. The "gunshot" scene is deliberately framed so that it riffs off Blow Up - you can't really be sure what happened in that moment. Some of the filmmaking actually gets quite abstracted, at times, and at times this abstraction is enhanced by Pink Floyd's music. They don't make movies like this anymore; in fact, even back then, they barely ever did. 

...And how many feature films are there that actually are structured to be watched on LSD? I don't think even 2001 was. Zabriskie Point is up there with the Roeg/ Cammell film Performance as a movie that you really are meant to watch under the influence; psychedelics are to Zabriskie Point what 3D is to Avatar. If you've only seen Avatar in 2D, you haven't really seen the film. I wish I'd tried to reach out to Sam Shephard about the film at some point; he was involved in the writing of it, but I have no idea what he felt about the finished product or what his actual contributions were.

As I say, you might be able to find fault with Zabriskie Point for its sentimentality, naivete and idealism - I won't argue with you, really; people who hated Easy Rider probably won't be very compelled by Zabriskie Point (I actually offered to send a copy to Peter Stampfel, in that regard,  to see if he liked it better, and given that he was friends with Sam Shepard; he declined my offer). But all told, I think the film is a bit more complex than it was given credit for being, at the time of its release. For instance, assuming Daria is stoned out of her gourd when she fantasizes the house blowing up at the end, does that make the scene an endorsement of direct action (given that it's only happening in her head) or a condemnation of psychedelics (given that, again, it's only happening in her head...?). Or is it something that is neither, exactly - a sentimental gesture towards the feelings and desires of the youth movement, coupled with a slightly melancholy realization that they won't amount to anything? (Of course, I think some people out there who poured derision on the film have it that she's ACTUALLY blowing up the house, that she's suddenly acquired Firestarter-esque psi-powers of some sort; I hope we can just dismiss that interpretation as the fruit of literal-minded laziness, unworthy of consideration). One of the key arguments in the film comes when Daria challenges Mark to play a "death game," designed to teach him that violence and killing and blowing things up are not the way to change society; the film is remarkably unclear at the end as to who wins that argument. Is the film's ultimate message that "It's okay to blow things up, but only in your head?" I suspect the critics who condemned the film for its simplicity couldn't begin to answer these questions... so JUST HOW SIMPLE IS IT?

I mean, I love this movie, what can I say. Wish there was a proper blu-ray of it with the correct score, because it drives me nuts that all I have is a DVD that ends on that lame Roy Orbison tack-on (I like Roy, but not this). No idea why there's been no subsequent release, since this lazy DVD churn-out; wish a boutique label would pony up the money to do the film justice. 

End rant, but... now to the point of things: if you want really trivial reason to see Zabriskie Point, apropos of recent obituaries, it turns out that the film has Philip Baker Hall's first role. He's the deli clerk in the top photo - an uncredited role, but confirmed on IMDB and elsewhere. He was in his late 30's and quite a bit more portly, such that it's almost hard to believe it's him, but if you listen to the scene where the customer is trying to get more meat on his hoagie, the line "if ya wants extra, ya pay extra" is delivered distinctly in Hall's voice. I've included a still I think from Magnolia that makes it easier to see that it is, indeed, Hall. I never would have realized this if I hadn't gone to IMDB, on reading that Hall had died, to see what his first film was; I was floored to learn it was this. 

I had nothing against Philip Baker Hall - he's good in the films I saw him in. I wasn't exactly a big fan or anything. But I'm a big fan of Zabriskie Point, and thought this was an interesting discovery.