Drive, He Said

Poorly developed and fragmented movie about a confused college basketball player with a host of predictably militant and/or cynically unhappy acquaintances characteristic of 1960s academia where the film is set. I'm not sure whether we are supposed to like or even care about the characters or not, but in any event I didn't feel much of either for any of them. Jack Nicholson directed this movie with a taste for profanity and nudity. I guess he thought he was being provocative and progressively mirroring the changing cultural mores of the time. He would have fared better by putting his energy into developing characterization and refining the script that he co-wrote instead. All in all a disappointing movie which left me with a feeling of indifference about it.

Drive, He Said, Jack Nicholson's first solo outing as writer/director for BBS Productions, one of the first true indie film powerhouses, is unfortunately also it's first genuine misfire and failure for good reason: the film is virtually unwatchable.

Nicholson, while unquestionably being one of the greatest actors of our time, never seemed to get much guidance (not one of BBS' strong suits) when writing scripts. He co-wrote Head with Bob Rafelson, mostly stoned, and that actually kind of worked given that film's stream of consciousness/acid-trip feel. At least there was a guiding vision (probably by Rafelson) --- a genuine point to be made. That Nicholson was allowed to botch Jeremy Larner's lauded novel (with help from Larner) is inexcusable. It might have worked better had the actors just been allowed to improv all of their lines...it certainly couldn't have been worse.

Simple elements of the story --- that the college basketball hotshot hero (William Tepper) is boning the wife of a *professor* (not just a random boyfriend) is just glossed over and left for the audience to assume. It makes no real difference, because this story line (like all the others) never goes anywhere. Characters flounder in and out of scenes, overact, underact, mumble their lines, all seemingly at random. It gives you new appreciation for the directors who can pull this type of renegade filmmaking off well (Rafelson, Altman, Cassevetes). You simply cannot stand back and let the actors do whatever they feel like, which is obviously what Nicholson did. He mistakes indie filmmaking with making a documentary film (and even that's a stretch as most docs have a better sense of story and purpose).

Yes, I know the real point is supposed to be the juxtaposition between the go-go rah-rah pointlessness of the basketball story contrasted with the over-the-top campus radical B story starring the unfortunately untalented (and maybe just undirected) Michael Margotta as a guy so intent on dodging the draft that he will incite riots, streak, attempt to assault and rape a woman in her own home, and then loose an entire room of lab animals on each other just to be declared mentally unfit. It's all as subtle as being hit on the head with a sledgehammer and just as artful and entertaining.

If you can endure Karen Black screaming her lungs out for over five minutes straight, you just might have a chance at sitting through this interminably long ninety minute snoozer. If you buy the Criterion BBS box (an awesome set, by the way), it's worth a look because it's such a freak show, otherwise don't bother.

Note that when you read a positive review of this movie though, it is usually slathered with praise about it's nostalgia and social value/accuracy as a "gritty portrait of our times" in regards to early '70s campus friction.

There's a good reason for that too: with a movie as flimsily made as Drive, He Said, you MUST bring something to the equation yourself. God knows it isn't on the film itself.

I attended college in the late Sixties, and I wanted to chime in with Titov and others who says that this is one of only a handful of movies that captures the time as lived experience rather than journalistic cliché. I can think of only three or four others: "Baby, It's You"; "Dog Fight"; and to some extent Milos Forman's first American film, "Taking Off." Not one of these films is available on Netflix. I saw each when it came out. "Taking Off" was revived pretty often for three or four years, so there must have been others who liked it as much as I did. The others I haven't seen since they were first in theaters, so I can'be sure of my present reaction. But for 40 years I've remembered the last line of "Drive, He Said," which says something.

This may be the only film that actually comes close to capturing on film the essentially uncapturable world of the American college experience of the late 60s-early 70s. Go ahead, name another movie that even approaches this one: "Getting Straight"? "RPM"? These are caricatures. "Return of the Secaucus Seven" has its moments, but that's a retrospective film about (self-obsessed) individuals more than a film about a time and a place depicted *in* that time and place. "Drive, He Said" portrays-- with subtlety and nuance where it should, and a swift kick in the shorts where that's the only appropriate way-- the anti-draft movement, the ambiguity of big-time college sports (especially when there's a war on), the sexual revolution of the period, and the general unreality of the day. Believe me, it was like that.

The whole cast deserves commendation (as does the director, of course) but particular praise should be reserved for Bruce Dern, as the basketball coach, and Karen Black, the hero's very unusual-- except for that time-- love interest. William Tepper, as the lead, also rates a real round of applause both for his perfect capturing of the student-athlete of the period and for actually playing real college basketball in the film (remember Anthony Perkins in "Tall Story"? Yikes!).

All in all, a classic of a kind-- and the last film someone currently in 6th grade should be writing comments on ("boring", "repellent"-- um, right, sonny, please go back to your Arnold movies). Why isn't this film available from imdb?

Drive, He Said (1971)

** (out of 4)

Jack Nicholson's directorial debut is a confussing mess but here goes. The film deals with a troubled basketball star (William Tepper) who's caught in an affair with a teacher's wife (Karen Black). The only person trying to make him go straight is his coach (Bruce Dern) but outsiders keep stepping in the way. The film was also co-written by Nicholson and most of the blame can start right here. The film is all over the place and it seems there are enough story lines for at least five other movies. There's also a subplot with a friend who's trying to dodge the draft, which goes no where and leads to some pretty over the top, wannabe serious moments. The one thing going for the film are some pretty good performances, although it appears Dern is trying to give a Nicholson impersonation. Nicholson's direction hits a few good notes but in the end this seems like something that would have only been shown on TV. Needless to say it's never gotten an official release on home video.