Vas-y, fonce

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 (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.

One of the more unusual movies I've ever seen is "Drive, He Said." Made in 1971 made by the same production company that made "Easy Rider" and "Five Easy Pieces" that made Jack Nicholson a star a year or two earlier.

This was the first film directed by Jack Nicholson. It's a combination basketball, free love, anti-draft movie that was filmed on the campus of the University of Oregon. It was not well-received at the time, and was somewhat infamous for its male frontal nudity scenes. The basketball skill level seemed very high.

It's basically the story of two friends--one a basketball star and Greek major who's hormones are raging and is undecided about a pro career. The other is a guy taking drugs to try to stay out of the draft, and basically he flips out.

I thought it was an interesting premise, but I found the speech of the main characters to be stilted. In some ways it captured the ethos of U. S. campuses in the Vietnam War era pretty well.

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.

Not much to make of this directorial debut by would-be star actor and frequent attendee of Los Angeles Lakers games Jack Nicholson, "Drive, He Said," which doesn't so much get its title from the basketball played in the film as it does from a poem, "I Know a Man," by Robert Creeley, which is recited at the beginning as the college hoops game is broadcast on a TV in the background. Soon thereafter, the poem-reciting, counterculture youths dressed in camouflage paramilitary regalia invade the gymnasium of the game to put on a bit of performance art that's as vaguely against, or agitated by, rather, American militarism--specifically the Vietnam War--as is the rest of the picture. Seems the war is such a weight on these young men's minds that it drives one to insanity and another to waffle over whether he wants to really play basketball or not.

Neither character arc is very compelling, and the crazy one is over-the-top ridiculous. There are easier ways to avoid a draft, guys, whether it's for the NBA or USA. And poor Karen Black having to put up with this tomfoolery and, worse, replaying an attempted-rape climax as old as D. W. Griffith silent films and the Victorian literature he in turn stole it from. The entire film is as muddled as its basketball footage with barely a narrative to be found, and it's undoubtedly dated as an independent film from the early '70s.

On the other hand, there's enough here, to use a cliché from another sport, out of left field to be at least bemusing. Plus, at least the actors evidently know how to dribble and shoot enough to keep up with apparent real former collegiate athletes. The Leopards team's mascot is a real, caged leopard that occupies the sidelines. A lot here concerning caged animals and letting them loose, which is the sort of motif that goes for symbolism in this picture. At one point, a montage of slow-motion basketball footage is played to "The Star-Spangled Banner." As the making-of-video included on the Criterion disc claims, it also includes some guerilla filmmaking exploiting a real riot that broke out during filming at the University of Oregon, which fits seamlessly within the rest of the picture's aesthetics. The remainder of the movie mostly seems to merely revel in the Sexual Revolution, including a considerable amount of focus on male genitalia. Nicholson claims he wanted a "symphony of dicks" during a locker-room shower scene, which supposedly he had to compromise on, but not by much.