it happened sometime in my sophomore year
and I blame it all on Jack...
          up until then I was a good kid, I swear (JP, you are such a liar...) and had it not been for Easy Rider, likely to have grown up and voted republikan. Yourstruly got to see About Schmidt la otra noche, had been looking forward to it for some little while, first reading about it in one film mag or another, positive vibration out of the film festivals, and I didn't come away disappointed, came away with something entirely other than a purely critical opinion in terms of goodfilm/notsogoodfilm on whatever level your criteria's based on, something a good deal more personal that induced this sort of pleasant reverie of an earlier time in this boy's life, my initial introduction to Jack Nicholson, my awareness of his work and how many of his films had marked milestones in my life over the years I've been watching him.
There was a theatre within walking distance of the house my parents once owned, on Pikes Peak, called the Northgate, and that, one fine summer evening, was where I saw Easy Rider. Even the Momz realized something had struck a chord in her eldest boy, 'course I was young & dumb and susceptible, you know? And what the hell does that have to do with About Schmidt? well, gimme a second here, alright? There is nothing in what I will describe here that gives away anything important in A.S., but amongst a few other things that I found interesting are those few moments of time when Jack's character is sitting atop a vehicle at night, with some lit candles in front of him, he's looking up at the sky, and I immediately hearkened back to that time years previously when it was this same actor,
in this other film when he is sitting in front of a campfire with Fonda & Hopper alongside, talking about, amongst other things, extraterrestrials, well, it was one of those moments where some benovolent force in the universe allows one the perception of some kind of "click", like tumblers falling into place allowing a kind of crazy logic to manifest itself where it wasn't able to previously. It was also interesting when I went about seeking some linkage & backround material afterwards and found this next item, making note of a curiously similiar response.
I mean, there was some serious shit going down in the sixties (when isn't there Mr. Smartyboots?) and while Easy Rider was simply a low budget road movie about a couple of bike riding stoners, to me it was much more, something along the lines of a clarion call, it was unfortunate that I was stuck in El Paso, well, again, maybe if I'd been in San Francisco or Ann Arbor, New York, any one of a number of places outside of that West Texass town, I suppose things would have turned out altogether differently, if I'd managed to survive being closer to where it was all happening. It is certainly the point in time in my life when I had to spend intellectual energy on the question of Violence/Non-violence and just where would I make my stand. Aside from a few of my peers, I'd say a good many young men my age were fully expecting to go to Viet Nam, many of them unquestioningly, as that was what a Good American did. There were nearly daily lessons in which you had to ask yourself, What is Right Behavior here, what would Doing the Right Thing entail, and did one have the courage to commit. Typing that, I had to stop and think "kind of like now, do you decide to support the current administration's follies or do you finally decide that you've had enough of their bullshit, Binky? The biggest difference between then and now? No one is making any film even remotely like Easy Rider.
Funny what can happen when you decide to go to a movie on a Sunday night, particularly if you've been around a little while, and have been making some effort all along to pay attention. I got started on this little labor earlier this morning, and stopped about midway along, met up with a friend and spent part of the afternoon on a nice walk outdoors, some aimless conversation, kind of worrying all along I was going to lose the thread, the diversion of energy would result in some dilution of the idea that had been simmering all along since the night I watched About Schmidt. Like I wrote in the first line here, I blame it on Jack, but I sure don't resent him for it, am sort of thankful really, grateful for his presence and the legacy he'll leave behind, the same way I'm grateful for John Lennon, Noam Chomsky, well, I'll stop there 'cause that could end up being a very long list, and I'll end this here, with some lines of dialogue from Easy Rider, seems they be just as valid now as they were then.

George: You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can't understand what's gone wrong with it.
Billy: Huh. Man, everybody got chicken, that's what happened, man. Hey, we can't even get into like, uh, second-rate hotel, I mean, a second-rate motel. You dig? They think we're gonna cut their throat or something, man. They're scared, man.
George: Oh, they're not scared of you. They're scared of what you represent to 'em.
Billy: Hey man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody needs a haircut.
George: Oh no. What you represent to them is freedom.
Billy: What the hell's wrong with freedom, man. That's what it's all about.
George: Oh yeah, that's right, that's what it's all about, all right. But talkin' about it and bein' it - that's two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. 'Course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom, but they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em.
Billy: Mmmm, well, that don't make 'em runnin' scared.
George: No, it makes 'em dangerous.