Rating: 3/5
Criterion Challenge 2022 | 30/52 | America Lost and Found: The BBS Story
Wyatt and Billy pull up to La Contenta Bar in Mexico. There, they meet a cocaine dealer, trying the stuff before buying. In LA, they meet with a wealthy buyer. Wyatt counts the money, and the two ride off in their truck. Back at the garage, Wyatt stuffs the cash into plastic tubes and puts the tubes into his chopper’s Stars & Stripes fuel tank. Billy gets on his flame-themed chopper, and the two ride east to New Orleans.
The film follows the boys on the trip and the folks they meet along the way: a hitchhiker who brings them to a hippie commune, a square lawyer who joins the trip to New Orleans, and women whose sole purpose in the film is to fuck the men.
The film aims to be a modern Western, with Wyatt named after Wyatt Earp and Billy after Billy the Kid. Their Wild West is the world of drugs and performative counterculturalism. The soundtrack is wall-to-wall ’60s rock: Steppenwolf, The Band, Jimi Hendrix, etc. The actors use the drugs depicted—no fake stuff.
The performances are solid. Jack Nicholson’s uptight lawyer, George Hanson, is unconvincing but entertaining. Dennis Hopper looks and acts like he’s perpetually on the supply. Karen Black is perfect and has never done anything wrong.
The best part of the movie is the cinematography. Hopper, who is also a photographer, encouraged cinematographer László Kovács to use natural light when possible. The flickering transitions contrast well with the long shots of the boys riding through the countryside and the impromptu-feeling shots of wandering through the city. The LSD scene is the movie’s pinnacle.
Ultimately, the film feels like boys in Hollywood wanting to make an exploitation flick. Hopper tried to bring the movie to Roger Corman to produce, but Hopper scared off potential buyers. So, they took the project to Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson, who created The Monkees.
I’m sure the movie was exciting for all the trust-fund babies and rebellious upper-class kids it depicts. Today, however, the movie is a time capsule of a particular brand of self-indulgence that still draws in libertarians and the occasional teenager despite its obvious indictment of counterculture’s self-destructive tendencies. Or maybe I’m giving the filmmakers too much credit.