Dennis Hopper and "Easy Rider" at 40

NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday broadcast an interview with Dennis Hopper yesterday (May 2) about the movie "Easy Rider" on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of its release.

Hopper is a smart, interesting guy who's been in the movie business for years (one of his earliest roles was as the son of Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor in "Giant"). His reflections on "Easy Rider" are fun to hear (what were his and Peter Fonda's characters looking for in the movie? "I think we were looking to make a big score and retire to Florida").

My favorite take on "Easy Rider" is the UK TV ad above. I first saw it in Europe in 1999 and have laughed about it ever since. Thanks to some sophisticated special effects, Hopper plays opposite his character from the film.

He's selling the Ford Cougar. According to a "making-of" documentary, also on YouTube, Ford's marketing surveys found that Cougar owners were quiet on the outside but sort of rebels inside. Hence, Hopper's appearance in the ad and the use of "Easy Rider."

But things have changed, as the ad shows. At the end, the contemporary Hopper leaves the "Easy Rider" Hopper in his rear view mirror. His little laugh is just perfect.

God hates fangs

Stephen Moyer as vampire Bill Compton in "True Blood."

Photo courtesy HBO

Vampires don't usually do too much for me, but I have to admit that I've gotten a bit hooked on HBO's new series, "True Blood." It's funny, creepy and unsettling and it's set in the South, so it pretty much hits the grand slam of oddball horror and cracked behavior.

The show (by "Six Feet Under" creator Alan Ball) is based on a series of Southern vampire novels by Charlaine Harris. The premise: A Japanese company has developed synthetic blood that provides all the vampires' basic nutritional needs, allowing them to make themselves known and to ask for the same rights that humans have.

Ball said in a radio interview that he sold this to HBO as "popcorn TV," which it mostly is. There's some subtle comment on anti-vampire discrimination and religious intolerance that has parallels to anti-gay sentiment, but mostly it's just weird and fascinating and bloody.

The best part of the show is the opening credits (below). Newsweek notes that opening credits are sort of a dying art, but Ball uses them to great effect to open "True Blood" with a sense of doom. Shot on film at various speeds and printed with some colors overly saturated and others muted, the credits are like a Southern Gothic fever dream brought to life, gators and religious hysterics included. And on the soundtrack, Jace Everett growls, "I wanna do bad things to you." Oh, yeah!

Too bad they didn't borrow this look for the series itself:

'Generation Kill:' The view from inside the Humvee

"Gentlemen, from now on we're going to have to earn our stories."

                                              -- Sgt. Brad "Iceman" Colbert, "Generation Kill"

The best movie of the summer isn't on the screens of your local multiplex, it's on HBO. And it ends this Sunday.

"Generation Kill" is a miniseries based on Rolling Stone reporter Evan Wright's non-fiction account of his ride with a Marine reconnaissance patrol during the first 40 days of the Iraq war (produced by David Simon and Ed Burns, the guys behind "The Wire"). It's funny, profane and scary. It's at its best when it captures the simple tedium of war as the Marines drive and wait and drive some more and wonder if they will ever see action.

When I've tried to describe the series to friends, I tell them that the thing it does best is to put you inside that Humvee with those Marines. You listen to them talk and boast and chatter endlessly. The radio spits out bulletins and orders. The Marines talk about their fears and frustrations. They stop to take a shit beside the road (no flush toilets for these guys). And, every once in a while, bullets slash through the night or an explosion rips the calm of a village.

When Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" came out, William Arnold, our film critic at the Seattle P-I, said that he thought it was a new way of presenting a war, that the film simply put you in the middle of of the battle and let you experience it as the soldiers did. "Generation Kill" owes much to Spielberg (the first 20 minutes of "Private Ryan," I think, may be the most significant contribution to film he has made). No John Wayne heroics or plot lines here, just guys trying to do their job and stay alive (and sane) in a very bad place.

The episodes start quietly and move through the mundane until the fight begins. Handheld cameras put you in the middle of the action. It's confusing, just as I imagine a real battlefield is. And sometimes, mistakes are made, just as on a real battlefield. At the end, you're shaken and confused and profoundly moved.

The director Sam Fuller once said that the best way to make a war movie would be to take shots at the audience every once in a while to make them feel what it's like to be in the middle of the real thing (but he admitted that might be bad for business). "Generation Kill" comes surprisingly close to doing that. In the end, the guys in the Humvee are heroes not because they are Rambo or super patriots, but because they simply survive this badly managed invasion, are there for their buddies, and come out with their dignity intact.

It's an amazing series and I'm sad to see it end. If you don't have HBO, look for it on DVD in a few months.

Elvis Mitchell's radio show, The Treatment, has a great interview with Susanna White, the Brit who directed the first three episodes and the last one. 

UPDATE: The last episode just finished airing. I may write more about it later. Among the many things that struck me, one was that, like another great anti-war film, "M*A*S*H," "Generation Kill" ends with a football game. But where Robert Altman played that scene for laughs, the game in "Generation Kill" becomes a reflection of the Marines' anger and frustration with the war and with each other. Fists fly and finally someone says, "Maybe we shouldn't play football anymore." Amen.

And then the episode ends with a video (some of it actually shot by Marines in Iraq) set to Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around." As Star-Ledger blogger Alan Sepinwall notes, it's almost a cliche but you have to give "Generation Kill" a pass because the song is such a perfect fit.

Stay frosty.

Spike Lee's Oscar commercial

The Academy Awards are trying to combat falling ratings by focusing this year's Oscar ceremony on the general appeal of the movies to the U.S. audience. You'd think they would focus on making better movies but that's the American way: hype over content.

Anyway, Spike Lee has created a series of TV spots for the Academy and the first one, featuring average people delivering famous movie lines, can be viewed at Oscar.com. It's a hoot and worth watching. My favorite is the woman pictured above delivering the most famous line from "Godfather III" (and just about the only good thing from that film): "Just when I thought that I was out they pull me back in."

See if you can identify all the rest. I was stumped by only one: "Don't shove me Harv. I'm tired of being shoved. " The Internet Movie Database can help if you're stuck.

Too bad the Oscar broadcast (5 p.m. PT, Feb. 25) won't be as witty as this TV spot.

To see the ad, go to www.Oscar.com and click on the icon that says "The 79th Academy Awards on ABC" in the video section of the home page.

"Rosebud!"

UPDATE: The ad is now online at YouTube. Hurry before they pull it down!