THE TRIP 1967
36%
Directed by Roger Corman
Written by Jack Nicholson
Starring Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, Susan Strasberg, Dennis Hopper
Synopsis
TV commercial director Paul is going through a divorce from wife, Sally. To find relief, he smokes reefer, meets free-love spirits, and embarks on his first acid trip.
Why We Love It
It’s the sixties, and American independent cinema is swinging! John Cassavetes’s pioneering Shadows had laid out the blueprint: interior films smaller than what the studios were interested in, with personal stories pawing at greater truths and fueled by raw method acting. And for The Trip, method research equaled LSD sessions with Peter Fonda, Roger Corman, and Jack Nicholson. The triad’s quest: depict honestly the counterculture they were living, a sub-society that was letting subconscious desires flow onto the walls its members had painted, into the psych rock they danced with all night, and through the free love inflicted upon each other’s bodies.
Fonda’s Paul, his impending divorce affecting work, visits John (Bruce Dern), a gentle bearded shaman who plies people back to reality with apple juice. John procures the acid that Paul proceeds to drop, and soon he’s off into the inner void, where questions of the self slumbered, now confronting answers. Cloaked and masked figures chase Paul around on horse. There are remembrances of carnal pleasure. Reality and fantasy begin to blur. Paul surrenders to the superorganism that he exists as a part of, that connects him to all life in the universe. He can feel the energy pouring off a piece of fruit. He laughs at a washing machine.
The journey is first merry and then nightmarish. It’s told through kaleidoscopic effects, blasts of projected lights, avant-garde editing, and sequences of rapid-fire, loosely related imagery.
Some critics took significant displeasure in The Trip’s garish, cut-up filmmaking, hackneyed performances, and wandering plot, and anyone watching the film today without the right frame of mind—ahem—might find it downright laughable. But for the common bohemian, this was a movie that came out at the right place, right time. In 1967, the nation’s eyes were on San Francisco and its dawning Summer of Love, so the Los Angeles–set Trip is like a rambling postcard from southern California. American independent filming (now in full color!) was opening up our world, earnestly capturing the little dramas, victories, and setbacks that make up our day-to-day existence. And here, it’s attempting to peer into the frontiers of the mind.