Arlo Guthrie’s 18-minute talking blues is a ‘60s counterculture classic that details true events of how a littering ticket he received for throwing away garbage at a dump when it was closed for Thanksgiving caused him to be considered ineligible for the Vietnam draft. It has become a tradition for classic rock stations to still give it a spin every Thanksgiving.
However, the film that was inspired by the song is a mess. Obviously, the song isn’t long enough to make a feature, so the filmmakers created a quasi-biography about Arlo, combined with a melodramatic hippie love triangle. Arlo’s story is very interesting, but the script doesn’t explore it enough. Of course, there was no obvious end to his story yet, but as the son of the dying folksinger Woody Guthrie and as a young man trying to find his way in the world there was good potential for drama, which a good writer could have mined. Instead, according to Arlo on the commentary track, we get an older person’s inaccurate version of hippies, which isn't compelling.
The melding of fact and fiction by these screenwriters creates a disjointed plot. It’s about an hour before the story of the song gets told, so the film begins with Arlo leaving school because the cops and the straight people constantly harass him. He joins his friends Ray and Alice in Stockbridge, MA. They have recently bought a church to live in that they open up to everyone. Arlo spends his time playing music and visiting his dying father in the hospital. When we finally get to the Thanksgiving dinner, the song plays on the soundtrack. Arlo and a friend get arrested for using the dump when it’s closed. They pay a small fine and with that mark on his record, Arlo avoids the draft.
One of the people Ray and Alice take in is Shelly, a drug addict fresh from rehab, who has an off-screen affair with Alice. The relationship between the three is nebulous because it’s never completely clear what anyone’s feelings are. Alice decides to open up a restaurant. Shelly rides motorcycles and has a heroin problem written by people who have obviously never been close to it or did any research about it.
Article comments
1 - Bryan McKay
It's awfully sad that Arthur Penn's career went absolutely nowhere after the breathtaking Bonnie and Clyde.
2 - Richard Marcus
El Bicho, yet another profound reasoning on why I've never sat through the thing. I find it interesting that all three people who have reviewed the movie, each from a different perspective, have all come to the same conclusion, that it is a bad movie.
To me such obvious concensus shouldn't be ignored, and although the song deserves to be dusted off and played every ten years, perhaps it is time to send this movie to an ignoble rest.
Thanks El Bicho for your contribuiton to our Arlofest
Richard
3 - El Bicho
Thanks for the compliment, Richard. What I found telling from the different articles is the personality of the writers shining through.
For Al, it seemed to validate his views on the pointlessness and dead end of the hippie lifestyle. I thought the film was telling me that, but it felt forced and didn't naturally occur from the story. I didn't see why it all fell apart, just that it did, so it was bad. No lifestyle works for everyone, but Jack Nicholson seems to be doing just fine with his artist's lifestyle that includes sex and drugs.
In regards to the drugs, I don't know what the film was saying. When Shelly ran out after his stash was caught, he went on an extended motorcycle ride. We cut to the hippies collecting his body and I'm guessing Penn was saying he o.d. Considering we saw more of him racing through the streets at night than shooting heroin, a fatal traffic accident would be just as believable from what the film shows us.
I do agree with Al that the filmmakers were going for something 180 [did keyboards ever have degree symbols?] degrees different than the song, but that begs the question why would they bother doing it under the banner of "Alice" and did Arlo know this when he sold the rights to the song? It would be like Sousa selling "Stars and Stripes" and the movie version being anti-American.
For Scott, the idealist, he was slightly rattled by reality of the film, of the plot and the film's failings. Now I don't know either gentleman except through the occassional article or email, and I'm not intending to be insulting, but I think out of the three of us Scott would have been the most likely to have been a hippie back in the day, although I definitely would have gone to a number of the parties. Being older might have helped the enjoyment of the film; being stoned wouldn't.
Thanks for the opportunity, Richard.
4 - Lucas McNelly
"It's awfully sad that Arthur Penn's career went absolutely nowhere after the breathtaking Bonnie and Clyde."
except that he was nominated for an Oscar for this film. i don't get all the hate for this. I expected it to be pretty awful and found instead that it was rather good. a little disjointed, sure, but not bad by any means.
5 - -E
Congrats! This article has been selected as one of this week’s Editors’ Picks.
6 - Scott Butki
For Scott, the idealist, he was slightly rattled by reality of the film, of the plot and the film's failings. Now I don't know either gentleman except through the occassional article or email, and I'm not intending to be insulting, but I think out of the three of us Scott would have been the most likely to have been a hippie back in the day, although I definitely would have gone to a number of the parties."
That's the nicest thing anyone has said to me all week.
7 - Scott Butki
This excerpt from the savant review nicely touches on what probably irked
me about the movie:
"Their biggest and bravest idea was to write a movie with no real plot, just a beginning and ending; the narrative focusing on the adventures of Arlo interwoven with the rise and fall of the dreams of Ray and poor Alice. "