Drive, He Said

It's strange that while Easy Rider has often been credited with opening up Hollywood, its prime movers should subsequently have had such a hard time. But Hopper, Fonda and Nicholson all overreached next time out, and the fascinating Last Movie, Hired Hand and Drive, He Said each got pigeonholed - or shelved - as 'failures'. Nicholson's movie was nothing less than his own variant on W.R.- Mysteries of the Organism: a boldly-shot campus yarn of basketball and revolution turning on notions of Reichian sex-pol. No way can it be said to work, despite the cast's cultish distinction, but it still knocks most of its quasi-radical contemporaries sideways as an index of doomed '60s/'70s causes and confusions.