The Trip (1967 film)

The Trip

Theatrical poster to The Trip (1967)
Directed by Roger Corman
Produced by Roger Corman
Written by Jack Nicholson
Starring
Music by Mike Bloomfield, The American Music Band
Cinematography Arch Dalzell
Edited by Ronald Sinclair
Distributed by American International Pictures (1967, original)
MGM (2003, DVD)
Release dates
 1967
Running time
 85 minutes
Language English
Budget $100,000[1]
Box office $10 million[2]

The Trip (1967) is a counterculture-era psychedelic film released by American International Pictures, directed by Roger Corman, written by Jack Nicholson, and shot on location in and around Los Angeles, including on top of Kirkwood in Laurel Canyon, Hollywood Hills, and near Big Sur, California in 1967. Peter Fonda stars as a young television commercial director, Paul Groves.

Plot

Paul Groves (Peter Fonda), a television commercial director, takes his first dose of LSD while experiencing the heartbreak and ambivalence of divorce from his beautiful but adulterous wife (Susan Strasberg). He starts his trip with a "guide," John (Bruce Dern), but runs away and abandons him out of fear.

As Paul experiences his trip, he wanders around the Sunset Strip, into nightclubs, and the homes of strangers and acquaintances. He considers the roles played by commercialism, sex, the role of women in his life. He meets a young woman, Glenn (Salli Sachse), who is interested in people who take LSD. Having learned from Paul recently that he would be taking LSD, she has been looking out for him. Max (Dennis Hopper) plays a role as another guide to his trip.

Glenn drives Paul to a beach house, where they have passionate sexual relations. As the sun rises, Paul steps out to the balcony to get some air. Glenn asks him whether his first LSD experience was constructive. Paul defers his answer to "tomorrow." His face is frozen in close-up, and his image cracks like glass through an animation special effect.

Production

Corman wildly edited some scenes for The Trip, particularly the exterior night scenes on the Sunset Strip, to simulate the LSD user's racing mind. The Trip features photographic effects, body paint on seminude actresses to lend atmosphere, and colorful patterned lighting, during sex scenes and in a club, which imitates LSD-induced hallucinations. Finally, Corman included inscrutable fantasy sequences including one where Fonda is faced with revolving pictures of Che Guevara, Sophia Loren and Khalil Gibran in a wildly lit room. For no apparent reason, a little person riding a merry-go-round in the background blurts "Bay of Pigs!!" The story plays over a musical backdrop of improvisational jazz, blues rock of the band The Electric Flag, plus an exotic musical score with an organ and horn-drenched theme.

Roger Corman did research by taking LSD himself. Charles B. Griffith wrote the first two drafts of the script—the first one was about the social issues of the sixties, the second one was an opera.[1][3] Corman then hired Jack Nicholson to write the eventual screenplay. Corman encouraged Nicholson's experimental writing style and gives between 80 and 90 percent credit to Nicholson for the shooting script in the director's commentary appearing on the DVD of this film. Corman slightly modified the story to stay within budget.

Whilst most of the music actually used in the film was by Mike Bloomfield's Electric Flag, it is interesting to note that early visuals (e.g. the band in the club at the start of the film) are of Gram Parsons and the International Submarine Band, one of the earliest country-rock bands. It had been Fonda's original intention to use the ISB's music on the soundtrack but, in the event, their contribution was deemed insufficiently "psychedelic" or trippy to warrant inclusion and the Bloomfield/Buddy Miles/Nick Gravenites Electric Flag is what is actually heard in the film.

Release

The film had huge censorship problems in the UK and was refused a certificate 4 times by the BBFC. A cinema classification was rejected in 1967, 1971 and 1980, and again for video in 1988. It was eventually released on DVD fully uncut in 2004.

The movie was very popular. Corman says it took $6 million in rentals.[4] According to Variety, $5.1 million was in North America.[5]

Home Media

The Trip was released in a Region 1 DVD by MGM on April 15, 2003, doubled with a similar film, Psych-Out, in a 2-disc set.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Mark McGee, Faster and Furiouser: The Revised and Fattened Fable of American International Pictures, McFarland, 1996 p255
  2. ↑ "The Trip, Worldwide Box Office". Worldwide Box Office. Retrieved February 26, 2012.
  3. ↑ Aaron W. Graham, 'Little Shop of Genres: An interview with Charles B. Griffith', Senses of Cinema, 15 April, 2005 accessed 25 June 2012
  4. ↑ Roger Corman & Jim Jerome, How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime, Muller, 1990 p 153
  5. ↑ "All-time Film Rental Champs", Variety, 7 January 1976 p 46
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