Possibly my favourite film
Published: Fri, 11/01/13
I first saw the film Easy Rider around about 1980. If you are
under 40 years old you might find it hard to imagine but in those
days if you wanted to see a film you generally had to go and see it
at the cinema. Of course films were broadcast on TV but it was a
limited selection and if you didn't catch the film as it was
shown you didn't see it. But in East Finchley, not too far
from my family home, there was a small independent Cinema called
the Phoenix and there they held late night showings of what are
sometimes called 'Cult Classics'. Mark Kermode the film
critic gained his early education into horror films other genre
movies there as a youngster. (I knew Mark slightly as a child, our
mothers are very old friends.).
Anyway about midnight, probably on a Saturday evening my friend
Colin and I rode our motorcycles down to East Finchley and watched
a double bill of Easy Rider and Performance, which featured Mick
Jagger. (I have never been quite sure why these films were often
paired in double bills, both involve drugs I suppose.)
Well I was quite blown away by it. A couple of years later I took
a girlfriend to see Easy Rider at the same place and after that
video tapes and later DVDs became commonplace. I have seen the
film several times since. I am not going into detail about the
film, you either know it or you can look it up on the Internet Movie
Data Base yourself (just put imdb into Google).
The important thing about the Easy Rider film is that it was
released in 1969 having been made independently of the big studios
and on a relatively tiny budget, about 350,000 dollars which even
in the late sixties was pocket change in film making terms. It
then went on to make 60 million dollars worldwide. That much is
true, however the mythology that was then promoted around the film
suggested that the production was the result of some stoned hippies
improvising in front of a camera and coming out with a masterpiece.
In fact Easy Rider was scripted by Terry Southern, one of the best
script writer of his generation. Dennis Hopper had been working in
films since he was a child actor including roles opposite James
Dean in Rebel without a Cause and Giant. Peter Fonda is the son of
cinema giant Henry. Peter had also worked in movies since his
youth and had made several films with Roger Corman who was the
master of low budget 'B' movies including the Wild Angels
and The Trip. The producers Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson had
been responsible for creating the Monkees between 1965 and 1967 and
the spin off film 'Head' in 1968. In fact it was the money
made from the Monkees that made making Easy Rider possible. Last
but not least Jack Nicholson was not at all well known at the time
but he was massively experienced in film making, as a script writer
as well as an actor. It is widely agreed that Nicholson's
performance as small town lawyer George Hanson makes the movie.
You either love or hate Easy Rider (or just don't get it at
all) but either way it was a landmark film. It would be fun to
believe that it all came about through amateurish improvisation.
But that simply isn't the case. To be as successful as it was
it needed a combination of a radical idea about counter culture
America and a team of classically trained experts in film making.
That is what created the result.
Creating a Stav centre and teaching Stav there is something
radically new. It will be different, fresh and innovative. But it
will be built on the foundation of my 40 years training in Martial
Arts, Ivar's much longer experience and what we have both
learned from traditions which go back hundreds of years.
Great things are built with new ideas and fresh inspiration, but
they can only come into reality on a foundation of established
expertise and knowledge.
I got a mention in the local paper, page nine of the current
Western Gazette you can see the online version here
http://www.westerngazette.co.uk/search/search.html?searchPhrase=martial+arts&where=
regards
Graham
PS Battle with the Mac continues, I liberated another 20 gig of
hard drive space in case that was the problem, but it isn't.
Oh well.