The LA Times' Sunday magazine, called West, has an article about a little known movie called Cisco Pike a "hippie-burnout drama … in which the optimism of the 1960s slips into the disappointing loneliness that Los Angeles can cultivate like no other city." It stars Kris Kristofferson as a one-hot wonder rock musician who now needs to deal dope to make ends meet. Gene Hackman, Harry Dean Stanton, and Karen Black* also star.
It was finally released on DVD this year to little fanfare—so little that Norton didn't know of the release until I contacted him. In a final indignity, the packaging was adorned with this supremely backhanded compliment from critic Leonard Maltin: "Surprisingly Good."
But Cisco Pike is much more than that: It belongs in a pantheon of films—along with Sunset Boulevard, Mi Vida Loca and Valley Girl — that have managed to capture in-the-moment pieces of the L.A. landscape that are no more.
Kristofferson's character, Cisco Pike, can't accept that his 1966 song "Breakdown" will stand as his only hit. Now he sends out demo tapes, collects rejections and bitterly corrects music-biz slicksters about the trivia of his distant career:
"I saw you guys at the Forum in, what was it, '68?"
"The Shrine '67."
(*Karen Black rode in the same train with my family and I last week. She's one of my favorite actresses so it was fun. I didn't want to bug her but my three-year-old daughter had a chatty conversation with her about make-up.)
