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“Raise A Glass To Peter” Fonda

Peter Fonda

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8 Responses to ““Raise A Glass To Peter” Fonda”

  1. Pete B. says:

    He made a great Mephistopheles in 2007’s Ghost Rider!
    (Got tired of seeing “No Comments” for this post.)

  2. movieman says:

    I recently rewatched Fonda’s directing debut, 1971’s “The Hired Hand,” and thought it was a lost (minor) New Hollywood masterpiece.
    First saw it on a double-bill w/ Hopper’s “The Last Movie” in March 1972 when I was in 8th grade and hated both of them, lol.

    Now I think “Last Movie” is possibly Hopper’s best film, and “HH”…well, I already said how I feel about it in the opening line.

  3. Paul N says:

    First Fonda movie I remember scared me silly. It was that “classic” Race with the Devil. Nighttime creepy fun. Always thought he was one of those lucky guys that got to rid the family fame. Definitely came around to him having his own voice once I got a bit older. Was one of those “cool as a cucumber” dudes for sure.

  4. spassky says:

    “Now I think “Last Movie” is possibly Hopper’s best film, and “HH”…well, I already said how I feel about it in the opening line.”

    Aww man what about “out of the blue”? Downright masterpiece, that one.

  5. Ray Pride says:

    OUT OF THE BLUE has nearly completed financing of its restoration, due in part to classic status within Canadian cinema.

  6. movieman says:

    Not a huge “Out of the Blue” fan, Spassky. I just watched it again a few months ago, in fact.
    But 1988’s “Colors”–which, in so many ways, feels like a Hopper outlier–is a really fantastic movie w/ great Duvall and Penn performances.

  7. spassky says:

    There’s some REALLY iffy stuff in “Colors” politically, representationally, etc… but some fiery performances, and a definite vision, for sure.

    I’ve been checking out the restoration of OUT OF THE BLUE, but really REALLY wish they’d come up with a print.

    “classic of canadian cinema”…? lol, vancouver being a character etc… but if we are going to label every american film produced in vancouver as canadian, well… that’d be interesting. I guess it was all canadian financing, and the presence of mr burr definitely brings up the point in an interesting if all together misguided way… I would definitely categorize its aims as being those of making an american film (whatever the fuck that means), in similar ways to his earlier two films… that’s an interesting discussion for sure.

  8. spassky says:

    oh but back to peter fonda… IDAHO TRANSFER is a hidden gem… while I never thought P. Fonda was superlative as a director or actor or icon really.. he was always there, fighting the good fight, trying for something and desperately swimming against the tide

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon