He's a poet, he's a picker
He's a prophet, he's a pusher
He's a pilgrim and a preacher
And a problem when he's stoned
Kris Kristofferson's first film was Dennis Hopper's followup to Easy Rider, his disastrous The Last Movie in 1971.
Kristofferson's next movie was Cisco Pike. Cisco's a drug dealer (mostly grass as it was known on the street then) who's fresh out of jail. He's promised his girlfriend Sue (Karen Black, who was also in Easy Rider) he won't sell anymore.
But when Leo Holland (Gene Hackman), an L.A. narc, shows him a 100-kilo shipment of Mexican brick weed he lifted from another dealer, Cisco's in. "It's bad dope," he tells the detective. "Meaning good bad. It's incredible grass."
Holland's dirty and forces Cisco at gunpoint to go along with his scheme. He needs it all sold and $10,000 in two days.
Cisco stashes the red-papered green bricks in his guitar case and tours around L.A. selling them off. His most fun encounter is with Merna (Viva) and Lynn (Joy Bang). They have a threesome and later meet up at the Troubadour where Hare Krishnas are outside chanting.
The backstory is Cisco's a stuggling musician who had a shot a few years ago with his partner Jesse Dupre (Harry Dean Stanton) but their song "Breakdown" has proven to be a one-hit wonder thus far. He's disillusioned and distracted by Holland, who's a strange dude with his own problems.
Sue wants to split L.A. but it's Cisco who rides away like a cowboy after Jesse ODs, leaving her behind. A year earlier Jack Nicholson's character similarly dumped Black at the end of Bob Rafaelson's Five Easy Pieces.
The soundtrack features three songs by Kristofferson ("Lovin' Her Was Easier," "The Pilgrim – Chapter 33" and "The Breakdown"); a blues number by Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee played repeatedly and Doug Sahm's "Michoacan." After the hilariious scene with Sahm in a studio Sue criticizes his Tex-Mex border-style rock.
In his 2006 essay about Cisco Pike in the L.A. Times, Sean Howe wrote:
Premium grass distribution is the hero’s occupational compromise, but Cisco’s drug delivery route does recall Fellini’s portrait of hedonism beneath the surface of respectable society. Although most chroniclers of Los Angeles since Raymond Chandler have focused on the sin lurking behind expensive iron gates, Cisco Pike blithely suggests that everybody is a dope fiend, from hotel doormen to hairdressers to country-club bluebloods. Norton wanted to normalize the idea of the pot smoker, to acknowledge that the Summer of Love forever changed something about America.
Despite its dim view of former bandmate Jesse’s heroin use, the film is hardly anti-drug. Even with its delayed release, Cisco Pike beat Superfly to become one of the first studio films with a dealer as its hero.
Kristofferson's first decade of movies leaned towards countercultural. He followed Cisco Pike with Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) in which he played the latter and featured Bob Dylan in a mostly non-speaking role; Paul Mazursky's Blume in Love (1973) with George Segal; Sam Peckinpah's Western Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) with Warren Oates; Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore with Ellen Burstyn (1976); Michael Cimino's reviled Heaven's Gate (1981); and Alan J. Pakula's Rollover (1981) with Jane Fonda. Probably his most famous film is the 1976 A Star Is Born remake with Barbra Streisand. Kristofferson appeared in several movies with his fellow country music outlaws Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings, The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James and the remake of Stagecoach, both in 1986. He also co-starred in Blade (1998), Blade II (2002) and Blade: Trinity (2004) with Wesley Snipes.
Kristofferson sang "Lovin' You Was Easier" with Roseanne Cash at Nelson's 90th Birthday Celebration on Apr. 29, 2023. It was his final live performance. The celebratred actor, singer and songwriter passed away at 88 on Sept. 28, 2024 in Maui.
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