Slate Magazine - DVD Extras

Retracing the path of the iconic movie on its 40th anniversary.

Keith Phipps — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:11:42 EST

Day 6 I begin the day by flying from Albuquerque, N.M., to New Orleans. It's cheating, but only a little. Warned not to film in Texas because the state had no patience for long hair, Easy Rider skipped the state, so I do, too. Renting a car at the airport, I head directly to Morganza, La., a rural community up the road from Baton Rouge where Hanson, Wyatt, and Billy try, and fail, to enjoy a meal. "You name it, I'll throw rocks at it," one local tells the town sheriff as they enter the diner. The teenage girls dining there have a different reaction. Visibly attracted to the men, they follow them outside and coo over their bikes. Easy Rider used locals as the diner patrons and Fonda recalls giving the men a single line of motivation: "We've just raped a 13-year-old white girl outside of town."

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The Easy Rider Road Map: An interactive guide to the movie's journey.

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:41:46 EST

An interactive guide.

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Stranger Than Paradise on DVD.

Nathaniel Rich — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:11:32 EST

For better or worse, Jim Jarmusch has developed a reputation as the cineaste of cool. He has only himself to blame. For one, he has a rare genius for the suave posture and the shockingly odd image. Think of Johnny Depp in a checkered suit and black bowler, limping through a birch forest in the surrealist Western Dead Man (1995), or the two Japanese tourists in Mystery Train (1989), ecstatic with passion for Elvis Presley, sitting on the floor of their Memphis, Tenn., hotel room with lipstick-smeared faces. He also frequently casts musicians as his actors (John Lurie, Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, and Jack and Meg White, among others), and his soundtracks, featuring Charlie Parker, Elvis, and Ethiopian composer Mulatu Astatke, help give his films their distinctive mood—the cinematic equivalent of a world-weary shrug. Most responsible of all for this reputation, however, is his trademark dialogue, with its reliance on antiquated slang, digressive riffs, and bathetic one-liners.

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How John Cassavetes' Shadows changed American movies forever.

Elbert Ventura — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:11:32 EST

If American independent cinema could be said to have a birthday, Nov. 11 is as good a date to celebrate as any. On that night 50 years ago, John Cassavetes, an actor then best known for his TV roles, unveiled for a downtown New York audience his directing debut, Shadows. Cassavetes had financed the production with his paychecks from Hollywood and made the film with a cast and crew of novice actors from his drama workshop. The finished product betrayed their inexperience: mismatched cuts, shots out of focus, audio out of sync. But it was also unlike anything audiences had seen before: a raw, kinetic, jazz-scored dispatch from bohemian New York that was frank about sex, progressive on race, and intoxicated with youth. The film radiated a sense of urgency, even desperation—it felt like something Cassavetes just had to get out of his system.

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Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Condition will crush you.

Grady Hendrix — Mon, 2 Nov 2009 10:35:03 EST

Like a stinging rebuke to Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, this week the Criterion Collection releases a three-disc set of Masaki Kobayashi's 1959 World War II masterpiece, The Human Condition. Deep where Basterds is shallow, expansive where Basterds is puny, and profound where Basterds is glib, Kobayashi's humanist triumph is finally getting the Western exposure it deserves. Previously unavailable in the United States, a restored version was screened last year at New York City's Film Forum and proved to be so popular that it was brought back for a return engagement. Not bad for a movie that is nine-and-a-half hours long (spread over three films) and so monumentally painful to watch that it stands as the Grand Canyon of despair.

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