Sunday 21 August 2011

Once we get out of the eighties, the nineties are going to make the sixties look like the fifties



"It takes more than going down your local video store and renting Easy Rider to be a rebel" the words of Huey Walker as played by the legend that is Dennis Hopper in the 1989 film Flashback which I watched for the first time in many years last night. Shit, it was either that or the cack factor.

Thanks must be given to C who down loaded it from one of his snidey websites for me after hearing me complain once too often about the price of the DVD on Amazon and being out bid every time on ebay.

If you have never seen the film, find a snidey website and download it, it is well worth a watch. Dennis Hopper is great as the ageing hippy rebel and Keifer Sutherland is very good as an FBI agent that isn't Jack Bauer.  the film gently pokes fun at the hippie ideals of the 60s but also has something to say about American society in the late 80s.

I was smiling all the through remembering the last time I watched this film was with a group of great friends, one weekend  the summer of  about 1991 when G, the lounge lizard,  was house sitting for a friend. We had about half an ounce of good squidgy black and the house had rather a good wine cellar. We spent the weekend watching films like Flashback, Two-Lane Black Top and Easy Rider while ripped on good black and drunk on very good claret.

At the end of the weekend the house was in no worse a state than it had been at the start, however G was never asked to house sit again as the main reason he was there was so that no one burgled the wine cellar.  Unfortunately due to G knowing a bit about wine we had tanned quite a few of the good bottles and therefore the owners thought that they would run the risk in future of being robbed rather than have the house sitter reap the benefits of their cellar.

Here is a track not from Flashback, but a cover of a track from Easy Rider that whenever it comes on transports me back to that weekend and puts a huge grin on my coupon.

Kathryn Williams - The Ballad of Easy Rider.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

My wife did something similar. She was at a formal business dinner with some Austrians and the leading man was puffed up and boasting about his cellar. In all innocence, she asked whether a £1,000 bottle really did taste that much better than a £1 bottle. To avoid losing face, the man had to get some of his £1,000 bottles out of the cellar.

drew said...

And it does taste that much better. But not advisable after a few joints of black because it could have been Ribena for all I knew.

Swiss Adam said...

I've seen this film. S'alright. Love the quote- not sure the 90s delivered but there you go. I've never drunk a really expensive wine so really wouldn't know. We're still working our way through red that cost somewhere between 2 euros and 4 euros.

anto said...

was this also an episode of Black Books in a different dimension?