Cisco Pike

1972's CISCO PIKE shares its name with the film's protagonist, an L.A. singer/songwriter past his prime, now only sometimes recognized as a guy who once played the Troubadour and had a few hits.  Public tastes and the music business a fickle lot, Cisco (Kris Kristofferson, in his film debut) had to turn to selling dope to survive, and he got busted.  As the film opens, he tries to pawn his guitar.  His new demos keep being rejected, anyway.  The store owner, played by the wonderful Roscoe Lee Brown, refuses, feeling as if he'd be robbing the young man's very existence. 

Cisco is soon confronted by the weirdo narco cop who put him away, Leo (Gene Hackman), and finds himself in a garage with several kilos of marijuana...which Leo stole from gang members.  The dirty cop will eventually make him a deal - sell the bricks and give him the ten grand he needs to pay his stockbroker, and he will shuffle some paperwork in Cisco's drug charge.  A deadline is set for just a few days.  Essential blackmail. 

I'd always had this thought that CISCO PIKE was a film about the music industry.  It turns out that writer/director Bill L. Norton's film (also a debut) only tangentially considers this.  I've read that Robert Towne fleshed out Norton's screenplay with the inclusion of  the Leo character.  The result is more of a (mild) crime thriller.  While there is some urgency in the plotline, Norton and his cast are far more interested in rich characterization.  Kristofferson gives as natural a performance as humanly possible.  Someone wrote that he is as good an actor as he is a singer (and he contributes a few songs here); I think that's fair. 

Hackman delivers an amazing, quietly unhinged portrayal of a true oddball who turns out to be most discouraged about how little the LAPD pays him.  It's a carefully controlled bit of acting, with subtle indications that he may crack at any second.   Harry Dean Stanton appears as Jesse, Cisco's former bandmate, a fortysomething who is paralyzed by the realities of getting older.  Another great performance to add to his long, impressive gallery.  It is through him that the main theme of CISCO PIKE is elucidated: fading relevance.  For just about every player in this story.  Karen Black, as Cisco's girlfriend Sue, does not fare so well in a very underwritten part.  She barely even seems to be present most of the time. 

For its qualities, CISCO PIKE is at its best as a time capsule of that transitory time when the '60s were rapidly absorbed into the dour '70s.  Freewheeling youth sailed on without consequence for awhile. Then, the smiles dropped and the fan chants silenced.  The check finally arrived, and not just for the counterculture.  It will be too much for at least two characters to face, and will be their undoing.  Others will simply move on.