A Good College Basketball Movie Intercut with a Bad College Student Going Over the Edge Movie

rDrive, He Said was a 1964 novel about an alienated white college basketball star by Jeremy Larner (1937-), who had been an undergraduate at Brandeis (not exactly famous for its basketball team) and then dropped out of graduate school at Berkeley, and would later win a 1972 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, for "The Candidate." Drive, He Said won the Delta Prize for first novel.

Jack Nicholson (who as also born in 1937, did not attend college, and is a major basketball fan) adapted the novel with Larner, coproduced and directed the movie version in 1971, with his "Five Easy Pieces" costar, Karen Black playing Olive, a faculty wife (who listens to Billie Holliday records instead of Tammy Wynette, as in "Five Easy Pieces" and is having torrid sex with the hirsute (white) star of the college basketball team Hector (William Tepper). Hector's "bad attitude" greatly annoys Coach Bullion (Bruce Dern [The Championship Season]) but Hector is the Leopards' highest-scoring member. His falling in love with Olive might seem like "good attitude," but freaks her out, since she has not intention of trading in her husband except for sexual romps.

Hector does not room with another basketball player, or even another athlete, but with a drug-addled and/or borderline psychotic named Gabriel (Michael Margotta), who is involved in a (Vietnam war-)protest guerilla theater group that interrupts a basketball game. Hector's story (the basketball movie) and Gabriel's story (a "Howl!" of what strikes me as a 50ish sort, not a late 60s sort) are awkwardly intercut (with jump cuts). And Gabriel treats his sex partners with contempt, in contrast to Hector's romantic (if promiscuous) relationships with his.

The Leopards prevail and Gabriel gets crazier and crazier. Both stories provide a lot of full-frontal male nudity. In contrast, the major sex scene (Tepper penetrating Black from behind) shows no flesh at all. Both have their coats on. In the 2009 interview that is the spine of the "making of" featurette, Nicholson says that he wanted them to look like copulating bears. He also says that he wanted to begin the movie with a "dick symphony," super close-ups of penises.

Karen Black was called on to scream a lot with a break-in/rape sequence. Tepper has some charm and some basketball ability, though more plausibly a highschool-team starter than someone about to turn pro. At least he was the right age (22). At 24, Margotta could pass for a college senior, too. I can't imagine why he had a draft physical during basketball season, however, and just about everything about his character seems false to me (for which I blame Larner and Nicholson more than Margotta).

There are some striking images of reptiles, and the basketball scenes are historical curiosities (a reminder of the short shorts players used to wear). No images from Vietnam were interpolated (as in "Head" (1968), the first BBS movie, which Nicholson cowrote with directed Bob Rafelson, whose 1970 movie "Five Easy Pieces" established the Jack persona (in a roadside diner) and made him a star, following Nicholson's much-noticed, Oscar-nominated supporting role in "Easy Riders" (1969)). The affair with an older (then-31-year-old Karen Black) woman would have reminded me of "The Last Picture Show," even if I had not known that it, too, was a BBS movie. "The Last Picture Show" (1971) has more stories being told than "Drive, He Said," but is far more coherent. "Drive, He Said" was set in the present, ca. 1970, but, like "The Strawberry Statement" (1968) in which Margotta also appeared, the milieu of college turmoil seems false to me,* whereas the small Texas town of the 1950s in Bogdanovich's "The Last Picture Show" convinces me. (I grew up in a small town, albeit later, but was in college 1970 and know that that was after the draft lottery began -- and a time when even stars of collegiate sports had less cachet than earlier or later.)

I was frequently bored watching "Drive, He Said," and thought it might have been better if it had confined itself to being a basketball movie, instead of straining for "relevance." (The lack of any visible rapport between Tepper and Margotta made their pairing '"senior year! '" seem particularly forced and schematic. And Margotta's scenes seem to me to be set pieces that do not grow out of the rest of what is on display in the movie).

The movie did not reach a youth audience, or any other one. The "new American cinema" had many flops, including "Head", "A Safe Place", and "The King of Marvin Gardens" from BBS, Monte Hellman's "Two-Lane Blacktop", Peter Fonda's "The Hired Hand", and Dennis Hopper's "The Last Movie" along with hits such as "Easy Rider," Five Easy Pieces " and "The Last Picture Show."

Æ'†'" '" ''Æ'''¯' Margotta was also in another anti-adult movie that seems quite false to me, "Wild in the Streets" (1969). As in "Medium Cool," there was a real riot (campus variety) in which the fictional characters were loosed in "Drive, He Said." The movie was shot on the campus of the University of Oregon (Eugene, OR), partly with authorization, parly guerilla-style by Bill Butler (The Conversation, Jaws).



Criterion's "America Lost and Found: The BBS Story" collection also includes
Head (1968) written by Nicholson and Rafelson, directed by Rafelson
Easy Rider (1969) in which both Karen Black and Jack Nicholson had supporting roles
Five Easy Pieces (1970) directed by Rafelson, starring Nicholson and Black
The Last Picture Show (1971)
A Safe Place (1971) with Nicholson
The King Of Marvin Gardens (1972), directed by Rafelson with Nicholson