SEPTEMBER
2001
FILM SCHOOL HELPING RESTORE FONDA FILM
Condensed from the Tallahassee Democrat
By Mark Hinson
Sporting a black leather motorcycle
jacket, boots and wrap-around glasses, Peter Fonda arrived at
FSU's film school recently (in May) looking exactly the way you'd
expect the star of "Easy Rider" to look.
"I just got back from biking in Brazil," Fonda said.
"We flew in last night to be here. We're still wearing our
road gear."
Fonda was in Tallahassee to discuss his film "The Hired
Hand," an artful Western he starred in and directed in 1971.
The FSU film school is lending a helping hand restoring "The
Hired Hand," which is being prepared for re-release. If
that goes well, "The Hired Hand" could be coming to
an art-house cinema near you very soon.
Fonda feels it was unjustly ignored when it came out on the heels of "Easy Rider."
The low-budget biker flick "Easy Rider" stunned old Hollywood in 1969 by becoming both a counterculture phenomenon and a financial smash.
Captain America-as Fonda's stoic character, Wyatt, was nicknamed
in "Easy Rider"-became an instant icon.
Tinseltown was suddenly courting him with scripts, starring-role
offers and money deals.
Fonda, the son of screen legend Henry Fonda, could write his own ticket.
Bucking all expectations, Fonda selected the revisionist Western "The Hired Hand" and announced he would direct and star. He grew a woolly beard, traded his chopper for a horse and headed off to New Mexico and Utah to capture his vision.
"The Hired Hand"was met with mostly favorable reviews but the studio, according to Fonda, did not promote the film properly. It never found a wide audience in America, though it fared better in Europe.
"Easy Rider's" shadow was harder to get out from under than my famous father's," Fonda said. "People wanted me to be 'Easy Rider' smoking pot, and this wasn't it."
It would take many more years-and Tallahassee writer-filmmaker Victor Nunez-for Fonda to shake the "Easy Rider" image and mystique for good by picking up an Oscar nomination playing a North Florida beekeeper in 1997's "Ulee's Gold."
"The Hired Hand" rode off into cinema obscurity.
Or did it?
As Fonda settled his tall frame into a seat in a small screening theater at FSU, sound guru and film-school professor Richard Portman, who worked on the original "Hired Hand" and is overseeing the sound mix for the re-release, gave a brief introduction for the audience.
"This is a very good movie," Oscar-winner Portman said slowly with emphasis on his words. "It holds up."
Set in 1881, the movie tells the story of three drifter cowpokes
who wander into a dusty desert town that's not kind to strangers.
After one of them is killed under murky circumstances, Fonda's
character decides to return to the farm and the wife he abandoned
many years earlier.
The estranged wife, played by Verna Bloom, is not exactly waiting with open arms and has not been faithful. The two cowboys become farm workers until the past catches up with them.
"I first saw 'The Hired Hand' (in Europe) on a triple bill when I was 17, and I was with my mother," said film promoter Hamish Alpine, who is helping bankroll the restoration and redistribution of "The Hired Hand."
"My mother, who's 82 now, said, 'Now that's a great movie.' But she wasn't the one who sat through the two other movies to see it for a second time. I did."
Though there is a gunfight near the end, "The Hired Hand" is not a shoot-em-up Western in the traditional mode. Its pace is deliberate, and its tone is understated. The characters don't talk a lot and when they do it's in a direct manner.
Bloom was not initially pleased with the final product.
"We didn't allow anyone to wear makeup; we wanted it to
look as authentic as possible," Fonda said.
"I think she thought it made her look bad. . . But two years ago she wrote me a nice letter to tell me she had recently seen 'The Hired Hand,' and she thought it was the best work she'd ever done. That made me feel good."
After the screening at FSU, Fonda chatted informally with film students and answered questions they tossed out.
"You are who I was back then when I was making 'The Hired Hand,'" Fonda told the group of 30 or so. "And I'm as excited now as back then."
When asked what his famous father initially thought of his
son acting and directing right after his first big break, Fonda
laughed.
"My father said, 'You're nuts,'" Fonda said.
Because "The Hired Hand" features a strong female lead who is sexually liberated and not punished for it, Fonda heard from his very famous sister, Jane. She was miffed because the film hadn't been made by feminists.
"I wasn't trying to stand up to my sister-really I wasn't-by making this movie," Fonda said. "When this movie came out men weren't supposed to make anti-chauvinist movies with a strong feminist statement. Only women were supposed to make those types of movies."
Finally, one student asked Fonda about the quickest way to break into the movie business.
Capt. America thought for a second and said:
"When you make your student film, don't make it for your
teacher or your class. Make it for the marketplace. If you want
to make fine arts, take up painting, take up creative writing,
take up poetry. But you'd better make your film for the marketplace
because if it doesn't succeed there, you're not making another
one."
Or it could take 30 years before another chance comes around.
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