Cisco Pike: Dope Noir
Crime Doesn't Pay?
In the wake of the blockbuster success of Easy Rider, the movie market was flooded for several years by "Youth Culture Pictures," which ranged from modern classics to highly embarrassing misfires. Hollywood seemed to think the winning formula was lots of young kid's music, naked starlets, long haired actors, and meandering narratives about "stuff." The old fogies running the studios, including the low end drive-in producers, were pretty clueless about the what young people wanted, but were willing to turn over cash to make movies to people who looked like they smoked pot and dug the Beatles.
One such effort was Cisco Pike. On an Easy Rider ripoff scale, with Zachariah grading out at F (never, never watch it) and Vanishing Point grading out at A, Cisco Pike comes in around a B-. It met the Hollywood formula of lots of young kid's music, naked starlets, long haired actors, and meandering narratives, but offered something a little more substantial than many of its contemporaries.
Cisco (Kris Kristofferson in his first leading role) is a fading musician and former drug dealer trying to sort out the mess of his life, living with his girlfriend (played by Karen Black) and waiting for an old band mate to arrive, hoping to re-kindle their old magic. He is pressured by the crooked cop who busted him, Holland (played by Gene Hackman), to help him sell 100 kilos of primo weed that he somehow acquired. Holland offers to help Cisco to get off his pending drug charge and to keep a share of the profits, Cisco reluctantly agrees.
The middle of the movie follows Cisco around as he spends a weekend making deal after deal to unload the pot, one kilo at a time. You get a feeling for what a grind drug dealing at this level is: lots of phone calls, missed connections, and sketchy buyers. Hairy encounters with the police. Along the way, Cisco re-connects with the music business in the form of star musician Rex (Played by Doug Sahm of The Sir Douglas Quintet) and his sleazy manager. The exchange (literally selling him two kilos) only serves to drive home the point how far out of the business he has fallen.
Holland puts pressure on Cisco, demanding that he deliver $10,000 by Monday morning. Into all that, his former partner Jesse (played by Harry Dean Stanton) arrives, high on speed and smack. As Cisco races the clock to complete enough deals to pay off Holland, things fall apart tragically. The ending of the movie unspools chaotically and frankly, it's kind of a mess.
Cisco Pike was written and directed by Bill L. Norton, who never really had his moment. His career high point was writing and directing More American Graffiti, the now forgotten sequel to George Lucas' hit. Screenwriting master Robert Towne (Chinatown, Shampoo) did uncredited re-writes on the film, which added the Karen Black and Gene Hackman characters. The abrupt and illogical nature of the ending suggests it was hastily shot by committee and leads the viewer to wonder what was in that original script.
The movie does feature some great tracks from Kristofferson's contemporaneous album "Silver Tongued Devil and I", which includes the classic "Me And Bobbie McGee" (not included in the soundtrack). There are additional songs by Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Doug Sahm, all providing a solid, funky backdrop for the narrative.
The movie's bleak view of the world of drugs seems, in an odd way, a ghost of the old Production Code, where crime could never pay. By 1972, the year of Cisco Pike's release, the Code was dead, replaced by the Ratings System. But this was also the time of Nixon's launching of The War on Drugs, which was designed, in part, to target unruly young people. There were rumblings from some critics and the usual suspects that Hollywood's lax handling of drug use in recent films was encouraging drug use and corrupting youth. Cisco Pike's downbeat ending wasn't exactly in the Reefer Madness form, but it was also ambiguous enough to leave viewers the chance to write in their own judgments. This was a studio picture, however, so you wonder if there was pressure to show crime not paying.
Cisco Pike is one of the first entries in a sub-genre I have named Dope Noir. Dope Noir depicts the lives of participants of the drug trade, filtered through a Noir perspective. Cisco Pike, with it's failing protagonist trapped in a corrupt set-up that just seems doomed from the start certainly fits a classic Noir template.
To clarify, a Dope Noir should portray characters involved in the lower levels of the drug trade. So no films about drug lords and cartels, no Scarface or Sicario. The narrative shouldn't be too different than a classic Noir revolving around a jewelry heist or a con job, but the substitution of drugs for cash or jewelry can bring in the additional corrupting influence of the drugs themselves.
Some examples:
Who'll Stop the Rain? Previously reviewed here.
Training Day
Drugstore Cowboy
The Mule
Narc
Another Day in Paradise
8 Million Ways to Die
Fresh
Some of these films are told from the viewpoint of the dealers, some from the not always honest cops who deal with the drug trade. Like any good Noir, they focus on the dark side of human nature and rarely offer happy endings.