Acid Westerns ...

[Dave Monroe]

And again from Jonathan Rosenbaum, Dead Man (London:
BFI, 2000), Ch. 6, "On the Acid Western," pp. 47-62
...

"What I partly mean by 'acid Westerns' are revisionist
Westerns in which American history is reinterpreted to
make room for peyote visions and related
hallucinogenic experiences, LSD trips in particular. 
The influence of marijuana on the drifting, nonlinear
aspects of teh style of McCabe and Mrs. Miller, which
seems partially reflected in the importance of opium
in the plot, is realted but still somewhat distinct
from the paradigm I have in mind, by virtue of being
less radical an upheaval of generic norms.  Both 'acid
Westerns' nad 'pot westerns' depend on reevaluations
of white and nonwhite experience that view certain
countercultural habits and styles in relation to
models derived from Westerns, but where they differ
most, perhaps, is in their generational biases, which
lead them respectively to overturn or ironically
revise the relevant generaic norms." (p. 51)


"ROSENBAUM: Part of what I'm calling 'acid Westerns'
and you've soemtimes called 'peripheral Westerns' has
to do with certain literary ideas about the wilderness
and travelling from the east coast to the west coast. 
In most Western versions of the east-to-west journey,
there's a movement towards enlightenment and freedom,
but Dead Man almost reverses that, turning the story
into a movement towards death.  And if you think of
all the white people that Blake and Nobody run into,
they all seem to fit into two categories--some version
of capitalism or soem version of the counterculture,
sometimes the two mixed together.

"JARMUSCH: Yeah, they coexist somehow.  And the
counter-culture is always repackaged and made into a
product, y'know?  It's part of America.  If you have a
counter-culture and you put a name on it, you call
them beatniks, and you can sell them something.--books
or bebop.  Or you label them as hippies and you can
sell tie-dyed T-shirts." (p. 51)

By the way, anyone ever see the "now a major motion
picture" adaptation of Stone Junction (1990)?  I could
swear I saw a reference to it, but now I can't find it ...

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