The Trip: Most Trips Have Highs and Lows

The way that slasher films dismantle the delusions of the postwar American Dream in the ‘80s, or how Dracula can be an icon for repressed sexuality, films are able to reflect the sentiments of the society it was intended for, while also the popular political attitudes of the time, and even the state of the industry at the time it was produced, which allows us to retrospectively access what any given film says about its culture at a given time. Sometimes, what a film doesn’t say is as powerful as what it does. 

“Turn on, tune in, drop out,” were the famous words of Timothy Leary, a leading figurehead of the sixties psychedelic scene. Psychedelics and the ‘60s are almost synonymous. They shaped the consciousness and aesthetics of the mid-60s, creating lasting impacts on music, politics, fashion, and design. Hallucinogens also instigated a coruscating period in cinema, even mainstream cinema could not ignore the vibrant impact psychedelics were having on society. With the end of the studio system, Hollywood was eager to remain relevant and was willing to dabble in more radical elements of style and content, giving birth to the somewhat experimental, psychedelic exploitation films. One of the most popular examples being Roger Corman’s 1967 film, The Trip, written by Jack Nicholson starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Susan Straberg.

In 1966, The Trip had been announced with Roger Corman soon set to direct, bringing along his past colleague and friend, Jack Nicholson, to write the script. Nicholson and Corman had previously collaborated on a number of low-budget films, including some of Nicholson's first acting credits, such as The Cry Baby Killer (1958), The Raven (1963), and The Terror (1963). Nicholson’s first draft was apparently as thick as a book and full of social commentary as one might expect—or hope—from a film written during the late ‘60s. America in 1967 was a time of civil and political unrest at home and abroad. A time of cruelty and perseverance in which marginalized communities fought back against racial inequality and violence, which was apparently very present in the first drafts of The Trip. Sadly, as the drafts got revised we were left with the politically and conceptually watered-down film we have now.

The Trip plays out as to be expected. Fonda’s character Paul gets chastised by his soon-to-be ex-wife, Sally, for not showing up to sign the divorce papers and for generally being evasive of the proceedings. Paul, seeking a sort of self-confrontation, enlists his buddy and LSD advocate John (Burce Dern) to be his guide for his first hallucinogenic venture. They meet up with Max (Hopper) who supplies them with , and meet Glenn (Salli Sache), a beautiful blonde who is immediately smitten with Paul. They go back to John’s lavish LA mansion where Paul’s trip begins pretty quickly. He sees visions of death, lights, sex (more of that to come), witches, hooded figures riding horses, and women. John makes the mistake of leaving Paul alone too long. Obviously, Paul runs away from John and wanders around Los Angeles tripping balls. He breaks into someone's home, disturbs a nice woman doing her laundry, and roams aimlessly while he considers the role women play in his life, all while being periodically chased by the aforementioned hooded figures (who are inevitably revealed to be his wife and Glenn). He catches glimpses of Glenn around the city before she ultimately leads him to her Malibu beach house where they have sex. Paul’s trip ends and he decides he got the insight he needed but whether or not his trip was positive or not is something for him to “think about tomorrow.”  

The film ends with a glass crack effect on the screen, supposedly required by the production company, American-International, with the intention of having viewers believe Paul’s experience with LSD left him “shattered and confused.” Corman objected to this alteration and Peter Fonda describes it as having “changed the meaning of the picture..I’ll never stop regretting we didn’t do it Jack’s way.” While the film is intellectually and conceptually in-adventurous, there are some parts of the film that are genuinely enjoyable—particularly three moments towards the end of the film that nods to the initial intentions of the film.

Right after Paul splits from John, he breaks into a home where he sits and gets news updates about the American casualties in Vietnam. While this doesn’t actually affect Paul or his trip in any real way, I can assume it’s a sliver of truth that made it through from the initial drafts. While a moment like this could have meant something, it was really no more than a name drop which could easily be written off as an event to place the era of the film. It unfortunately carries no real weight. After his stint in home invasion, he meets Flo, a woman with large curlers in her hair, eating her dinner in a laundromat as she waits for her sheets. Paul’s altered state makes him inclined to come into the laundromat and attempt connection with this woman who he thought looked a little lonely. Although short and abrupt, this is one of the few moments where we see past the film's narrow narrative of one man's self-exploration. We don’t really come to know Flo, but we can identify her character as a symbol of loneliness and yearning for connection. This moment is a little more drawn out, but  it’s really another interesting interaction allowed to come up a bit short. The final conceptually noteworthy moment happens directly after. Paul enters a psychedelic club where he is approached by a waitress attempting to take his order. She soon discovers Paul's condition and poses the question, “What's wrong with you guys, isn’t the real world good enough for you, lovefreak?” It’s a moment of interest, sure, but even given these small doses of reality, amidst the generally positive, easy, and uncomplicated trip Paul experiences, there was much to be desired conceptually.

What remains rave-worthy about The Trip are its visual effects, and the moments that remind us of the truly sensuous nature of film. In what comes out to be a sex scene bordering 4-minutes long, we see what is the stand-out sequence in the film. Not only was this some of the most visually stimulating in the whole film, it was conceptually one of the most explorative, even if inadvertently. At the beginning of the movie, Paul has an LSD-fueled fantasy about Sally. They have sex while being blasted with a liquid light projector and probably wear body paint to amplify the psychedelic light show. Their bodies seem to melt and mend together until as it progresses we can’t fully tell whose body is whose. As the edges and boundaries of their bodies blur I thought of how intimately this visual display was mirroring love and desire. It is a stellarly visual moment that appeals to our memory and imagination of what it is like to be in love, what it is like to become one with another, and what it feels like in a metaphysical sense to share your body with someone. It is something that won't always translate into words and can sometimes only be truly shown in something as expressive and experimental as film. What makes this film a tier below anything truly memorable as a whole is the thoughtlessness that's present in the plot, in the “trip” sequences, in the dialogue, and in the heart of the film as a whole. In the absence of substance, what is redeeming are the moments, such as this, you as an audience member look past the bareness and are able to experience the moving pictures in front of you as what they are: a visual exercise. 

What is film if not visual experimentation? We expect a lot from cinema, poetic yet realistic dialogue, emotionally transformative performances, and small, delicately placed details in the design to further the reality of the world we’re being shown. Boiled down to its bones, the beating heart of cinema can be found in the pursuit to put what is intangible and unspeakable into a visual display. The Trip is memorable not because you’ll remember its intricate plot or its thematic intentions, it's memorable because it makes attempts to show you something that goes beyond the reality we experience everyday. It displays, even if just in moments, a genuine interest in creating visual elements that surprise and intrigue us.

The Trip can be enjoyed because we should be able to enjoy a film for exactly what films are at their core: visually stimulating moving pictures that we resonate with. A scene like this makes me believe this film at the very least goes beyond the typical and can be seen as, if anything, an exploration. Ultimately, The Trip is simply a beautiful movie about a careless man who takes LSD and the expected hills and valleys he encounters, which is fun, but it could have been much more. 

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