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Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me
Starring Barry Primus. Directed by Jeffery Young. Screenplay by Robert Schlitt Paramount Pictures, 1971. 90 minutes. Rated R. Out of print.
Los Angeles Premiere: Sept. 10, 1971, at Bruin Theater.
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Gnossos (Barry Primus) | Gnossos and Kristin | Kristin (Linda De Coff) |
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Gnossos | Heffalump (David Downing) with Gnossos at Guido's Grill |
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Heff is shot down in Cuba | Gnossos visits his mystical friend Blacknesse |
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Gnossos and Fitzgore (Bruce Davison) | Jack (Susan Tyrrell), Heff, Juan Carlos Rosenbloom (Raul Julia), and Gnossos in Cuba |
See also movie posters on the Book & Movie Posters page.
Los Angeles Times, Sep. 10, 1971. "Sights, Sounds of Silent Generation" By Kevin Thomas.
Daily Mirror, Sep. 16, 1971, p. 11.
Daily News, Sep. 16, 1971, p. 113.
Morning Telegraph, Sep. 16, 1971, p. 3.
New York Post,Sep. 16, 1971, p. 46.
New York Times, Sept. 16, 1971, p. 52.
Daily News, Sep. 17, 1971.
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Morning Telegraph, Sep. 23, 1971. By Joe Rosen.
Variety, 1971, p. 16.
Saturday Review,Oct. 2, 1971.
Village Voice, Oct. 7, 1971.
Women's Wear Daily, Nov. 1, 1971.
Washington Post, Nov. 5, 1971.
Chicago Tribune, Nov. 29, 1971.
Boston After Dark,Dec. 21, 1971, p. 34-35.
Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 21, 1971. |
SELECTED QUOTES:
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"BEEN DOWN SO LONG IT LOOKS LIKE UP TO ME" is an adaptation of the late Richard
Farina's novel of the same title. The novel, a lightly fictionalized account of
Farina's exploits at Cornell during the late 1950s, achieved a cult status after Farina's death
in a motorcycle accident the day following its publication.
The film stars Barry Primus as Gnossos, the Farina subrogate, and Linda DeCoff as
Kristin, his Chevy chase girl friend. The autobiographical note is strengthened
by the physical resemblance to Farina of Primus, recently seen in "Puzzle of a Downfall
Child." David Downing plays Gnossos-Farina's black friend Heffalump (shortened to
Heff in the film).
"Been Down So Long" marks the directional debut of Jeff Young, a 28-year-old Harvard
Law School graduate and protege of Arthur Penn. The film is stylishly directed
and acted but the screenplay by Robert Schlitt, a veteran television writer, is
not wholly satisfactory.
Farina, a high priest of hip, was into dope, tripping, mysticism, and guerrilla
fashion at a time when his fellow students were into Murray the K, hot rods, crew cuts,
and conformity. That Farina was 10 years ahead of his time, and that he did not
proselytize others to follow him, are perhaps the reasons for the current generation's
interest in his work. Although he was adrift in the Beat Generation certainly he was
not representative of it. The fact that Farina was not of his time gives the film-makers
an opportunity to blend fashionable nostalgia for the 1950s with the hipness of
the present. Now and then are conveniently captured in the same scenes without
having to resort to distracting flashbacks.
The best episode in the novel turns out to be the best sequence in the film: when
Gnossos, firmly an outsider and a freak, crashes the frat house scene in search
of a free meal and a chance to hassle the cleancut brothers. Gnossos promptly
turns on and does battle with all the fraternity cliches. On one level he easily
destroys the fraternity ethic, yet on another he never firmly convinces that he
wouldn't rather be accepted as one of the group.
It is after Gnossos splits with his self-professed virgin, Kristin, and heads for
Cuba with Heff on a combination drug-dealing and anarchist trip that gaps occur
both in the exposition and motivation. The paradox of having contracted venereal
disease from his "virgin" does not adequately explain Gnossos' actions in Havana
thereafter. Nor after Heff's death does the act of digging a jungle grave
demonstrate a renewed determination in Gnossos to return to the life from which
he dropped out.
Although at the time of his death Farina had not produced a full-length scenario,
he understood film writing technique. I was present once when Farina and Joseph
Heller were discussing how best to adapt "Catch 22" for film. Heller seemd visibly
impressed by what he heard. One of Farina's unpublished stories, a western,
was intended to be developed as a film property to star Bob Dylan. Perhaps some
canny producer will pick up that project and give Farina another try.
--Tom Costner
Richard Fariņa's first and last novel, "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me," begins in the fall of 1958, the autumn of the Eisenhower years, a time of Vanguard rockets and Murray the K and Batista, of Dharma Bums who took to the road to learn about life and then celebrated what they found in literature that Truman Capote once classified as mere typewriting.
"Been Down So Long," however, was written in the 1960's (it was published
in 1966, shortly before its author was killed in a motorcycle accident),
and although set in the time of the Beats, it has the sound and feel of the
decade that was yet to come. This explains, I think, something of the
schizoid nature of the film adaptation that opened yesterday at the Little
Carnegie.
Gnossos Pappadopoulis (Barry Primus) has, it's true, been on the road
when he returns to college to resume his academic career, but from the
length of his hair and the rhythm of his speech, he's been mushing through
the America that the men in "Easy Rider" could not find, not through
Kerouac country. As a matter of fact, the unnamed school that Gnossos
attends could well be the locale of a number of other movies about the late
1960's, including Jack Nicholson's "Drive, He Said."
All of this would be nit-picking if "Been Down So Long" had any particular identity of its own. It doesn't. Robert Schlitt, who wrote the screen adaptation, and Jeff Young, who directed it, have excised practically all of the novel's lunatic, literary exuberance. What remains is a rite-of-university-passage of sophomoric angst, of dumb melodrama, and of such depressing familiarity that I feel as if I'd been burdened with someone else's memory, while having been denied the pleasure of the original experience.
The young performers are attractive and, when occasionally given the opportunity (especially for comedy), they do very well indeed. Primus has a short but marvelous sequence in which he disrupts a fraternity rush (one of the few sequences that really fix the film in its time) by accusing a short-haired "brother" of homosexual tendencies.
I also liked David Downing, as a black student who turns, rather gently,
toward militancy, and Linda DeCoff, as the virginal co-ed whose farewell
gift to Gnossos requires treatment with penicillin. "Bringing this to
Havana," says the Cuban doctor to Gnossos, "is like bringing bread to a
bakery." He is, of course, talking about the Havana of Meyer Lansky and
Lucky Pierre, not of Castro.
--Vincent Canby
Village Voice review by Tom Costner.
October 7, 1971.
NOTE: Tom Costner was a friend of Fariņa when he was living in Paris, giving this
review a special importance.
New York Times review by Vincent Canby:
September 16, 1971, p. 52.
Gnossos .... Barry Primus Heff .... David Downing Kristin .... Linda DeCoff Motherball .... John Coe Pamela Watson-May .... Marion Clarke Fitzgore .... Bruce Davison Mojo ... Zack Norman Juan Carlos Rosenbloom .... Raul Julia Sergeant Woody .... John Collin Kovacs .... Guy Deghy Komensky .... Mark Malicz Count Derassy ... Karel Stepanek Jack .... Susan Tyrrell Beth .... Cynthia Harris Agneau .... Nick Hammond Judy Lumpers .... Marilyn Hengst Heap .... Paul Jabara Father Putti .... James Noble Oeuf .... John Ryan Calvin .... Philip Shafer |
Fraternity Brother .... Larry Albright George Rajamuttu .... Ved Bandhu Male Student .... John Davis Cuban Hustler .... Jaime Escobar Maykers .... Scott Fischer Vampire Girl .... Sue Holiday Harold Wong .... Calvin Jung Irma Rajamuttu .... Shi Khanma Female Student .... Judy Kiehl Fred Krebs .... Fred Krebs Fraternity Brother .... John Moore Youngblood .... Bud Palmer Mrs. Motherball .... Blanch Romero Counter Lady .... Birdie Schroeder Flip .... Flip Shafer Cuban Priest .... Victor Vasquez Cuban Doctor .... Luis Vera Radio Announcer's Voice .... Martin Gleitsman Sports Announcer's Voice .... Bruce Wittkin Murray the K. .... Murray the K. |
Music Credits:
Music by Garry Sherman
Lyrics by Gene Pistilli
"Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me"
and "Little Boy Lost" sung by Gary Sherman
Additional Music:
The Platters: "It Was You", "Be My Love"
The Five Satins: "Play Something Slow", "Roll, Daddy, Roll"
The Four Lads: "Down By the Riverside"
Linda Hopkins, Mildred Pratcher & Mildred Price: "God Be With You"
Colin Walcott: Sitar Cue
Technical Credits:
Director of Photography: Urs Furrer
Produced by Robert M. Rosenthal
Associate Producer: David Saunders
Screenplay by Robert Schlitt
Edited by Nicholas Meyers & Bruce Wittkin
Paintings by Gregory Kwater
A Rosenthal - Young - Saunders Production