Wow, I’m getting busy. The WCAI piece about my Vineyard project was picked up on Facebook, on some Vineyard discussion groups, so I’ve been hearing from people and trying to get back to everybody. Exciting!
A couple of weeks ago I watched Downhill Racer for the first time. It was weirder and more oblique than I thought it would be—movies were going bonkers in 1969.
The score by Kenyon Hopkins is odd, avant garde jazz and I can’t say I found it entirely successful. (I did help out with the Intrada CD, some time back.)
It reminded me of another, quasi-“mod” 1969 movie I once saw on cable that Kenyon Hopkins scored: The First Time.
This was clearly an attempt to ape the success of The Graduate. Three clueless teenage boys are determined to lose their virginity. They mistake Jacqueline Bisset for a prostitute, and hang around with her, and...well, “cringe” does not begin to describe it.
This movie is so obscure that somebody put the entire thing on YouTube and nobody cared to flag it. (It is age-restricted, though, so I can’t embed.)
Here’s the end credits music:
The only reason I watched—and remember—this movie is because it was about a nerdy, shy kid like me who scored with 1969 Jackie Bisset (wow, did I have a crush).
Sorry to be crass, but, well, underneath it all, we’re just animals.
It is maybe one of the most cartoonishly embarrassing “youth movies” ever made.
Enjoy, until somebody takes it down!