When I was a senior in high school I met a young man for the first time who had somehow lived near my hometown for quite some time, yet I had never met him. He was an honest to goodness pot smoking mountain hippy who happened to look like Screech had been following the Grateful Dead for the entirety of his life. Long ago his parents had decided to homeschool him, which is why we never met him at school, but as his “senior year” wound down he had the desire to play baseball so there he was at tryouts, a mystery to us all. There’s more than one story I could tell about this interesting fellow but what sticks out most in my memory are the long discussions we’d have about drugs. At that time I was an herbal virgin, never once even getting near second hand smoke. He on the other hand was old hat at the old game, and when I inquired about the effects of LSD he was more than happy to sit me down and give me a few ground rules for the day I was ready to go on “the long strange trip.”
- Do it with friends. You’re going to likely freak out a little and will want people you know well nearby.
- Chose a safe place to do so. Pick somewhere familiar to add to your comfort.
- Be in nature if possible. It’s peaceful and usually quiet.
- Have water nearby. You’re going to want to hydrate.
- Listen to Phish and/or The Grateful Dead. (I wasn’t too keen on that rule.)
Soon after moving to Boston to go to college, I decided I was ready to finally take acid. I’m not sure exactly what helped me come to this decision, but I’m sure it had nothing to do with a classmate that I was relatively familiar with saying, “hey want to drop some acid after class?”
Suffice it to say, I didn’t follow a single guideline that my high school friend thoughtfully shared with me. The three gentlemen I decided to do this with were two of my classmates, who I’d known for the better part of three weeks (in hour long increments) and one of their roommates, who I didn’t know at all. (Rule 1 Broken) We decided as a group that the best possible thing to do would be get “all fucked up and watch The Wall” but none of us happened to own a copy. The roommate suggested that we go to the movie theater down by Boston Commons and watch Natural Born Killers, which he had just seen a few days before. The plan was to take the tab, hop on the T and get over to the theater, which was about 20 minutes away, so that by the time the movie started we’d be ready. At this point I hadn’t really ridden the subway past the Kenmore stop, so I was going into unfamiliar territory. I was thankful we wouldn’t have to switch to another line, so that at least kept me a little calmer. (Rule 2 Broken)
By the time we made it to the Boyleston stop all was going well. We walked the short distance to the theater, purchased our tickets, bought some snacks (Rule 4 Maintained if you count Root Beer) and headed into the screening.
I’ve spoken before about the only movie theater I’d really been to for the majority of my young adult life. While it had a decent amount of screens, it was small potatoes compared to the behemoth in Boston. What is now called the AMC theater (but at the time was a Loews I believe) was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Gigantic screens. Amazing sound. And multiple levels! Upon entering I decided that there was a good chance I could just move out of my dorm and come live here if necessary. I was honestly in heaven, rubbernecking to take in everything I could…and that’s when, as Hunter S. Thompson so wonderfully put it, when the drugs began to take hold.
I managed my way through the previews quite well. My acquaintance assured us that the doses were rather low grade so it should be enjoyable. Although I cannot remember a single trailer that was shown to me at this point, I remember being confident this would be a wonderful experience to remember.
Maybe we should’ve seen Airheads or The Little Rascals.
It started out well enough, with the soothing sounds of Leonard Cohen’s “Waiting for the Miracle” starting off the movie as we see Woody, an amiable actor that I adored thanks to Cheers and White Men Can’t Jump. I was going to have trouble buying him as a bad guy, that I knew for certain.
I should also point out that at this time in my life I was a big Oliver Stone fan. Thanks to their endless plays on HBO, I practically knew both Platoon and Wall Street by heart, and while I was okay with Wall Street, I believed Platoon to be an absolute masterpiece. And when his follow up Vietnam film Born on the Fourth of July showcased that Tom Cruise could actually act, I believed Mr. Stone to be an actual magician. I assumed that with NBK he would have some new tricks up his sleeve, pushing himself past some of the new techniques he’d highlighted with JFK.
But then again, I didn’t take into account that I’d experience them while on acid.
I’ve thought long and hard about how I would properly describe what it was like to watch this film on acid, and the honest truth is I’m not sure I can do it. When you experience something that alters reality for the first time, you’re not sure what’s real and what isn’t. If I’d been watching a movie like Star Wars, which I knew front and back, I would’ve been able to make that judgement. But considering Stone used a wide variety of cinematic tricks to make even the most stone cold sober movie viewer uncomfortable, you can only imagine what it was doing to me.
It all began when L7’s “Shit List” kicked in and Juliet Lewis began fucking some good ole boys up, with brief interruptions of opera and Woody Harrelson stabbing the manager from Major League. Essentially the whole opening scene fucked me up, with the colors shifting to black and white, characters repeating something they just said, the film going to slow motion, near subliminal images of a bloody Woody, to shifting camera viewpoints. Apparently someone had handed Oliver Stone a book on filmmaking techniques and he decided he was going to do them all. By the time we hit the opening credits I wasn’t sure what was actually happening. When we were treated to the sitcom starring Rodney Dangerfield as Mallory Knox’s (Lewis) physically, mentally, and sexually abusive father I was 100% certain that I was entirely in my own head and exorcising some of my more bizarre thoughts regarding the film Back to School. For the remainder of it’s two hour runtime I essentially melted into my seat, stuck somewhere between abject terror and complete fascination. I’d comment on the condition of my new friends but honestly I forgot they existed outside of what was proving to be a low grade nightmare. My large sized Root Beer and Reeses Pieces became my security blanket, as they were the only objects I felt had actual permanence in the entire theater.
When the movie ended it continued to replay in my mind, images replicating on my surroundings, switching between over saturated color and monochromatic film stock. How we made it to the actual subway is beyond me, as it would’ve been just as easy to find our way into the Public Garden, endlessly circling the pond in a hijacked Swan Boat. As we rode through the Boston Underground I couldn’t stop thinking about the movie, and not in that “it was such an amazing movie I can’t stop thinking about it” way. It had followed me into the T and and sat next to me, content with replaying its songs and scenes directly into my head, so much that I didn’t notice when my friends exited the T. Hell, I didn’t even realize we were above ground. When the train eventually came to a stop I found myself at Boston College, well past my stop at Boston University.
At this point, in my hometown at least, I would’ve expected someone to come up to me and ask if I was okay. After all, the train had come to its last destination and I was still sitting there. But as I came to learn over my time in the city, you simply don’t talk to strangers who look like they’re in the middle of a psychotic break, something that is fairly common in the subway system. As the semester went by I saw more than my fair share and I certainly wasn’t going to talk to them, so in retrospect it is not surprising people kept their distance from me. Thankfully the train began it’s return journey back into the city for long and I managed to find my stop despite all the internal distraction. It would be some time before I found my way back to my dorm, as I somehow managed to get into the school’s athletic stadium nearby and took a seat in the bleachers for an unknown amount of time. Eventually I got back to the safety of my room and rode out the remainder of the trip in relative peace and quiet.
But the film stayed with me.
I wasn’t able to go back to the theater for a few days, mostly out of fear that as soon as I walked in all the employees would point at me, laughing smugly, as if they had all witnessed something embarrassing that I’d done. When I did manage to summon the courage and buy another ticket I was more than surprised to discover that I hadn’t imagined much at all. The film really was that fucked up, with it’s surreal nature interjected with sex, violence, and surprisngly good rock and roll. (Seriously, if you don’t have this soundtrack somewhere in your CD/mp3 collection then you are truly missing out.) It would be years before I managed to read the original Quentin Tarantino screenplay, but in all honesty I think the changes that Oliver Stone made to it. While QT’s screenplay had the Wayne Gale elements, who was played brilliantly by pre-Marvel Robert Downey Jr, it was Stone who really amped up the satirical elements and pointed the finger back at the viewer, screaming that it wasn’t him who was fucked up for making the movie, but us for enjoying it so damn much.
And the film certainly stuck with people. By the end of the semester every frat house I partied in had it’s poster somewhere on the wall. People, much like the fans in the movie, started wearing Mikey and Mallory shirts, and there wasn’t a handmade flyer on campus that didn’t have the photocopied head of Woody Harrelson wearing those reflective sunglasses on it. I’m quite certain that had Pulp Fiction not come out a short time later the behavior around the Natural Born Killers obsessive might have become cult-like. However, the media certainly did notice the film and before long it was called out by parent groups and their ilk for it’s glorification of violence and anarchy.
When I was a kid I was certain that adults were far smarter than I was and knew what was best. For the first time in my young adult life I recognized how easy it was for somewhat well intentioned adults to COMPLETELY MISS THE FUCKING POINT. But then again, it wasn’t just the Tipper Gore clones who took the wrong message from the film, unable to grasp what was easily recognizable, and some would say far too obvious, satire. Those my own age, the recently named Generation X, latched onto the Bonny and Clyde personas present in the film and openly fantasized about their own cross country sprees. It seemed a weekly ritual in my creative writing class to listen to someone vomit out their tedious version.
I’m not sure if I took any lessons from Natural Born Killers, despite the lasting impression it gave me. Had I gone into it sober then perhaps I could’ve formulated a well thought out response and review of it. Instead I had to spend my first few viewings wondering what had been real and imagined, and it wasn’t until it came out on VHS that I was able to fully put those questions behind me. I certainly went into the film one person and came out, maybe not slightly evolved as Woody stated, but at least changed. Was my mind actually expanded thanks to the LSD?
I’m going to say it wasn’t, but then again, I didn’t follow the rules set forth by my friend. Maybe he had a point about listening to the Grateful Dead instead of Nine Inch Nails.
