Dynamite Chicken

Dynamite Chicken was made in 1969 by Richard Pryor and some friends of his. They tried to capture the zietgiest of the late 60's with the vietnam war, Nixon, censorship, changing sexual mores, and hair in different segments narrated by comedians, actors, Allen Ginsberg, and some other people I have never heard of. It featured many prominent cultural icons such as Andy Warhol, Joan Baez, the music of Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and Malcolm X.

Emily: This movie utilized the cut-up technique, which we observed in the William S. Burroughs shorts, with flashes of different videos from the 50s and 60s, advertisements, news clips, naked women, and weird comedians. However, the way it kept coming back to Richard Pryor in some alley with a basketball gave it some continuity and pulled it together.

Kamala: It also eschewed narrative continuity. I wanted to watch Dynamite Chicken as another example of the chaos and opposing "contrasts," as the movie repeatedly repeated, that made up the socio-political scene in the late 1960s. We should have watched this one with Easy Rider, or even before it, but it just came today in the Netflix and that is how the cookie crumbles.

Emily: The credits called it a "A contemporary probe and commentary of the mores and maladies of our age.....with shtick, bits, pieces, girls, some hamburger, a little hair, a lady, some fellas, some religious stuff, and a lot of other things." which I think is pretty accurate. One of my favorite bits was the beginning, when we hear a male and female voice in the dark, talking about...what they have just done in the dark-and the girl asks for a light and then you hear like five other voices also asking for the lighter. ....It was an orgy. I don't know if I explained it very well.

Kamala: .....

This is kind of the definition of an independent film. It was financed in part by John Lennon, and distributed by some company called Tango Entertainment. It features many "counterculture" (I'm using that word for lack of a better one) icons, and has an intellectual or artistic agenda in that it rallies against censorship, police violence, racial politics, religion, the Vietnam War, and Richard Nixon.

Emily: The first scene is also great- a big fat guy walks out of his apartment to the 2001 music (when the apes discover the monolith). Richard Pryor is hysterical, and Fred Willard is in it! (that guy from all the Christopher Guest movies)