Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

Cisco Pike

(1972)

My friend Kris Kristofferson looks very, very young in this, but he was actually already thirty-six, just the right age to play a musician who used to be big but now is out of fashion and scrambling to make a living dealing pot. This was his first movie. Karen Black plays his main squeeze, or “old lady” as we used to say. The great Harry Dean Stanton is his former music partner, and Gene Hackman is the psycho nark who demands that Cisco get $10,000 for him over the weekend. Hackman has stolen the super-duper grass from a Mexican who he may have killed. There is an appearance by Andy Warhol “superstar” (which essentially meant no-talent hangers-on) Viva. It’s an okay movie, but a little dated now.