Human Highway (1982)

 

Director: Neil Young and Dean Stockwell

Screenplay: Neil Young, Jeanne Field, Dean Stockwell, Russ Tamblyn and James Beshears

Cast: Neil Young as Lionel Switch / Frankie Fontaine; Russ Tamblyn as Fred Kelly; Dean Stockwell as Otto Quartz; Dennis Hopper as Cracker, Charlotte Stewart as Charlotte Goodnight, Sally Kirkland as Kathryn Geraldine Baron as Irene; Gerald Casale as Nuclear Garbageperson; Mark Mothersbaugh as Nuclear Garbageperson / Booji Boy; Bob Casale as Nuclear Garbageperson; Robert Mothersbaugh as Nuclear Garbageperson (as Bob Mothersbaugh); Alan Myers as Nuclear Garbageperson

An Abstract Candidate

 

Among idiosyncratic trends, one was a small amount of times musicians directed films. A few happened in the seventies – Bob Dylan’s Renaldo and Clara (1978) in its original four plus hour form, outside of fragments, was withdrawn, and Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels (1971) is a divisive and weird experiment I need to get to again before given a proper comment on. Even Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit gets into this line up with The Fanatic (2019), a genre film with John Travolta, and he did manage to get into a murder’s row of figures, as in the eighties especially, you get a set of really distinct ones from big figures of music. Prince directed Under the Cherry Moon (1986), and David Byrne of the Talking Heads made True Stories (1986), a film which got lost beyond being a known cult film, only to get a huge critical reevaluation and a Criterion approved re-release for physical media. There is also the subject for today, which has to be one of the weirdest, in that I can now talk today about a film Canadian born musician Neil Young, legendary for the likes of the After the Gold Rush (1970) album, in which he managed to get together with the likes of Dean Stockwell, a bugged out Dennis Hooper, older actor Russ Tamblyn, and the band DEVO just before their mainstream success with the song Whip It, and make a film were Stockwell taking salt in his coffee is the least peculiar thing on the table.

Young, to be blunt, is an incredibly talented figure but, like Lou Reed, his impulses over the decades are entirely his decisions whether his fans agree with them or not. His eighties period, before 1989’s Freedom album and Rockin’ in the Free World, is bizarre in general. Trans (1983) I will look to with sympathy as, with the tragedy that his son was born with cerebral palsy and unable to speak, the sudden shift as a rock musician to synthpop was as much dealing with trying to communicate to him as an experiment. It is however after this when David Geffen, the owner of his then-label of choice, demanded a "rock and roll album" from him, only for Young to make a rockabilly album as a response and Geffen to sue him for not making albums uncharacteristic of him. The eighties albums after are not well regarded, and even his return to Cosby, Stills and Nash for American Dream (1988), their last album from 1970 as a quartet, was not held in good regard. Human Highway, which has songs from Trans, predates that album, and was shot over four years with Dean Stockwell as a co-director¹, and likewise this is one of those films that, with Young's name as a selling point, which would divide people as much.

Young himself plays Lionel Switch, an idiot savant of a car mechanic who also dreams of being a rock star, someone who thinks that working on a car radiator is the same as the dangers of radiation poisoning, and openly admits to having drunk water from these radiators in the same dialogue. Stockwell is Otto Jr., who also plays his late father in an old man fake beard who died of said radiation poisoning, Otto the second having inherited the family gas station and diner, which is in close proximity to a nuclear power station, and was running into the red in bills when the son inherited it in the will. Hopper is among the diner staff, the chef with a loose hygiene plan and friend of neighboring raccoons, and Russ Tamblyn is the new employee Fred, a friend of Lionel‘s, taken in to work in the garage. DEVO, glowing bright red due to the radiation, work with the nuclear waste from the plant they casually dispose of, and both provide the most musical numbers and has member Mark Mothersbaugh, in the early era version of the band where he wore a baby mask, taking on the Dadaist Greek chorus by himself. Experiencing Human Highway, it is a vibrant plastic Americana in design to the production team’s credit, with throwbacks to fifties culture set against the new eighties era. Stockwell comes prepared with a pea green shirt and red tie, but for a film which has been difficult to see at times in a proper version, even a muddier version shows Neil Young already had a distinct eye even with help, creating a vibrant place even with minimal production design in idiosyncratic touches, like occasional back projection or the issue of nearby radiation from the plant causing flies to also grow bright red by a onscreen visual effect. Whilst cinematographer David Myers was more known for his history in musical concert films and working with musicians - he was the cinematographer on Renaldo and Clara, and was there to film the legendary Woodstock (1970) concert film - he also was cinematographer on a lesser known George Lucas project, THX 1138 (1971), a very aesthetically distinct film which, whilst different animals in aesthetic and tone, makes the stylization found here in Human Highway not a hard abrupt turn in his career. The look of this film stands out for what does admittedly wander to and fro from what presumably could be a plot, such as Otto considering torching the buildings for an insurance scam.

Sadly this does have one badly aged and problematic joke, of a stereotypical Middle Eastern (Saudi Arabian) figure of wealth that comes to the diner, clearly an actor in brown face and Young’s character using a racial term that is not acceptable. It is a sole sour note to a film where its biggest sin would be that, for Neil Young fans or film viewers, it is so scattershot and a weird flight of fancy it would lose people for not really caring for an actual story. You have to tolerate its peculiar lurches and that Neil Young, whilst capable of composing the likes of Cortex the Killer, or pissing Lynyrd Skynyrd off enough they added additional digs at him in live performances of Sweet Home Alabama, has a very dad humour sense of comedy too. His character Lionel with Russ Tamblyn play to old style slapstick, and the diner staff are over the top, so if you at all find this "lame" or still think this with a dismissive viewpoint, neither is that going to help with Human Highway. David Lynch is an apt comparison, more so as members of this cast would appear in his work – Stockwell and Hopper in Blue Velvet (1986), Russ Tamblyn in the Twin Peaks series - but even his most explicably comedic work, like the one season TV series On the Air (1992), whilst also having cheese ball humour, still possessed his own distinct sense of surrealism.

By the end of the film, Human Highway even rejects pretense of plot, as alongside abrupt nuclear catastrophe, a music number to celebrate it, and end credits evoking the Heaven sequence from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983), a portion of the film is Lionel being knocked out and having an extended fantasy about his rock success. This transpires after he meets his idol, also played by Neil Young, and knocks his head working under the star’s limo, starting a multi-scene dream sequence where, splicing in real concert performances, even the most impatient viewer will be rewarded, as Human Highway would have been worth preserving for the duet between Young and DEVO on My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue). This becomes of note as, whilst this timeline has been questioned¹, it is Mark Mothersbaugh, as he sings in the lyrics, credited to the phrase "rust never sleeps", which became the album this song would appear on with its acoustic counterpart. The heavier version of the song I first learnt of becomes a ten minute version here with added electronic noise instrumentation, and Mothersbaugh in a baby crib on the lead vocals, a sequence which is spectacular if you can appreciate a full blown rock jam session. It is, for a legendary song, an impressive moment for rock film history even if you sit through the whims of Human Highway and do not appreciate its goofball cheesiness.

That entire dream scenario may put off some who can even appreciate the first half, as it has its own aesthetic choices. It oddly evokes another director, Chilean figure Raúl Ruiz, and his eighties work with the obsession with idiosyncratic production design, saturated colour and viewers having to watch his work in VHS rips only, as Young choose to depict this passage of his own film with what feels like Vaseline smeared on the screen throughout.  Shifting between real concert footage, and moments of more slapstick, you have the character of Lionel is touring with the type of woodcarvings of Native Americans you would see in front of cigar stores in American films, seemingly wandering off at some point by themselves, and Young and real Native Americans at a celebration in front of a pyre, all of which becomes a stream of consciousness. The entire experience is unpredictable in a way, legitimately comparable to some experimental films, which can be appreciated but also liable to cause some viewers to pull their hair out for cohesion. Human Highway does show a lot of indulgences in its form, undoubtedly, but at the same time, baring the one joke I references earlier, the obvious issues with the film structurally have thankfully given way to so much that stood out and stayed with me in a positive. The final film altogether is absolutely of a period in Neil Young’s career which was ready to divide people, and even outside of it, this is an eccentric film I could appreciate but could have frustrated me if I was in the wrong mood. Thankfully I was in the right mood and could even at its silliness something to admire.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Stream-of-Consciousness/Wacky

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

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1) The Weird Story of Neil Young’s Human Highway by Jim Knipfel, written for Den of Geek and published June 4th 2018.