Blue Velvet - 1986

Blue Velvet (1986) Wall Mural
48 in. x 72 in.

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A controversial, disturbing, off-beat cult film drama that explores the corrupt, malevolent under-side of small town, suburban Americana. Following the collapse of his father in a colorful opening sequence, a college boy Jeffrey Beaumont (MacLachlan) returns to middle-class hometown Lumberton, where he finds a severed human ear in an overgrown vacant field. With the help of an innocent, sweet high school teenager Sandy Williams (Dern), he investigates the bizarre mystery of the ear, finding himself involved (and participating) in a frightening, nightmarish world of voyeurism, violent sex, perversion, drug-addiction, and depraved degradation. He encounters nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens (Rossellini) (who repeatedly sings Bobby Vinton's "Blue Velvet") enslaved by her sadistic, demoniacal, obscenity-shouting, sexual tormentor and drug-dealer Frank Booth (Hopper), who psycho-sexually blackmails her while holding her husband and child hostage. Academy Award Nominations: 1, Best Director.

Easy Rider - 1969

Easy Rider Poster
27 in. x 40 in.
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Framed   Mounted


Easy Rider (1969) is the late 1960s "road film" tale of a search for freedom (or the illusion of freedom) in a conformist and corrupt America, in the midst of paranoia, bigotry and violence. Released in the year of the Woodstock concert, and made in a year of two tragic assassinations (Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King), the Vietnam War buildup and Nixon's election, the tone of this 'alternative' film is remarkably downbeat and bleak, reflecting the collapse of the idealistic 60s. Easy Rider, one of the first films of its kind, was a ritualistic experience and viewed (often repeatedly) by youthful audiences in the late 1960s as a reflection of their realistic hopes of liberation and fears of the Establishment.

The iconographic, 'buddy' film, actually minimal in terms of its artistic merit and plot, is both memorialized as an image of the popular and historical culture of the time and a story of a contemporary but apocalyptic journey by two self-righteous, drug-fueled, anti-hero (or outlaw) bikers eastward through the American Southwest. Their trip to Mardi Gras in New Orleans takes them through limitless, untouched landscapes (icons such as Monument Valley), various towns, a hippie commune, and a graveyard (with hookers), but also through areas where local residents are increasingly narrow-minded and hateful of their long-haired freedom and use of drugs. The film's title refers to their rootlessness and ride to make "easy" money; it is also slang for a pimp who makes his livelihood off the earnings of a prostitute. However, the film's original title was The Loners.