Unsung Auteurs: Kris Kristofferson

By Erin Free

FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit they deserve. In this installment: the late Kris Kristofferson, who starred in Cisco Pike, Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, Convoy and Heaven’s Gate.

With the passing of the great Kris Kristofferson – one of the most important and influential singer-songwriters in the country music genre – we instantly began thinking of the lesser celebrated column of his long, storied, and constantly fascinating career, namely his work as an actor. Though always first noted as a musician in pretty much any discussion with him at the centre of it, Kristofferson in fact appeared in over a hundred feature films and television projects, which is not half bad for a secondary “side hustle”, especially when you consider how truly great some of Kristofferson’s films are.

But wait a minute, Kris Kristofferson never directed a film, nor wrote one…so how the hell can he be an auteur, right? Let alone an Unsung Auteur? Stay with us, okay? Like late Unsung Auteur Shelley Duvall, Kris Kristofferson crafted such a distinct screen persona – at least during his breakout period in the 1970s – that it almost felt like the work of an auteur. Though his acting career would later fracture with work across all genres (even leading famously into the comic book arena with his mentor role in Wesley Snipes’ iteration of Marvel’s Blade series), when Kris Kristofferson first began acting, his lane was specific, seemingly consciously driven, and wonderfully singular. The fact that Kristofferson’s lane frequently criss-crossed the particularly wild roads of some of the most iconoclastic filmmakers of the 1970s made the singer/actor’s choices appear even more focused and studied.

This was not just a guy taking whatever came his way…Kris Kristofferson was really considering his roles, despite his apparently laidback approach to the profession. “I feel about my acting the same as I do about my performing,” Kristofferson once said. “I’m sure as hell no Laurence Olivier. When it works, I feel blessed that it does, but it works just when I’m being as honest as I can be with whatever it is I am playing. I just fell into the acting. I thought I’d like to learn to direct a movie, but acting? It didn’t interest me then. Jesus, these guys who really study for it, they must figure, ‘Who the fuck is this, some shit-kicker they hauled off the Troubadour stage?’”

By the time Kris Kristofferson began acting, he was already a highly successful singer/songwriter, and was a vital player in the shifting fortunes of American country music, along with his friends Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings. He’d famously been a lot of other things too: a boxer, an athlete, a college student and eventual Rhodes scholar (“I think between us, Bill Clinton and I have settled any lingering myths about the brilliance of Rhodes scholars,” Kristofferson once said), a US Army soldier, and an accomplished helicopter pilot. Kristofferson began his acting career with a striking one-two that instantly positioned him as a cinematic countercultural force. These were projects with a political, philosophical bent, and with a definite thematic throughline.

Kris Kristofferson and Karen Black in *Cisco Pike*

Bearing the somewhat amusing “And Introducing” tag, Kris Kristofferson made his debut in 1971’s largely forgotten but wonderfully loose and freewheeling Cisco Pike. This was the first film for talented writer/director and Unsung Auteur B.L Norton, who would go on to helm the underrated sequel More American Graffiti, before sadly disappearing into episodic television and TV movies. It’s a classic example of a post-Easy Rider wig-out released by a major studio, and was a perfect fit for Kris Kristofferson. Though a major studio flick, this was at a time when Hollywood had been well and truly turned on its head. After all, how often do you see a drug dealer as the hero of a Hollywood studio movie? Kristofferson is all loose-limbed, raw-boned charisma and cool as Cisco Pike, a famous singer just out of prison for dealing grass. His efforts to get his life and career – as well as his relationship with Karen Black’s goofy but sensible sweetheart – back on track are almost instantly foiled when Leo Holland (a typically fierce and compelling Gene Hackman) – the jittery, idiosyncratic cop who put him behind bars – shows up on his doorstep with a particularly indecent proposal. The corrupt Holland has stolen a massive haul of top-grade weed, and he wants Cisco to sell it for him…or he’ll frame him and send him straight back to prison. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Cisco starts offloading the grass, beginning a tour through LA’s hip counterculture scene, which is surprisingly located in every socio-economic strata of the famously debauched city.

Boasting a lazy, laidback feel, and a supporting cast of wonderful oddballs (Andy Warhol “superstar” Viva and cult actress Joy Bang winningly play cute upper class drug fiends; Texan musician Doug Sahm plays a hipster singer; Harry Dean Stanton is Kristofferson’s decrepit former musical partner; Antonio Fargas is a drug dealer; and Severn Darden is a sleazy lawyer), Cisco Pike is a perfect piece of forgotten seventies cinema…as was Kristofferson’s other picture that year. A famous Hollywood disaster, Kristofferson was suitably part of the mad ensemble of Dennis Hopper’s post-Easy Rider, south-of-the-border freak-fest The Last Movie, a tripped out take-down of Hollywood and American imperialism…or something like that. Though not a great “acting role”, merely being on the set of a film like The Last Movie was like planting a flag in the ground with regards to the type of cinema you wanted to be associated with. In short, Kris Kristofferson was a singularly cool screen presence.

Kris Kristofferson & James Coburn in *Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid*

From there, Kristofferson moved onto one of his most iconic roles, while also forging one of his most important cinematic relationships. Directed by the great Sam Peckinpah, 1973’s Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid is one of the truly extraordinary westerns of the 1970s, an elegiac tone poem in salute of America’s long gone outlaw, renegade spirit, with Kristofferson’s youthful, hippy-style Billy The Kid pursued across an earthy but haunted landscape by James Coburn’s jaded lawman. With a cast of Mount Rushmore-like western legends (Slim Pickens, Katy Jurado, Chill Wills, Jack Elam, Jason Robards) and counterculture oddballs and scenesters (Luke Askew, Kristofferson’s partner Rita Coolidge), a soundtrack by Bob Dylan (who also appears in a rare acting role as the enigmatic Alias), and a master director operating at the absolute top of his game, Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid is a true masterpiece…depending, of course, on which cut of this infamously studio-fucked flick you see.

After his richly charismatic lead turn in Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, Kristofferson (now with trademark beard) appeared in support in a trio of superb films, all with major directors of the era, and again hooked into the counterculture of the time. The truly on-song burgeoning actor delivered a fantastic performance as “the other man” in Paul Mazursky’s funny, heartfelt 1973 divorce drama Blume In Love opposite George Segal and Susan Anspach, and appeared briefly in Sam Peckinpah’s profoundly unhinged 1974 mind-fuck Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia as a very unpleasant biker. Kristofferson was also terrific in a small role in Martin Scorsese’s gorgeous 1974 feminist classic Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and then took a detour into truly unusual territory with two very strange films.

Kris Kristofferson in *The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea*

After nearly ten years of success as a screenwriter, Lewis John Carlino made his directorial debut in 1976 with the quietly bizarre cult curio The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, which marked another singular acting choice for Kristofferson. In a bold and unusual move, the film is adapted from legendarily troubled Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima’s short story, and transposed to England. Sarah Miles and Jonathan Kahn star as a widowed mother and son in a small coastal town whose lives are up-ended by the arrival of Kris Kristofferson’s eponymous seaman. Filled with steamy but deeply disturbing sex scenes and wrought utterly uncomfortable by constant threat of the son’s gaggle of weirdo friends, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea remains one of the most curiously hypnotic and strangely horrifying films of the seventies, and that’s really saying something. Kristofferson, meanwhile, offers a strong, imposing turn, and proves once again to be an actor drawn to edgy, fringe material.

Kristofferson changed tack with 1976’s absolutely scorching Vigilante Force, a no-holds-barred actioner in which Jan-Michael Vincent brings in his older brother (Kristofferson’s hardened Vietnam vet) to help clean up the booming crime problem in their small hometown. In one of his best and most out-of-character performances, Kristofferson proves, however, to be a complete psycho, and ends up taking over the town himself, leading to a full-tilt shoot ‘em up showdown between the two very different brothers. Manic and uncompromising, Vigilante Force is a truly stunning potboiler, featuring a host of in-your-face sequences, including a slew of violent fights and one of the most callous and upsetting murders in 1970s cinema, disturbingly committed by Kristofferson himself.

Kris Kristofferson & Barbra Streisand in *A Star Is Born*

After the low budget exploitation of Vigilante Force, Kristofferson went decidedly large on 1976’s A Star Is Born, a complete overhaul of the 1937 and 1954 films of the same name, and the biggest influence on Bradley Cooper’s eventual and highly successful 2018 take on the material. With Kristofferson as a rock legend on the skids and Barbra Streisand a rising star, the film is notorious for its on-set troubles, but stands as a big, almost crazily epic love story that could only have been made in the mid-1970s…another well-tooled belt-notch in Kristofferson’s of-the-era film choices, if not an overly happy one. “Filming with Streisand is an experience which may have cured me of movies,” Kristofferson said of his infamously headstrong co-star.

The ribald 1977 sports comedy Semi-Tough (directed by the great Michael Ritchie and co-starring Burt Reynolds and Jill Clayburgh) and Sam Peckinpah’s 1978 trucking epic Convoy fit with Kristofferson’s countercultural, anti-establishment film choices, and then led to the film that can safely be positioned as the full-stop on the singer turned actor’s period of pure, artistically driven cinematic performance. Though for many years derided merely as a self-indulgent, budget-blowing mess, Michael Cimino’s 1980 western Heaven’s Gate has enjoyed a considerable, well-deserved rethink in the past few years. It’s a towering, epic piece of cock-eyed Americana, and Kristofferson is terrific as a lawman caught up in a range war between wealthy landowners and struggling immigrants. The disastrous, studio-bankrupting box office failure of Heaven’s Gate irreparably damaged the reputations of everyone involved, and signaled the end of Hollywood’s here’s-the-cheque-book fascination with young auteur filmmakers.

Kris Kristofferson with Michael Cimino on the set of *Heaven’s Gate*

“I was real surprised to see the critics line up on the side of the philistines so fast,” Kristofferson said not too long after the film’s release. “To me, the film was about the American dream, and it shows one of the basic flaws in the dream – the idea that money is more important than people. I’ll be proud of that movie as long as I’m in the business. It was a work of art. Michael Cimino, the director, says he’s unrepentant and plans to sin again, and I hope he gets the chance.”

The sad, destructive failure of Heaven’s Gate marked the end of Kristofferson’s true “auteur” period as an actor, with the gifted performer moving away from singular, artistically driven projects and into more traditional fare. Though Kristofferson would make many, many more fantastic films with wonderfully idiosyncratic directors (Alan Rudolph’s Songwriter and Trouble In Mind; Randal Kleiser’s Big Top Pee-Wee; John Sayles’ Lone Star, Silver City and Limbo; James Ivory’s A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries; Paul Cox’s Molokai; Ethan Hawke’s Chelsea Walls and Blaze), his consistent, deeply thoughtful run of counterculture-tilted movies in the 1970s could never be rivalled…nor could Kris Kristofferson’s wild outlaw spirit and thrilling sense of artistic adventurousness.