Review of Drive, He Said

Before he became a journalist, Eugene McCarthy's speechwriter, and then an Oscar-winning screenwriter (The Candidate), Jeremy Larner was a successful novelist. His first effort, Drive, He Said (Delacorte Press, 1964) won the $10,000 Delta Prize for best first novel, beating out over a thousand other manuscripts. The protagonist of Drive, He Said is Hector Bloom, "a half-hick, half-Jew, left-handed neurotic basketball player from the green hills of California" who attends a small, upstate New York university on the Hudson River. The book's other protagonist is Bloom's roommate, Gabriel Reuben, a New York City Jew from an affluent family who nonetheless harbors revolutionary political sentiments. Bloom plays great basketball, sleeps with a professor's wife, and confusedly ponders his future with pro recruiters while Reuben plots seditious mayhem—and eventually acts out by burning down the campus! Written before America's full engagement in Vietnam, Drive, He Said is more centrally concerned with early 1960s cultural vertigo, the vagaries of American Dream ideology, and arms race anxieties. Scripted just after the Sixties by first-time director Jack Nicholson in collaboration with author Jeremy Larner (and un-credited help from Robert Towne and Terrence Malick), Drive, He Said zeroes in on the radicalization of an All-American college jock during the era of Vietnam War protests—which were at their height when the movie was being filmed on the campus of the University of Oregon (Eugene, OR). The somewhat chaotic structure of Drive He Said, while off-putting to some critics, nicely enacts the turmoil of the time. Performances are, however, a mixed bag. The redoubtable Bruce Dern is excellent as Hector's mean-spirited coach. Karen Black is equally convincing as Olive, Hector's troubled mistress. Michael Margotta, who plays Hector's roommate, the increasingly psychotic campus radical is also good. Unfortunately William Tepper, an unknown cast as Hector lacks the charisma to carry off the lead role. Filmmaker Henry Jaglom and screenwriter Robert Towne both play professors and David Ogden Stiers and Cindy Williams appear in minor roles. Screened at the 6th Annual CineVegas Film Festival (2004) where Jack Nicholson was honored with the Festival's Marquee Award, Drive, He Said has not been released on VHS or DVD.