When any youth/counterculture "movement" starts getting portrayed in mainstream movies and television, it goes thru the Hollywood "homogenizer" and comes out all safe and pedestrian for the average movie-goer, but about as far from the truth as you can get. Not only was this movie a cheat to the Kerouac novel, but to the Beats as a whole. It's funny to see how Hollywood "suits" chose to portray the counterculture. They're strictly cardboard cutouts, mouthing hip sayings and going thru the motions. George Peppard looks especially uncomfortable thru the whole mess... and what EVER impelled the beautiful and talented Leslie Caron to take the role as his flighty, mentally unbalanced love interest?
Hollywood gave the same treatment to the hippies a few years later, such as British actor Richard Todd portraying a Timothy Leary-type LSD guru (!!!), and James "Book 'Em Danno" MacArthur a radical underground newspaperman in 1967's "The Love-Ins". Check it out if you want some good (unintended) laughs!
Not that "The Subterraneans" is all bad -- there are some terrific jazz performances worth seeing. But this was definitely a movie worthy of parody, which George Peppard himself would provide in the (infinitely superior) 1968 comedy "What's So Bad About Feeling Good?". In that picture, he and Mary Tyler Moore (!!!) are old "Beats" in a Greenwich Village flophouse, wallowing in their own miserable, pointless existences. When they are infected with a "happiness" virus from an imported toucan, they quickly clean up their acts and ditch the "bohemian" lifestyle! Peppard even goes back to his old job as a Madison Avenue advertising executive!
Like "The Subterraneans", "What's So Bad About Feeling Good?" is hard to find, having never been released on VHS or DVD, so about all you can hope for is a grainy bootleg copy off the internet. After seeing "The Subterraneans" again for the first time in decades, I can see it's not likely to be released on DVD any time soon! Can only hope "What's So Bad About Feeling Good?" does get the full restored treatment on DVD sometime. It's a funny 1960's comedy, and George Peppard looks much more at ease in the role!
Hollywood gave the same treatment to the hippies a few years later, such as British actor Richard Todd portraying a Timothy Leary-type LSD guru (!!!), and James "Book 'Em Danno" MacArthur a radical underground newspaperman in 1967's "The Love-Ins". Check it out if you want some good (unintended) laughs!
Not that "The Subterraneans" is all bad -- there are some terrific jazz performances worth seeing. But this was definitely a movie worthy of parody, which George Peppard himself would provide in the (infinitely superior) 1968 comedy "What's So Bad About Feeling Good?". In that picture, he and Mary Tyler Moore (!!!) are old "Beats" in a Greenwich Village flophouse, wallowing in their own miserable, pointless existences. When they are infected with a "happiness" virus from an imported toucan, they quickly clean up their acts and ditch the "bohemian" lifestyle! Peppard even goes back to his old job as a Madison Avenue advertising executive!
Like "The Subterraneans", "What's So Bad About Feeling Good?" is hard to find, having never been released on VHS or DVD, so about all you can hope for is a grainy bootleg copy off the internet. After seeing "The Subterraneans" again for the first time in decades, I can see it's not likely to be released on DVD any time soon! Can only hope "What's So Bad About Feeling Good?" does get the full restored treatment on DVD sometime. It's a funny 1960's comedy, and George Peppard looks much more at ease in the role!