Dealing: Or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues

source: Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues

Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues

This was a comedy???? I love this movie (maybe because I grew up in Boston and most of the movie takes place there, the same reasoning behind my love for "The Friends of Eddie Coyle"?) I saw "Dealing" with my older sister (she said she was my mom to get me in) when I was 13 (sis/mom said I was 11 to pay kid's price)though I did find a few scenes humorous ("F* U Susan", "F* U Peter", "F* everybody", I wouldn't call it a comedy. Considering it was 1972, I'm almost amazed this movie was released in the "big theaters", trafficking marijuana, police corruption, heroin, free love, etc. J. Edgar must have been rolling on the floor of Tricky Dick's Oval Office in a fit. I often look back on this movie in my memories and laugh (mostly about being embarrassed watching the "sex scene" sitting next to my sister), but I still believe this movie to be a drama and I would love to get a copy of it (as well as the movie "Clay Pigeon" that was in the coming attractions that day

This was a great little Saturday night flick that kept me laughing and highly entertained. This was actually a fairly intelligent teen comedy for the day without the Adam Sandler style inanity. The director had some very interesting techniques that really kept my attention. There was the guitar solo that was sung off-key, but by the end of the song, it really worked. The cool "dealer" kid all buffed out in his shades, sitting on the pot, and somehow devolving into an infant. The big dope deal, and just after our hero departed the house, every cop on the West Coast descends upon it. I really liked it, and I wish it was available on re-release somewhere.

Everyone loses in this offbeat counterculture comedy/drama written by Michael Critchon (under the pseudonym Michael Douglas). Robert F. Lyons is a Harvard law student who mules for theater director/dope dealer John Lithgow. He meets Berkeley beatnik Barbara Hershey on one run and falls in love...and gets her busted by crooked narc Charles Durning when he has her try to bring some drugs back to Cambridge. Incompetents Lithgow and Lyons try to exact revenge on Durning only to run afoul of Cuban Mafioso. It's an entertaining time-capsule of the early '70s with Lyons giving an exceptional performance. He's what THE PAPER CHASE'S James Hart would have been had he been an entrepreneurial stoner. Lithgow is terrific in an early role, trying to appear much more sinister than he is and Hershey is really beautiful in what amounts to a rather small role (despite top billing). With Joy Bang as Lithgow's not so helpful wife.

It's a crying shame Warner's has never released this. I don't know if it's the subject matter or the classic packed soundtrack full of big acts that's preventing them from doing something with this one. The comment on the front page about the slugs seems to have been written by someone who has not seen the film. There is no Jimmy and NO SLUGS. What you do get is a very pro pot themed film about a guy who moves weed cross country for his dealer, seemingly just because he enjoys the thrill. Back in the early 70's you could get stuff in and out of airports without any effort too. The film does not advocate harder drugs though, and shows the pot dealer ( a terrific John Lithgow in his debut...with HAIR! ) and his friends to be the good guys, while the cops are corrupt and evil and the organized crime guys are flat out murderous. Fans of Barbara Hershey will not be let down either, she looks great and has * scenes as the hippie girlfriend who gets mixed up in a deal gone bad.