She says he reminds her of the character in “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33,” a soulful, self-lacerating Kris Kristofferson song off his 1971 album The Silver Tongued Devil and I.
That’s how cool Kris Kristofferson was by the mid-’70s: Not even the Rolling Stones got their own commercial in a Martin Scorsese movie.
From that moment on, Kris Kristofferson was always with us.
Kristofferson hated the movie as well as the experience of making it (he called it “the worst thing I’ve been through since Ranger School”), but it was ironically appropriate that Kristofferson replaced Elvis.
In the ’70s, Kristofferson kinda looked like a young Brando and was a double-threat music-and-movie star like Elvis.
Campaign worker Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) meets disturbed Vietnam veteran turned taxi driver Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) for lunch in the movie Taxi Driver. She says that he reminds her of the character in Kris Kristofferson’s 1971 album The Silver Tongued Devil and I, which has the soulful, self-lacerating song “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33.”. She describes him as “a walking contradiction, a prophet and a pusher, half truth, half fiction.”. “I’m not a pusher,” declares Travis, whose metaphor-reading comprehension is merely marginally better than a dog’s. Nevertheless, he purchases the record, and while the salesperson gives it to Travis, Scorsese makes sure to display the picture on the cover, which features Kristofferson viewed from the hips up with his thumbs tucked into his jeans’ waistband. By the middle of the 1970s, Kris Kristofferson had become so iconic that even the Rolling Stones had their own movie trailer directed by Martin Scorsese.
The Silver Tongued Devil and I, according to Kristofferson, who passed away on Sunday at the age of 88 at his Maui home, captured the “echoes of the going-ups and the coming-downs, walking pneumonia and run-of-the-mill madness, colored with guilt, pride, and a vague sense of despair.”. “The singer-actor composed numerous songs and produced numerous films that encapsulated those feelings. These included the widely covered hits “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down,” “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” and “Lovin’ Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again)” as well as Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and the 1976 adaptation of A Star Is Born.
It is astounding in its scope and caliber to consider the entirety of his decades-long career as an actor and musician. He had the most tastefully balanced career of all the stars who appeared simultaneously on vinyl and celluloid; he was an artist who applied the same caliber of skill and morality to both mediums. He never conveyed the idea that he saw acting as a means of advancing his musical career or the other way around. Nor did one overshadow the other, as was the case with great musicians like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and David Bowie, who were all capable of being excellent in different roles but were never regarded as having the same dedication to both.
And Kristofferson was. The creation and reception of his work were inextricably linked, and it was clear how they nourished one another. Kristofferson was a very real character in both his songwriting and his film roles; they were grimy, distorted reflections of himself with elements of exaggeration or criticism and plausible deniability. There was alcohol on these men’s breath and dirt on their hands. They committed mistakes that made them lifelong outcasts, were killed, or were beaten.
Kristofferson, who was raised in a military household and was born in Brownsville, Texas, gained notoriety as a sensitive tough guy early on. He played rugby, played football, worked in blue-collar jobs during his high school years, and was good enough at rugby to be featured in Sports Illustrated. He was not, however, the conventional jock. He was a great lover of words, perhaps even more than women, who, according to several biographers, practically threw themselves at him the moment he reached puberty. (He wed three times: singer Rita Coolidge, former law student Lisa Meyers, and Fran Beer. Kristofferson was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he pursued his dream of becoming a literary novelist by boxing, playing rugby, and getting a showbiz manager who would help him become a successful singer-songwriter.
Kristofferson’s parents encouraged him to enlist in the Army because they despised the Hemingway-wannabe path their son was taking. Even after graduating from Ranger School and learning how to pilot a helicopter, he finally left to pursue his passion. His parents disowned him in a letter written by his mother: “Nobody over the age of 14 listens to that kind of music, and if they did, they wouldn’t be somebody we would want to know. “.
Over the course of the following ten or so years, Kristofferson maintained his composure and remained the gruff poet with the frog-in-a-cello voice, the narrow eyes, and the world-weary charisma. In an effort to pay for their son’s esophageal reflux disease treatment, he and Beer relocated to Nashville. Despite being told not to approach talent, he got a job as a janitor at Columbia Records and broke the rules to get his songs performed by artists he admired. One was Johnny Cash, who disregarded him up until Kristofferson crashed a helicopter onto his lawn due to intoxication. Kristofferson is said to have given Cash the charts for “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down,” which would go on to become one of his signature hits, when Cash stormed out of his house and discovered the longhaired guy who mopped up at the studio sitting in the helicopter’s cockpit. “It was actually a different song that wasn’t good,” as Kristofferson subsequently revealed to Cash’s son. “).”.
In addition to recording several songs with Kristofferson, Cash also gave him career advice. But not even Cash’s magic touch could make him a household name. In the industry, Kristofferson was primarily recognized as a conduit for new material during the 1960s. He was signed to Epic Records after writing “Golden Idol,” a single that didn’t really stand out. His first noteworthy songwriting credit was “Viet Nam Blues,” which Dave Dudley covered in 1966. It was just successful enough to get him signed. Songs like “Jody and the Kid,” “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” “Once More with Feeling,” “Waylon Jennings,” and “Jody Drusky” were among the artists who recorded his later songs. However, as a performer, he was unable to gain any momentum.
Finally, stardom arrived all at once and somewhat by accident. Throughout his years of hardship, Kristofferson never really considered acting. It wasn’t where his interest lay. His first on-screen role was in Dennis Hopper’s Brechtian anti-western The Last Movie, which he took on as a joke since Hopper was a friend and had recently made his directorial debut with Easy Rider, one of the biggest hits of the 1960s. Casting director Fred Roos saw Kristofferson perform at the Troubadour and immediately asked him to try out for the lead in one of his projects, Monte Hellman’s existential highway parable Two-Lane Blacktop, even though The Last Movie was two years away from release. Even though he wasn’t genuinely interested, Kristofferson accepted the tryout, showed up inebriated, and left before reading any lines.
Even though he blew a huge chance, Kristofferson was regarded as a rising star in the 1970s, possessing the counterculture approval that was becoming more and more necessary for success in the film industry. In addition, Columbia Pictures sent him writer-director Bill Norton’s screenplay for Cisco Pike after learning that Roos thought highly of him enough to offer him a leading part in a film. Despite not having any professional acting training, Kristofferson answered in the affirmative. Even though he didn’t think the movie was very good, the role marked his Hollywood debut, and it had a soundtrack that included original songs by Kris Kristofferson that would appear on The Silver Tongued Devil and I a year later. When Kristofferson’s former flame, Janis Joplin, passed away and achieved a posthumous hit with “Me and Bobby McGee,” the film was finally released in theaters in 1972. “.
By then, Kristofferson had become so much of a commodity that he was working with big-name directors, such as Sam Peckinpah (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Convoy), Paul Mazursky (Blume in Love), Martin Scorsese (Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore), and Lewis John Carlino (The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea). The Barbra Streisand rendition of A Star Is Born in 1976 served as the cornerstone in the star-studded chain of events. Only the first Rocky movie surpassed it as the second-highest grossing film of that year. Kris Kristofferson was with us forever after that. You would never go a year without hearing about him, seeing him on TV or in movies, and realizing that he was good—the kind of good that kind of just kind of kind of came out of nowhere.
Both live and on record, Kristofferson was a compelling performer both by himself and with other artists, and he was a wonderful sideman for anyone whose music even slightly resembled country music. His most prosperous period as a musician began in the 1980s when he was a member of the Highwaymen, a group that included Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson—all of whom were pioneers in the “outlaw country” subgenre. He also utilized the stage as a pulpit or soapbox for progressive causes, such as opposition to U.S. policy, Native American and civil rights, the dignity of Palestinians, environmentalism, and feminism. S. participation in Iraq, Latin America, the Gulf War, and Vietnam.
He was an eccentric leading man with a wood-carved face who, like Adam Driver today, didn’t mean much at the box office but somehow represented art and populism in a way that uncannily helped get movies funded. He acted throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Even in movies that didn’t label themselves as art (like A Star Is Born or the Blade films), he could still be good, sometimes even great, and the film still had artistic elements.
Elvis Presley was originally slated to play the self-destructive alcoholic rock star John Norman Howard in the film A Star Is Born. However, Presley’s manager, Tom Parker, insisted on receiving top billing and half of the soundtrack. Ironically, it was fitting that Kristofferson took Elvis’ place despite the fact he detested both the film and the process of making it—calling it “the worst thing I’ve been through since Ranger School”). Presley dreamed of being a hip and well-regarded actor in movies, just like his idol Marlon Brando, all of his life. As a dual-threat music and movie star in the 1970s, Kristofferson resembled a young Marko. Though he had entered films through a side door and had never attended an acting class in his life, Kristofferson insisted from the start of his Hollywood career on a foundation of hard truth that distinguished him as a serious actor. He was equally critical of music. Both of his decisions reflected the kind of person he was and always aspired to be: a creative force with goals and ideas who hardly ever took action solely for financial gain. That’s why you never caught him in the equivalent of a bubblegum Elvis timekiller like Blue Hawaii or Change of Habit. You could at least see hints of the qualities that might have caught Kristofferson’s attention when it was all just words on paper, even in his films that ultimately bombed with critics and audiences – such as Heaven’s Gate, which the public finally came around to liking, and the financial thriller Rollover, which is still rightfully forgotten. About the time Elvis departed the building, Kristofferson entered the stage and assumed the role of the music star matinee idol that Elvis had always yearned for: one in which he was taken seriously on the big screen, not because he had finally shown himself to be an artist but rather because there was never any doubt about his ability to be one.
