The Trip

Back when I was about 19 or 20, I accompanied my parents what was our last trip together. The purpose of the trip was my cousins wedding, but my parents decided to extend the vacation and rented a cottage for a few days after the wedding. On the shelf in the cottages livingroom was a shelf of books left presumably by past guests. Harlequin romances, Sidney Sheldon novels and biographies filled the shelves. One of the books was The Fonda's: A Hollywood Dynasty. I didn't actually finish the whole book, but skimmed enough to figure out Peter was actually the most interesting in the family.

For some reason this memory came back to for the first time last week. While searching for images of actor Bruce Dern for my Oscar post above I came across images of Brude assisting and holding a naked Fonda. Of course, I was curious about the scene and it's context within the movie. The scene is from 1967's The Trip and the trip is not a beach or resort, but instead the trip refers to LSD induced hallucinations.

The movie was written by actor Jack Nicholson and according to reports, Nicholson wrote John, the character Bruce Dern ended playing, for himself. Dern says director Roger Corman would not agree to Nicholson playing the role and chose him instead. As part of their preparation for the film, Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Nicholson all supposedly engaged in a group LSD trip as research.

I did manage to get my hands on a copy of The Trip and although tried, did not make my way all the way through. The editing is so clunky, obviously an attempt to recreate a high, but it left me more nauseous. Fonda does have a great body and a sex appeal which carried me through, at least until the end of the scene I have capped here. It certainly didn't win any awards, but it was Dern's 2014 nomination that led me back to check out this 1967 film.