Who'll Stop the Rain
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Who'll Stop The Rain is a 1978 psychological drama film made by Katzka-Jaffe and released by United Artists. It was directed by Karel Reisz and produced by Herb Jaffe and Gabriel Katzka with Sheldon Schrager and Roger Spottiswoode as executive producers. The screenplay was by Robert Stone and Judith Rascoe from Stone's novel Dog Soldiers. The music score was by Laurence Rosenthal and the cinematography by Richard H. Kline.
The film stars Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld, and Michael Moriarty with Anthony Zerbe, Richard Masur, Ray Sharkey, Gail Strickland, Charles Haid and David Opatoshu.
[edit] Background and production
The film is based on the novel Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone, winner of the National Book Award (US) for fiction in 1974. In certain foreign releases and re-issues the film retained the novel's title, but was re-titled Who'll Stop the Rain for its original US theatrical release, after the famous song by Creedence Clearwater Revival, which features prominently (along with several other popular CCR tracks) on the film's soundtrack.
Novelist Robert Stone based the character of Ray Hicks (Nick Nolte) on noted counter-culture figure Neal Cassady, with whom Stone became acquainted through novelist Ken Kesey, a classmate of Stone's in graduate school at Stanford University.
Hicks' death scene on the railroad tracks at the film's conclusion was directly based on Cassady's, which took place along a railroad track outside of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico in 1968. Also, the hippie commune setting, where lights and stereo speakers placed throughout the woods are utilized in Hicks' escape plan, was partially based on Ken Kesey's home in La Honda, California, where Kesey and his friends--known as the Merry Pranksters--famously wired the surrounding woods with lights and sound equipment to enhance their experiments with LSD. Though technically not a commune, Kesey's home was a frequent site for large parties attended by a mixture of literary luminaries such as poet Allen Ginsberg and journalist Hunter S. Thompson, music figures (including Jerry Garcia, whose group The Grateful Dead later became the house band for Kesey's famous Acid Tests), and outlaws, especially members of the infamous Hell's Angels motorcycle club. These parties are described intimately in works by Ginsberg and Thompson and in Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
[edit] Plot
The film opens in Saigon at the height of the Vietnam War.
John Converse (Michael Moriarty), a disillusioned war correspondent, approaches Ray Hicks (Nick Nolte), a merchant marine sailor and acquaintance of Converse's from back in the US, for help in smuggling a large quantity of heroin from Vietnam to San Francisco, where he will exchange the drugs for payment with Converse's wife Marge (Tuesday Weld), who (unbeknownst to Converse and Hicks) has become addicted to dilaudid. When Hicks discovers that he is being followed by thugs connected either to Converse or his suppliers, he goes on the run with Marge and the heroin, and is eventually pursued by the corrupt DEA agent (Anthony Zerbe) who initially set the deal in motion. As Marge is separated from her supply of prescription drugs, she experiences withdrawal, and Hicks decides to help her wean off her dilaudid addiction by using the heroin. Hicks also attempts to find another buyer for the heroin before his pursuers can catch up to him.
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