Sax von Stroheim writes:

My list of “Films that Belong to an American New Wave that Didn’t Really Exist” includes De Palma’s Greetings and Hi, Mom!; Norman Mailer’s Maidstone; Robert Downey, Sr.’s oeuvre; Shadows, Faces, and Opening Night; Robert Kramer’s Milestones; Mickey One, The Connection, Dusty and Sweets McGee, The Swimmer, and David Holzman’s Diary; various works by Andy Warhol; and, now, Aram Avakian’s adaptation of John Barth’s novel End of the Road.

Rated X for chicken screwing

Avakian’s movie captures the splintering of the American consciousness at the end of the 1960’s even as it was happening. Devastating, daring, and surprisingly all-of-a-piece, with James Earl Jones, Stacy Keach, and Harris Yulin all giving, early in their careers, what seem like career high performances. Dorothy Tristan is great, too: she seems like an actress who was made for this era. Keach plays an academic suffering from heavily symbolic catatonia and Jones is the deranged psychiatrist who tries to cure him. Terry Southern produced and wrote the screenplay, and it feels it. A favorite movie of Steven Soderbergh (he asked Warner Brothers to finally release it on DVD): it does remind me of Soderbergh’s early, more boundary-pushing work, from before he developed a severe fear of movies.