When I saw Dennis Hopper in "Blue Velvet," I was too young to remember him as a youthful counterculture icon, but I was old enough to appreciate him as a middle-aged nut. Auteur this and "Cahiers du Cinema" that, but to me the highlight of the movie by far was when Hopper's Frank Booth asks, "What kind of beer do you drink?" and, when told "Heineken," thunders, "Heineken? F--- that s---. Pabst blue ribbon!"
Maybe it speaks to my own ignorance as a film scholar, but this moment stayed with me and my friends longer than any other element of David Lynch's joint. We went around saying that whenever possible, and sometimes when it shouldn't have been. Even before we were of legal age, we enjoyed prized opportunities to say the line when someone had or offered a Heineken. It was probably old by the time we did so, but who cared? It was funny stuff.
I feel like walking down to a seedy neighborhood bar, one established no later than 1959, and enjoying a PBR while munching stale peanuts and watching pro bowling on the 13" black and white TV on the wall. I won't do this, but I feel like it.
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You know, I always wondered if that great line wasn't the genesis for the parts of the hipster movement in the last decade that drank PBR proudly in their trucker hats because, well, it was just beer and they didn't "need" an expensive (or good) one to have a good time. I always figured it was because 8-10 PBRs was a helluva lot cheaper than 8-10 Heinekens.
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