| Troika | |
| Director: | Fredric Hobbs Gordon Mueller |
| Producer: | Fredric Hobbs |
| Starring: | Fredric Hobbs Richard Faun Morgan Upton Nate Thurmond Gloria Rossi Parra O'Siochain |
| Music: | Fredric Hobbs Gordon Mueller |
| Cinematography: | William Heick |
| Editing: | Gordon Mueller |
| Studio: | Inca Films |
| Distributor: | Emerson Film Enterprises |
| Runtime: | 89 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
Troika is a 1969 American comedy art film written, directed, and produced by Charles Fredric Hobbs. It stars Hobbs, Richard Faun, Morgan Upton, Nate Thurmond, Gloria Rossi, and members of the San Francisco Art Institute. Its three parts are built around a fictional account of the director's attempt to gain financing for a film titled Troika.
Hobbs conceived the plot after working with the filmmakers Ron Bostwick and Robert Blaisdell on the short film Trojan Horse. It began as a "modern morality play"; the title comes from the Russian word for a set of three, reflecting the film's three segments. It was filmed in early to mid-1969 in various locations in and around California. The score was a collaboration between Hobbs and the editor-co-director Gordon Mueller.
Troika was previewed on October 12, 1969, and officially premiered on November 8. It received little attention from critics, with reviews being mixed to positive, yet became foundational for Hobbs' career and led to his three other films, before he retired in the late 1970s. The film is largely unavailable to the general public and has not received a home media release as of August 2024. During his lifetime Hobbs blocked Troika releases on home video as he was unhappy with the final print. In 2022, a copy restored by Glasgow's Centre for Contemporary Arts in collaboration with Hobbs' estate was screened at the Weird Weekend Cult Film Festival.
Abandoning the conventional narrative structure, Troika consists of an introductory story and three parts, each told in differing narrative styles. The film opens with an artist—Fredric Hobbs portraying a fictional version of himself—as he paints on a blank canvas. The scene then transitions to a series of encounters between Hobbs and the Hollywood producer Gordon Goodloins (Richard Faun) as the former attempts to convince him to invest in a proposed art film titled Troika. Goodloins relents and agrees to hear out Hobbs' proposal. Later, the two men meet and discuss the cinematic connections between art and life concerning his vision for the film. Goodloins is unimpressed by the idea and rebuffs him, suggesting that there is no consumer demand for art films. The sequence ends with Goodloins driving off in a limousine as Hobbs angrily chases behind him, shouting, "Up yours, Mr. Goodloins!"
The individual sections are not titled in the credits; Hobbs named them in an interview "The Chef", "Alma Mater" and "The Blue People".
In this segment, a chef wearing ritualistic face paint, begins making an alchemical and culinary brew in a large pot, into which he throws items such as medals and emblems. Nearby, a homunculus made of cloth lies inert; the chef uses pieces of it as ingredients for the concoction. Unsatisfied with the results, the chef introduces a woman, played by Gloria Rossi, covered in painted symbols. They dance the tango, then he throws her into the pot. Picking up a rose she had dropped, the chef gazes at it before tossing it too into the pot.
Presented in documentary style, the second segment depicts a student demonstration in the late 1960s. It opens during a sit-in on a college campus as mounted police gather outside. In the classroom, students covered in white face paint rest on toilet seats and chaise longues while college professors lecture them on different topics. Six professors complete their lectures, then the frustrated students boo a dunce-capped teacher out of the classroom.
The final segment opens with a train arriving at a grassy landscape. A tall insectoid named Rax (Morgan Upton), exits and travels to a nearby coastal hill. He is later attacked by a feral human (Parra O'Siochain), who leaves him for dead. Rax staggers onto a beach where he collapses and convulses in pain as an orange-colored woman (Rossi) emerges from the ocean, pushing a large sculpture. Seeing Rax, the woman turns towards him, caressing his wounds and eventually masturbating in front of him. The shot cuts to a seemingly rejuvenated Rax entering an icy cave where he meets a seven-foot-tall shaman known as the Attenuated Man (Nate Thurmond). Addressing Rax in distorted Arabic, he induces a vision of a sculpture of three corpse-like beings emerging from the cave's ceiling. Rax, alongside the Attenuated Man, then join a procession of blue people who embrace him as their "savior". The procession escorts Rax on a strange vehicle, marching across an otherworldly plain and through a ghost town before they arrive at a railway terminal. There, Rax bids the group goodbye as he boards the train, and the sequence ends with a shot of Rax as he merges with the sculpture of the three beings.
The film then cuts back to Hobbs, who has completed the painting. It is unveiled as a grotesque figure of a woman, from whose extended arm hangs many faces and shapes. Satisfied with the painting, Hobbs exits the frame, and the film ends.
Hobbs graduated from Cornell University in 1953 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and hoped for a career in the visual arts. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he produced paintings and sculptures acclaimed for their unique and avant-garde style, which explored environmentalist and spiritualist themes. In 1967, Hobbs collaborated with the filmmakers Ron Bostwick and Robert Blaisdell on a 25-minute documentary on his "parade sculpture" Trojan Horse, a metal sculpture bolted over a Chrysler chassis cab. Hobbs financed the project in conjunction with the independent production company Inca Films.[1] During the collaboration, he became fascinated with film as an art form and began to develop the concept for Troika, which he described as a "modern miracle play but not underground".[2]
Troika was developed during the late 1960s arthouse cinematic movement, when visual style often took precedence over linear narration. While contemporary writers categorized the film as a comedy or art film, it incorporates several different narratives and genres within each segment. Hobbs crafted Troika as a series of increasingly bizarre segments, with the final segment being his favorite. The film expands upon his prior works, exploring environmental and spiritual themes through a series of images. Religious motifs incorporated into the film were taken from various cultural backgrounds. The dialogue of the Attenuated Man, according to Hobbs, was taken from a portion of the Quran discussing the concept of Universal Brotherhood and modified later in post-production. The procession sequence, where Rax is paraded through the ghost town, was inspired by the traditional religious processionals Hobbs had witnessed during a brief stay in Madrid. The "Chef" segment was developed from Hobbs' anti-war sentiment after serving in the United States Air Force during the Korean War. Historical events were also used as inspiration for some of the film's sequences. For the "Alma Mater" segment, shot in the narrative style of an expressionist documentary film, Hobbs reportedly took his inspiration from the Kent State riots, in 1967 and April 1969.
The cast was mainly composed of unknown actors, although some had backgrounds in theatre. Hobbs plays a fictionalized version of himself and the chef character. The San Francisco-based basketball player Nate Thurmond appears as the mystical "Attenuated Man" in the final segment; one writer described the character as a Christ-like figure. Morgan Upton, later known for his roles in The Candidate (1972), and Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), appears as Rax, the bug-man. Members of the San Francisco Art Institute were hired for several roles, including the blue and purple people and the students in the "Alma Mater" scene.[3] Some of the characters in the marching sequence were student activists from the UC Berkeley School of Law.
Principal photography began in 1969. The visual artist Gordon Mueller was hired as the editor, and directed the scenes where Hobbs was on camera. The photographer and filmmaker William Heick was brought in as cinematographer; he was a close friend of Hobbs and had worked with the filmmakers Sidney Peterson and Robert Gardner between 1948 and 1953.
The "Chef" sequence was shot inside a local brewery where the crew used the vat as the chef's alchemy pot. The "Alma Mater" sequence was shot at the San Francisco Art Institute, with additional filming in Hillsborough, California. The segment's documentary footage was shot during the 1960s Berkeley protests. The ghost town in the final "Blue People" sequence was filmed in Collinsville, California, and the "otherworldly" landscape was shot in the outskirts of a town where a brush fire had recently occurred. Hobbs drilled the student activists portraying the characters in the marching sequence to march in step. Hobbs intended to include a sequence involving Thurmond's character as he runs alongside the skyline. The scene was filmed at Fort Cronkhite, but was abandoned when the army fired Nike Hercules missiles during an exercise, ruining the shot.
Hobbs designed the costumes and many of the background paintings and sculptures. Some of these were artworks he had made earlier, such as the Trojan Horse in the processional scene. He and Meuller co-produced the soundtrack, generating sounds that Thrower described as echoing the avant-garde composer La Monte Young.
Troika was first screened on October 12, 1969, and had its official premiere on November 21 in New York.[3] The associated paintings and sculptures were exhibited at the John Bolles Gallery in San Francisco between November 1969 and January 1970. It was screened at the Granada Theater in Wilmington, California on November 28 as a double feature alongside John Perry's short film Dandelion (1969). During its release, some theaters ran advertisements with the caption "Means Three", a translation of the Russian name the title was based on. Troika aired on UK and Canadian television between May and December 1979.
In later years, Hobbs repeatedly blocked its release on home video as he was dissatisfied with the quality of the print and was holding out to finish an edit ultimately never completed. The only known print is stored at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archives and includes additional materials.[4] [5] [6] In October 2022 the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, in collaboration with Hobbs' estate, acquired a copy for restoration efforts by the American Genre Film Archive.[6] [7] The film was screened for the first time in over fifty years at the Weird Weekend Cult Film Festival on October 28, 2022.[8] As of 2024 there have been no further announcements or screenings.
Contemporary and retrospective reviews of Troika have been largely positive, with critics focusing on its visual style and narrative. In 1969, Howard Thompson of The New York Times praised its unconventional plot, describing it as a "cluttered and disconnected collage of art objects, paintings, live-action fantasy and symbolism". Its surreal and psychedelic visuals were also praised by video retail company Blockbuster Video in their annual movie guide, describing it as a "wildly offbeat look at the movie business". The TV Guide echoed this sentiment and also noted that the film would only appeal to viewers who did not mind its unconventional narrative.[9]
The film was generally well-received, especially for its cinematography, but Cue magazine described it as "grotesque", dismissing its visual style as self-indulgent and "devoid of talent". Kevin Thomas of The Los Angeles Times wrote that the narrative was original but incoherent, and the comedic elements were too heavy-handed to be funny. He called it "obscure and boring". In a 1969 review, Wanda Hale of the Daily News wrote that the film had artistic merit, but was compromised by "amateurish" production.
After Troika, Hobbs developed three more films. In 1970, Hobbs was approached by pornographic film producer Habib Afif Carouba who offered to fund his next film, on the condition that it would be an adult one.[2] The resulting (1970), is a surreal satire on the porn industry. The film gained controversy due to its sexual content, which was considered scandalous for a mainstream film at the time.
In 1973, Hobbs wrote and directed his last two films. Alabama's Ghost is a horror film that combines the themes and motifs of blaxploitation and vampire films.[10] Godmonster of Indian Flats continued his exploration of the blaxploitation genre, and was shot in a horror western setting. Both were critical and commercial failures,[11] which, combined with behind-the-scenes conflicts with producers, caused Hobbs to retire from filmmaking.